LOGINHe swore I was his forever, but he stood at that altar, put a ring on another woman’s finger, and left me pregnant like I was nothing, and our baby meant nothing. I was twenty. Young, stupid, and poor enough to think love could win against his family. It couldn’t. They crushed me, and Sebastian let them. So I ran and buried the crying, broken girl who loved him and turned myself into someone colder, harder, someone who doesn’t break so easily anymore. Now I’m back after five years. Successful, untouchable, and ready to hurt him the way he hurt me. He looks at me like he’s seeing a ghost, eyes full of regret, telling me he never stopped loving me, that he wants me back… and that he wants his daughter. Too bad because sorry doesn’t fix the nights I cried alone. The only thing I want from Sebastian Hale now is revenge.
View MoreNAOMI POV:
I should’ve turned around the second those elevator doors opened.“HALE INDUSTRIES.” The name hit me like a punch to the gut, carved big and arrogant into that white marble. Sixteen years of trying to forget him, and there it was, staring me right in the face like it still owned me. My stomach twisted. For a second I couldn’t breathe. I almost hit the button to go back down, but I didn’t. I stepped out instead, heels clicking on the cold floor, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. “You’re here for the contract,” I kept telling myself. “Just the contract. You’re not that scared, pregnant girl anymore.” The receptionist gave me a polite smile. “Ms. Reed? They’re ready for you.” I followed the coordinator down the hallway, palms sweaty, mouth dry. Every step felt heavier. He was in there, I could already feel it in the air. The door opened, he was standing at the window, back to me, shoulders tense like the whole city pissed him off. The second the door shut behind me, he turned around. Grey eyes. The same ones I see every morning when my daughter looks at me. Everything inside me just… stopped. My chest squeezed so tight I forgot how to breathe. He looked older, sharper, with silver starting at his temples now. His gaze locked on mine and didn’t let go. For a long, painful second, neither of us said anything. I forced myself to move. I walked over, pulled out a chair, and sat down like my legs weren’t shaking. I opened my folder, looked straight at the events coordinator instead of him. “Let’s start with the budget,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady. The whole meeting felt like walking on broken glass. I talked about vendors, timelines, and venue capacity while my skin buzzed and my stomach kept flipping. Sebastian barely spoke. He just sat there watching me, quiet in a way he never used to be. His eyes kept coming back to my hands every time I folded the corner of the page without thinking. That stupid old habit. I felt his stare like a touch. Memories tried to push their way in, the little café on Renner Street, his laugh, the way he used to lean across the table and say, “You’re doing it again,” in that warm voice that always made me melt. I shoved it all down.When I finally glanced at him, his grey eyes were right there, searching my face like he was looking for the girl he left behind. My heart slammed against my ribs. “The florist portfolio,” I said, clearing my throat. “I’ll need it by Thursday.” “Done,” he answered quietly. Just one word. But the way he said it… it felt like so much more. Like something I didn’t want him to promise. --- The coordinator left first. I took my time packing up my stuff, trying to act normal, Calm. In control. I grabbed my bag and headed for the door. “Naomi.” His voice stopped me cold, low, and rough. Like it hurt him to say my name. I stood there with my back to him, hand on the door handle, pulse racing. The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. Part of me wanted to turn around. The smarter part of me walked out. --- Inside the elevator, I stared at my reflection and whispered, “You’re okay. You did fine.” My hands were still steady. My face looked put together.Then my phone buzzed, unknown number. I opened the message and froze. Text: “He didn’t just find you today. He’s been watching you and your daughter for over a year. Ask him why he really brought you back.” The elevator doors opened into the busy lobby, but I couldn’t move. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. That quiet “done.” Those grey eyes, the way he said my name like he’d been carrying it around for years. What the hell had I just walked into?I packed a bag for a weekend away with Sebastian, and for once I didn’t feel like a woman executing a plan.I felt like a woman who actually wanted to go. That difference hit deeper than I expected.I stood in my bedroom, the bag gaping open on the bed, and noticed everything that was missing: no performance, no armor of composure, no version of myself built only for survival. Just me, choosing shirts and jeans, letting my fingers linger on soft fabrics while my mind wandered toward two quiet days that asked nothing from me.Isla appeared in the doorway.She looked at the bag, then at me. The quiet satisfaction on her face was the look of someone who had watched her long game finally click into place.“What?” I said.“Nothing.” She leaned against the frame, arms loosely crossed. “You just look like someone who isn’t afraid of anything anymore.”“I look like I’m packing a bag,” I said, but the corner of my mouth twitched.“Same thing,” she answered, soft. “Jade’s coming Saturday. We’re
