Eight Years of Maybe One Day of I Do—Bride Swapped Deal With It novel Chapter 78

Chapter 8

Silas right away became public enemy number one.

Everyone’s admiring looks turned to disgust.

Overnight, the gossip about his affairs drowned out his six years of building a solid reputation.

Under all that pressure, Silas started screwing up at work. Even affecting project timelines.

“If you’re still in this state, I think it’s better to transfer you to another position for a while. Give you time to get yourself together.”

When Marin found Silas, he reeked of alcohol. Looked rough. Nothing like the confident guy from a month ago.

He clenched his fists, watching six years of hard work crumble like an avalanche.

He’d called me countless times. Sent who knows how many messages. Never got a response.

My last stretch back home was crazy busy. Even if he tried to track me down in person, he could barely find an opening.

And I had no time to deal with him.

Until that rare day I actually stayed in my office. He finally caught me.

The keypad lock was already installed. He couldn’t just barge in anymore like he owned the place.

He waited a long time before I finally unlocked the door for him.

He still looked worn out. Holding a box of candy and a bouquet of lisianthus.

The candy was the same kind he used to order for me every month.

The flowers were my favorite.

“Reagan.”

He set the candy on my desk. Eyes bloodshot. “I broke up with her.”

“Can we talk? Please?”

I finished reading the last report in my hand and said calmly, “Coffee shop downstairs. Ten minutes. Take your candy and flowers with you.”

Silas stood frozen in place. Didn’t move until I grabbed my jacket and walked out.

Then he finally, painfully, picked the candy back up off the desk.

I was leaving this office soon anyway, but before I did, I wanted to keep it clean. Didn’t want it getting dirty.

At the coffee shop, we found a corner and sat down. Neither of us said anything.

Honestly, I didn’t even know what there was left to talk about.

He stared at the box of candy in his hands for a long time. Then suddenly let out a bitter laugh.

“Do you remember the first time I gave you this candy?”

That was six years ago. Not long after we started dating.

I’d overworked myself and passed out in the break room at the office.

Back then, Silas was just some nobody entry-level employee. He left an important client dinner with his boss on the spot and rushed straight to the hospital to be with me.

Because he walked out, the client got upset and ended up choosing another employee’s design instead.

And Silas’s design had been better. He’d had a real shot at landing the lead designer spot.

When I woke up and heard what happened, I called him an idiot. Such an important dinner and he just left. I’d only had low blood sugar-it wasn’t worth him freaking out like that.

But he held my hand. Every word serious and firm. “Reagan, nothing is more important to me than you.”

Looking back now-when he said “important,” did he mean me as a person?

Or did he mean the higher position I had back then?

“Mr. Vaughn, are you planning to spend all ten minutes on a trip down memory lane?”

I took a sip of coffee, unbothered.

“Time is valuable. Please skip the unnecessary.parts.”

Silas stared at me, trying to find even a flicker of emotion on my face. Maybe some sign I was missing the past.

Too bad for him. He found nothing.

“Reagan, do I really not have a chance? Not even to start over?”

His voice cracked. “With Cora and me… it was more about using each other than real feelings.”

“But with you-those six years-I meant it.”

“I just… got blinded by other things. Made a mistake…”

I let out a cold laugh and cut him off. “You didn’t make a mistake.”

“You planned this.”

“Silas, if I weren’t the chairman’s daughter, would you even be sitting here talking to me right now?”

“You’d probably be overseas with Cora, throwing a party to celebrate your big win.”

Silas dropped his head. Couldn’t meet my eyes anymore.

“Thea spent ten years climbing to VP in Tech. You did it in half that time. You think it was all because of your own ‘blood, sweat, and tears’?”

I stood up, throwing his own words back at him.

He didn’t know I’d been hiding my identity.

He had no idea how much I’d quietly helped him behind the scenes these past six years.

A single casual compliment from my dad was enough to help him skip a ton of obstacles and settle into the department.

But he never noticed.

“You chose your own path. If you wanted to take shortcuts, deal with the consequences yourself.”

“As for what we had?”

“The second you started using me as a stepping stone, you should’ve stopped thinking about a future.”

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