Inicio / Romance / Ashes Of His Regret / Capítulo 131 - Capítulo 140

Todos los capítulos de Ashes Of His Regret : Capítulo 131 - Capítulo 140

167 Capítulos

Chapter 131

Esmeralda's POVDr Reeves… hmmm, he was the financial Expert, he is a compact man in his sixties with reading glasses he pushes up his nose every time he references a document, which is frequently, because his entire testimony is built on documents, numbers and different timelines. The language of forensic accounting that turns what was done to my father's company into columns and rows and percentage points.It is the least human part of the proceeding.It is also, in some ways, the most devastating.Because numbers don't have motivation. Numbers don't have a narrative that can be cross-examined or complicated or framed differently depending on who is asking the questions. Numbers are what they are.And what these numbers are is damning.*****Dr. Reeves speaks for forty minutes.He walks the court through the Morrison Manufacturing financials year by year, the genuine performance of the company before the interference began, and the engineered decline that followed. He identifies the

Última actualización : 2026-04-19

Chapter 132

Damien's POVFifteen years.The number goes through the gallery like weather quiet, immediate, felt in the body before it is processed by the mind. I hear the shift around me. The barely audible intake of breath from someone three seats to my right. The stillness that follows.I sit with the number.Fifteen years.With no parole for ten.I look at Esmeralda's back, the set of her shoulders, the position of her head, the absolute stillness of someone holding something enormous with both hands and refusing to let it shake her in public.She doesn't move.I don't move.We are very good, the two of us, at holding things still in rooms that are watching.*****I look at Julian.I have been looking at him intermittently throughout the day, not with the fixation of someone still in the fight, but with the particular attention of someone who wants to understand a thing completely before it closes.He is sitting with his hands folded on the table.He has been sitting that way since Esmeralda'

Última actualización : 2026-04-20

Chapter 133

Esmeralda's POVMatheson stands for the defense counter argument and He speaks for twenty-two minutes.I listen to every word.He does not dispute the financial figures. He cannot, Dr. Reeves' testimony is airtight and Julian's guilty plea makes the factual record immovable. What Matheson disputes is the weight the prosecution has assigned to them. He argues for context, the pressures of high-level corporate environments, the normalized practices of aggressive acquisition strategy, the distinction between a man who did harm and a man who intended to destroy.He uses the word *complexity* again.He asks the court to consider that fifteen years is disproportionate for crimes that, while serious, did not involve physical violence.He asks the court to consider Julian's cooperation, the guilty plea, the lack of a prolonged trial, the resources saved by a defendant who chose to accept responsibility.He asks the court to consider the man Julian Voss is today versus the man he was when the

Última actualización : 2026-04-21

Chapter 134

Julian's POVThe judge asks if I wish to make a statement.Richard told me I didn't have to. Told me that in cases like this, statements from defendants before sentencing often do more harm than good, they invite scrutiny, create new material for the record, give the prosecution a final opportunity to respond.He told me to consider carefully.I considered it and stood up.*****The room is very quiet when I stand.The particular quiet of a space that has been loud all day, testimony, argument, the weight of accumulated words suddenly holding its breath.I don't look at the gallery.I don't look at the plaintiff's table.I look at the judge.She is watching me with the expression she has maintained throughout the entire proceeding, attentive, measured, giving nothing away.I speak.*****"I am not going to argue against the prosecution's recommendation," I say. "I'm not going to ask for leniency I haven't earned or suggest that the sentence proposed is disproportionate. It isn't. What

Última actualización : 2026-04-21

Chapter 135

Esmeralda's POVHe stands up and tells the truth.I hear every word, but I didn't bother to not look at him.Not because I can't, not because looking would cost me something I can't afford to spend today. But because his statement is not for me, it is for the record, for the room, for whatever version of himself he is trying to become in the wreckage of the version he was. That is his work to do. Not mine to witness.But I hear something that got my attention “Morrison Manufacturing was not failing. It was a healthy company run by a man who understood what he built.”The judge's face gives nothing away.Mine gives nothing away.Underneath both of those surfaces, I don't know what is happening in her. In me, there is something moving that I don't have a name for yet. Something that started when he said my father's name. Something that has not finished arriving.“That decision killed that man's belief in himself in the last years of his life.”My hands are flat on the table.I let the

