The Billionaire's Regret After I Died

Rachel's POVCold water rushed over my head, numbing my skin and silencing the ringing in my ears. The hotel’s staff shower was small and unremarkable, white tiles, humming fluorescent light, but it felt like the only place I could hide. I scrubbed at my arms until the faint scent of frosting was gone, yet the humiliation clung to me like a stain that would not wash out.When the water finally ran clear, I stood there for a moment, hands braced on the wall, my breath trembling.Today was terrible. No, beyond terrible.I towelled off quickly, slipped into the spare staff clothes one of my old colleagues had pressed into my hands, and stuffed my ruined dress into a plastic bag. My reflection in the fogged mirror was a stranger. My hair still damp, my eyes swollen from tears, and

Rachel’s POVI sat in the car for a long moment after closing the door, hands gripping the steering wheel, the echo of his words still burning in my chest.Our five-year agreement will expire.A contract. That was all I’d ever been to him.I forced myself to inhale deeply, then again, until the air no longer caught painfully in my throat. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes, but I blinked them away. I had cried enough for one day.When I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror, my eyes were red-rimmed, lashes clumped together. My cheeks were blotchy, my hair a tangled mess. I barely looked like myself.“Pull it together,” I whispered. “Amber’s waiting.”I started the engine and adjusted the mirror. As I turned my head, something outside the passenger window caught my eye.A man stood by the curb, hunched beneath the flickering streetlight. His clothes were tattered, his shoulders bent, a scruffy beard shadowing most of his face. A small bag hung from his wrist, and when he tu

Rachel’s POVMy phone nearly slipped from my hand as Adrian’s words echoed through the speaker. “Amber’s gone.”For a moment, I couldn’t move. My chest tightened, the air sucked clean from my lungs.“What do you mean gone?” I whispered, but the line was already breaking up with his shouting in the background.The world around me seemed to tilt. I stumbled out of the gym, still drenched in sweat, my legs trembling. My vision swam as I made my way down the hall, clutching the phone to my ear.The moment Adrian saw me, his voice exploded through the night.“Where were you?” His face was hard, eyes cold with fury. “Do you even know what’s happened?”I stumbled out of the car, breathless. “Adrian, what—”“Amber ran away!” he shouted, stepping forward. “Because of you! Because you couldn’t control your emotions for once!”The words hit me like a blow. “What?” I whispered, my throat tightening. “No… she wouldn’t—”“She would,” he snapped. “The neighbors saw her leave with a backpack hours a

Rachel’s POVMy reality came back to me in fragments.The rough scrape of rope against my wrists. The smell of damp concrete. The faint flicker of light from a single, sputtering bulb above.My head throbbed, a dull ache pulsing behind my eyes as I tried to move. The moment I did, something bit into my skin, rough rope, tight around my wrists and ankles. The fibers scraped raw as I twisted against them, the burn sharp and real. My breath caught.Where was I?\The air was cold and thick, carrying the sour scent of gasoline and rot. Concrete walls pressed the sound back at me, my shallow breaths echoing in the silence. The dim bulb above flickered weakly, casting long, trembling shadows across the floor.

Adrian’s POV(Time goes back to the night Rachel disappeared)The words she’s missing echoed long after the officers left.I stood in the doorway, unable to move. Missing? No, that wasn’t possible. Rachel wasn’t the type to just vanish. Maybe she was angry, hiding somewhere to make a point, waiting for me to come crawling after her. That thought, however twisted, felt easier to believe than the idea of her being gone.The policemen were polite, calm. They promised to continue the investigation, to check nearby surveillance footage, to alert me the moment they found something. Then the door closed behind them, and silence took their place.I turned slowly, the house swallowing me whole. The living room lights glared too bright against the polished floors. Every detail, the half-empty teacup on the counter, the scattered toys by the sofa, screamed of her absence.When I looked up, Amber was standing on the stairs, clutching her stuffed bear, her small face pale.“Dad… is Mom home?”The