The CEO's Regret: Darling, Don’t Leave Me novel Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Back Home-1

Clara

The bus station was awake when I felt like everything inside me had shut down.

Bright white lights, announcements on a loop, the constant murmur of people coming and going with clear destinations. I didn’t have one. I just sat there, with a suitcase I’d packed myself, staring at a fixed point in front of me without really seeing it.

I never imagined my marriage would end like this.

Not with shouting, not with obvious betrayals… Not with a dramatic scene.

It ended with silence… With exhaustion. With a certainty that pierced my chest and left me no other choice.

I hugged myself as I felt the early morning chill seep through my clothes. Tears began to fall without warning, as if my body had been holding them back for years and now, finally, had given in.

I didn’t cry at home, I didn’t cry in front of Ethan. I cried here, where no one knew me. Where I didn’t have to hold up any image.

I thought about who I was before I became Clara Blackwood. Before the elegant surname, before the

galas… Before learning to walk one step behind a man who never looked back to see if I was still there.

I remembered my life before him, and a lump formed in my throat as I realized how much I had lost.

My hands rested on the suitcase as my mind traveled back to a version of myself I had almost forgotten. Clara Sinclair… That was my name before I became a wife, before I became a shadow.

I closed my eyes and saw her clearly. She was ambitious… Not loudly, not with a thirst for power, but with the quiet determination of someone who knows she can build something of her own. She had plans, ideas, projects that kept me awake at night, not out of anxiety, but out of excitement.

I wanted to create something that bore my name, not my husband’s, not my family’s.. My own.

I remembered the endless afternoons in my father’s office, when I would sit across from him with folders

full of proposals. Ideas about expansion, new lines of business, foundations, social investment. He would listen attentively, proud, though he always ended up saying the same thing:

“You have a brilliant mind, Clara. But don’t forget that the right deals are also a form of success.”

I nodded. I always nodded.

I grew up in a powerful family, yes. The Sinclairs didn’t need to prove anything. We had a name, influence, stability. But we also had a very clear way of seeing life… decisions weren’t made from the heart, but from expediency, from reality. And I learned that lesson well.

Before Ethan, I was about to launch my own project; it wasn’t small, it wasn’t improvised. It was mine. A

plan that combined business management with real impact. In my family, I had allies, contacts, support. I had enthusiasm. And then he appeared.

Ethan Blackwood. He didn’t arrive as a romantic promise. He arrived as a strategic opportunity. A brilliant, respected, young man with an unstoppable future. A surname that, combined with mine, reinforced both

our structures.

I knew exactly what that marriage meant… I never deceived myself. I didn’t make decisions based on illusion, but I allowed myself something dangerous: to feel.

I knew the Blackwood family, I knew him, I admired him more than I should have.

I liked him. I really liked him. And that was enough to convince me that, even if the beginning was an

“agreement,” something of “convenience,” the end could be different.

I believed that things could change in the process, and I was wrong.

I believed that respect could turn into affection and closeness, I believed that silence could transform into

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