The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 16

Chapter 11:1 Noticed her in Absence.-2

Just the echo of a house too big for one person.

I didn’t miss her as a wife, Tmissed her as a structure. And that was what baffled me the most.

Because I didn’t know how to name that feeling without accepting that Clara had been more important than what I wanted to see while I had her.

More days passed, and then I understood. She wasn’t going back, not because she was upset, not because she wanted me to look for her. But because, for the first time, she had chosen not to return to a place where she was not seen. And I… I was the last to notice it.

That night I poured myself a drink and sat in the darkness of the living room. I didn’t think about calling her. I didn’t think to ask for explanations. I thought something much more uncomfortable… That losing her wasn’t going to destroy my life… but it was going to change her forever. And that, for someone like me, was a hard truth to swallow.

Some time later, her father’s lawyer contacted my lawyers to manage the divorce and that ended up confirming everything.

In the same way, in the interviews I confirmed it, I announced the separation without giving details and without showing pain that people had no reason to see, in the end, it was going to be fine.

In the company, the building remains the same. Glass, steel, clean lines, offices that work like Swiss watches. Everything is in order, too much in order.

That’s what bothers me the most, it’s been months since Clara left and, if someone looked at my life from the outside, they would say that nothing changed. The company grew. The contracts keep coming. The meetings continue to be marked with surgical precision. My name is still respected.

But there is a kind of silence that is not noticeable in the balance sheets.

occu

Before, Clara was not in the company every day, nor did she occupy a fixed office, nor did she appear in

[ corporate photos. And yet… she was in everything.

In the details that I overlooked, in the uncomfortable questions that no one dared to ask me.

In the way an idea became more human after going through it.

I didn’t understand it while I had her around, I understood it when she was no longer there.

Now I walk through the corridors and everything works, yes, but without that second layer that she provided. People execute. No one questions. No one proposes something that is not aligned with the immediate result.

Clara did it…

Not to contradict myself, to complete what I did not see. I sat at the head of a boardroom table this

Chapter 11 faked in Ahor

morning, and for the first time, I had to admit it quietly, my company is efficient… but it’s not bright

anymore.

Vanessa was there, as she has almost always been lately. Vanessa Reed has never been a mistake. She is intelligent, ambitious, elegant. She knows how to move in this world and masters it naturally. In the past we tried something else, but it never quite fell into place. Too similar. Too conscious. Too calculated. Since then we have been partners, not external partners as before. Now… closest allies.

“This approach is solid,” she said, reviewing a projection, “but there’s something missing to differentiate it.”

I looked at her, surprised by the familiarity of the observation.

Clara said the same thing.

In other words. With a different tone.

“What do you propose?” I asked.

Vanessa smiled barely.

“A more emotional narrative. People no longer buy just results, they buy vision.”

I nodded.

It was a good idea, but it wasn’t the idea.

Vanessa has become a constant presence. Working lunches that extend longer than necessary. Drinks at the end of the day that are not always about business. She does not hide her interest. She never has. I haven’t set clear limits either… Not because I’m in love, But because emptiness feels so much like companionship when you don’t know what to call it.

Sometimes, as she speaks, I find myself silently comparing. Not her beauty. Not her intelligence. But something more difficult to define… The way Clara listened.

Vanessa hears to answer, Clara listened to understand.

I returned to my office this afternoon and stared at the window. New York stretched out in front of me as it always has, imposing, indifferent.

Before, when I got home, I knew that Clara would be there. Not waiting. Not claiming. Simply… present. Sometimes reading… Sometimes writing, sometimes in silence.

I thought that was neutrality, now I know that it was stability.

We didn’t fight. We didn’t scream. There was no drama. And for some reason, I confused the absence of conflict with the absence of love.

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