The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 13

Chapter 10: Back to New York-1

Clara

The growth did not come with euphoria, it came with tiredness. With full agendas, with decisions that I could no longer postpone, with the constant feeling that time was slipping away from me between meetings, calls and contracts that demanded more than a single office could sustain.

Sinclair & Co. was no longer small.

I noticed it one morning, walking between desks, dodging crossed conversations, phones ringing, screens full of graphics and proposals. There was movement. Too much. And for the first time, it wasn’t chaos… it was expansion.

“We need more space,” Julia, my director of operations, told me as we reviewed the flow of projects. “And more staff if we want to continue accepting contracts of this level.”

I nodded without hesitation. He had known this for weeks. I had resisted for one reason only: to accept that the company was growing meant to accept that I was growing too.

And that, although it sounds absurd, still commanded respect for me.

The new building arrived almost without drama. A larger, more functional structure, designed to support entire teams and not just ideas. Moving was a long, meticulous process. I didn’t want to lose the essence

we had started with.

Sinclair & Co. was not a factory of empty decisions. It was a firm that accompanied processes, that intervened structures, that redesigned the background before changing the shape.

That’s what we did, in simple terms, we analyzed companies with potential, we detected invisible failures

–

– worn-out leadership, obsolete models, broken internal cultures – and we built strategies to make them evolve without losing identity.

We didn’t buy power, we ordered it.

Important contracts began to arrive one after another. Financial firms, technology companies, industrial groups that sought to reposition themselves without falling into old formulas. Many of those names were known. Respected. Untouchable.

Now they called us.

I remember signing one of those contracts sitting in the main room of the new building. The light streamed in through the windows, and as I slipped the pen over the paper, I had a silent revelation… I wasn’t thinking about anyone else, I wasn’t comparing, I wasn’t demonstrating. I was just doing my job. Ethan didn’t cross my mind. Not because I avoided him, but because he no longer took up space. My focus was elsewhere, on sustaining what I was building, on not betraying myself, on not becoming what I had run away from.

* Chapter 18 to New York 1

Almost a year passed like this… Work Decisions. Results. And then he came, not as an interruption, but as a proposal.

Alexander Connor, who asked for a formal meeting. His name had already been circulating in the business environment for some time, Investor. International expansion. Aggressive but intelligent vision.

We sat face to face in my office. He observed the place with genuine attention, not as one who evaluates a property, but as one who understands a concept.

“You’ve built something solid, Clara,” he said bluntly. “It’s not common to see this kind of growth without losing the center.”

I didn’t respond right away. I learned not to rush words when someone was measuring more than they said.

“I want to invest,” he continued. “But not to inflate numbers. To take Sinclair & Co. to another level.”

He slid a folder toward me. I opened it calmly, and there it was. New York.

I felt something closing in my chest, slow, inevitable.

It was not immediate fear. It was memory.

That city had been the scene of a life that no longer belonged to me. Of long silences. Of a version of me

that learned to disappear gracefully.

I swallowed hard.

“An international headquarters,” he explained. “Manhattan. Not as a symbolic branch. As a real expansion.”

I looked up.

“Do you know what it means for me to go back there?” I asked, even though he didn’t know much about

He didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know what it means… but I see a woman with a lot of potential and… That’s why i propose it to you. Not everyone can handle something like this, without breaking down. Your company is solid, and so are

you”

I was silent. I felt the emotion go up, dense, uncomfortable. My fingers closed just over the edge of the table. I swallowed loudly. I didn’t want my voice to tremble… But I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t feel anything, either.

New York meant past. Possible encounters… Questions that no longer hurt, but were not neutral either. And yet… Before my eyes was the biggest opportunity I had had since I decided to start over.

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