The Billionaire Regret

Chapter 3

The ride home was silent, except for the occasional hum of tires against the asphalt and Elizabeth's laughter, soft and threaded with familiarity. She leaned into Daniel as though the seat beside me were empty, as though I were nothing more than a shadow carried along for the ride. Her perfume drifted back, cloying, filling the narrow space until it settled into my lungs.

I pressed myself against the leather, staring out the window. The city lights streaked by in fractured blurs, each one a reminder of a world that kept moving even as mine stood still. My fingers curled into my dress until the fabric wrinkled beneath my grip. Every laugh from the front seat cracked through me like a whip, but Daniel never once glanced back.

By the time the gates of the mansion swung open, dread pooled so heavy in my stomach that it felt like stone. The servants waited in two neat lines as we entered, their faces lowered in practiced politeness, yet their whispers ran quick and sharp through the air, impossible to miss.

"She looks worse," one maid murmured, voice shaking with a mixture of pity and thrill.

"Worse? She collapsed in front of everyone. Right there on the marble floor."

"I heard Mr. Cobbs told the whole crowd he was divorcing her."

"Divorcing her? In public?"

"Yes. He called her a burden. Said he couldn't carry dead weight."

A sharp intake of breath, a hiss of warning, but the damage was done. The words lingered like smoke, impossible to clear. And then the butler's voice, low and weary, cutting deeper than the rest:

"The house isn't blind. Everyone can see it. The mistress is fading. The master doesn't look at her anymore. His attention... belongs elsewhere."

Each word burrowed into me like glass. My back straightened on instinct, my chin lifted higher, and I walked past them with the grace drilled into me long ago. I would not let them see me bend. Not here. Not yet.

Inside the bedroom, Daniel pressed a small bottle into my palm. His eyes were cool, detached.

"The doctor says you need this," he said flatly. "Take it before you cause another scene."

No softness. No concern. Just dismissal.

Elizabeth lingered in the doorway, red lips curved into a smirk that dared me to resist. Her presence alone made the air suffocating.

So I obeyed. Two white pills, bitter against my tongue, swallowed dry because neither offered me water.

Daniel didn't wait. He loosened his tie and brushed past her, his hand grazing her arm in a touch that was too familiar, too intimate. As if it belonged there. Her laugh followed him into the adjoining room, low and satisfied, until even the walls seemed to thrum with it.

At first, there was nothing. Just silence pressing in on me. Then it began, the warmth, slow, almost harmless. But it spread quickly, curling in my stomach, burning its way into my veins. My hands shook as I stumbled to the mirror.

The reflection staring back at me was a ghost. Pale, lips drained of color, eyes sunken into shadow. The glow I once carried had fled. My skin looked dull, as if light itself had abandoned me.

Stress, I told myself. Stress and exhaustion. A trick of the mind. But Elizabeth's voice haunted me still, a cruel whisper etched into memory: She will not last much longer.

Later that night, voices drifted through the crack beneath my door. Servants again, careless, believing me asleep.

"They say the master has already ordered the divorce papers."

"And that woman... Elizabeth. She's always near him now."

A pause, then the youngest maid's hushed voice:

"He told the steward to ready the guest room. Tonight. He doesn't want her weakness in his chamber anymore. He wants Elizabeth where she belongs."

A silence followed, broken only by a sigh. "Poor Mrs. Cobbs. A wife erased while still alive."

The door creaked open. Daniel stood there, face blank, eyes colder than stone.

"You'll be staying in the guest room from now on," he said. No hesitation. No remorse. "It's better this way."

Elizabeth hovered just behind him, perfume thick in the air, her lips curved in quiet triumph.

I rose without a word, every ounce of dignity wrapped around me like armor. My steps carried me past them, steady though my knees trembled.

The guest room was colder than I expected. The walls bare, the air hollow. Stripped of warmth, stripped of history. As if prepared for someone who did not belong.

I sank onto the bed, pressing my palms to my ears, desperate to block out the world. But the mansion betrayed me.

Elizabeth's laughter seeped through the walls, followed by Daniel's voice, low, commanding, the same tone he once used for me. Then the rhythm. Their rhythm. The sounds I had once prayed for, sounds that once tethered me to him, now carved through me like blades.

Each gasp. Each sigh. A wound I could not close.

My nails dug into the sheets until the fabric tore. Tears stung, but I refused to let them fall. Instead, I turned toward the mirror propped against the far wall.

The woman who stared back was trembling, faded, her light stolen piece by piece. Not dying, not yet, but poisoned slowly, deliberately, erased a little more each night.

And still, somewhere beneath the frailty, something stirred. A spark that refused to die.

They wanted me erased. They wanted me broken.

But as the walls shook with their laughter and moans, I whispered the truth to myself, low and steady.

Not yet.

I would not give them my ending.