My daughter had written about me, and I wasn’t a cautionary tale in it.I was the point. I sat there, the words pressing against my ribs like something warm and too big for my chest, feeling more seen than I had ever been in my life.I found my voice eventually. Isla stood across the counter, watching me with those steady grey eyes while I clutched her phone, unable to speak. The living room noise drifted in—Jade’s voice rising, Marcus laughing, Sebastian saying something low and easy, but the silence stretching between us felt heavy, charged. “Mom,” she said softly. “It’s okay if you cry.” “I’m not going to cry,” I said, the words catching just enough to betray me. “You’re definitely about to.” “I’m not.” My voice wavered on the last word, and we both heard it. She didn’t push. She just waited, patient in that way of hers that somehow made the air feel thicker. I picked up the phone again and read the rest, all twelve paragraphs. Clear and precise. Entirely her voice,
Victor Hale wrote “the girl is remarkable” in the margin of a legal document. I slid the paper into the drawer with the rest of the letters, the quiet scrape of wood the only sound in the room. ‘That's the closest he'll ever come,’ I thought, and for the first time in sixteen years, it was enough. I was done waiting for more.I closed the drawer.No ceremony, no dramatic pause. Just the soft final click of wood meeting wood, like any other drawer when you’re finished with what’s inside. I turned away and went to make coffee, the routine pulling me forward before the weight of it could settle again.I had carried Victor for sixteen years—not the man, but the hollow space he left in my mind. What he’d done, what it cost me. What it demanded from me every single day just to keep standing. I’d carried it through the company, the plan, the deposition, the gala? every hard-won victory still laced with his shadow.No more.This wasn’t forgiveness. I wasn’t going to wrap it up prettily. But
Sebastian’s ex-wife told me he was already somewhere else on their wedding day. I sat with that for a long time. Not because it reopened the wound, I’d carried that one long enough, but for the strange, complicated grace of finally seeing the full picture. The edges fit in a way that hurt and soothes them at the same time.For years I had turned Claire into a symbol. The woman at the altar. The ring on her finger. The society photographs I’d closed on my phone and never reopened. She had been the face I pasted over the thing that broke me, because the thing itself—Victor, the machinery, the forged signature, the sixteen years, was too vast and faceless to hate with any precision.But she knew, on her own wedding day, that her husband was already somewhere else. That was not the life of a woman who had won. I called Sebastian that evening. My thumb hovered over his name longer than it should have.He answered on the second ring. “Hey.”“Claire sent me a message,” I said, voice steadi
He came back the next week and the week after. And I stopped calling it dinner and started calling it what it was, something I wasn’t ready to name, but couldn’t keep pretending was casual.The weeks before the gala moved differently. They were warmer and deeper. I hadn’t planned for it, and for on
My mother knew before I ever told Sebastian I was carrying his child, someone had already handed her a reason to let him go. I didn’t sleep that night.I just lay there on my back in the dark, staring at the ceiling, letting the truth settle over me. No fighting it, no trying to organize it into ne
Victor Hale had just tried to buy me out of the room the same way he bought his son a bride. The man had exactly one move, and he had just shown it to me.I want to go back twenty minutes.I had been heading for the lobby exit, folder under my arm, mind already on the drive back, when Victor appear
My daughter found his photo and didn’t say a single word. She just set her phone down on the kitchen table, the screen still glowing with those sharp grey eyes, and looked right at me.That silence hit like a slap.I stared back. The moment stretched… and stretched. My pulse hammered so loud I was






Welcome to GoodNovel world of fiction. If you like this novel, or you are an idealist hoping to explore a perfect world, and also want to become an original novel author online to increase income, you can join our family to read or create various types of books, such as romance novel, epic reading, werewolf novel, fantasy novel, history novel and so on. If you are a reader, high quality novels can be selected here. If you are an author, you can obtain more inspiration from others to create more brilliant works, what's more, your works on our platform will catch more attention and win more admiration from readers.
reviews