Última actualización : 2026-04-21

Chapter 136

Esmeralda's POVI wake up and there is nothing to prepare for, that is the first thought that came to my mind, not a relieved thought or a triumphant one. Just a simple fact.The particular awareness of a body that has been oriented toward something for so long that the absence of it is its own sensation.There was no testimony to rehearse, no motion to fight, no article to respond to.No Julian.I lie still and let the quiet of that settle.Damien is asleep beside me, actually asleep, the deep even breathing of someone whose body finally believed the alert could be stood down. He slept the way he hasn't since before any of this started. I noticed it in the night, woke briefly at three and heard him breathing and thought: “good.” And went back to sleep myself.Now it is seven in the morning and the room is grey and still.I look at the ceiling.*****The first thing I feel is not what I expected.I expected relief. Or something like triumph, the clean, earned satisfaction of a thing c

Última actualización : 2026-04-21

Chapter 137

Lila's POVBeep! Beep! Beep!I picked up my phone as it rang, I have been expecting her call since the sentence,not immediately thought, not the night of, when the coverage was everywhere and my phone was lit up with messages from mutual friends who wanted to know how she was and whether I'd spoken to her. That night I sent her one text: "I'm here when you're ready." And I meant it to land as permission rather than pressure."Hi," she says."Hi." I am already at my kitchen table with coffee and the particular readiness of someone who has been waiting for a call they knew was coming. "How are you?"A pause."Strange," she says."Strange good or strange bad?""Strange new," she says. "Like the weather changed and my body hasn't figured out what to wear yet."I think about that."That sounds about right," I say."Damien said it's going to take time.""Damien is correct.""He usually is." A pause that contains something warm in it, the specific quality of a woman talking about her hus

Última actualización : 2026-04-21

Chapter 139

Damien's POVThere is a version of this that I planned.Not the specific evening, I didn't plan a specific evening. But the concept of it. The moment when the trial was behind us and the press had moved on to other things and she had gone a full day without checking the news alerts and I could look at her across a room and know that the thing between us was not being shared with anything else.I planned to do something deliberate about it then.Say something. Make some gesture toward the territory we had been circling since before any of this started.What actually happens is: I make pasta.She comes home from Morrison at seven-fifteen on a Tuesday evening, three weeks after the sentencing, and she comes in and drops her bag by the door and takes off her jacket and comes into the kitchen and leans against the counter and says nothing, just watches me cook. The way she has been doing this more frequently lately coming into a room and simply existing in it without needing the room to pr

Última actualización : 2026-04-21

Chapter 139

Esmeralda’s POV“Castellano signed.”Theo says it from the doorway, like he’s been specifically instructed not to make it dramatic, which, of course, makes it dramatic anyway.I look up from the vendor review Hargrove submitted, pen paused mid-mark.“For when?” I ask.“Four-seventeen. Just now.”Tuesday.Of course it’s a Tuesday,I set my pen down carefully. “Thank you, Theo.”He nods once and disappears, leaving the boardroom quiet again.I sit in the quiet boardroom for a moment and began to think. Castellano Distribution. My father's largest client for eleven years. Julian ended the relationship fourteen months after the acquisition, a quiet termination, framed as a strategic realignment, buried in a quarter's worth of operational changes designed to make individual decisions invisible.I have spent four months rebuilding the relationship from the beginning, How time flies, not leveraging Damien's network, nor using the acquisition capital to make it financially irresistible. Jus

Última actualización : 2026-04-22

Chapter 140

Esmeralda’s POVI could barely make it to the bathroom before, the nausea hits me, very sharp and sudden, like my body skipped the warning and went straight to urgency. One second I’m standing by my desk scanning an email, the next I’m pushing past Theo with a hand clamped over my mouth.“Ma’am—?”I don’t answer. I can’t.I shove the bathroom door open just in time, dropping to my knees as everything in my stomach comes up. It’s violent, messy, completely ungraceful nothing like me at all.Behind me, the door opens a crack.“Ma’am? Should I call—”“No.” My voice comes out hoarse, breathless. I grip the edge of the sink as I push myself up slightly. “I’m fine. Just… give me a minute.”There’s hesitation, then the soft click of the door closing again.I stay there longer than I need to, staring into the sink as I rinse my mouth, waiting for the dizziness to settle. My reflection looks… off. Not sick, not exactly. Just… different.That’s when the thought slips in.Which made me almost sh

Última actualización : 2026-04-22

ANTERIOR

...

12 13 14 15 16 17

SIGUIENTE

ESCANEA EL CÓDIGO PARA LEER EN LA APP

DMCA.com Protection Status