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Chapter 2: The Empty House

ผู้เขียน: Mahi
last update วันที่เผยแพร่: 2026-07-23 19:22:37

The office door closed behind Elena with a soft click.

She didn't look back.

Not when Damian called her name.

Not when her world collapsed.

Outside, the rain had already begun.

Cold drops landed on her face, mixing with the tears she refused to wipe away.

She walked without knowing where she was going until a taxi stopped beside her.

"Miss, are you alright?" the driver asked.

Elena forced a smile.

"Please... take me home."

The driver nodded and drove away.

The city lights blurred outside the window.

Three years.

Three years of marriage had ended with a signature.

Three years of love had been thrown away in less than thirty minutes.

Her hand slowly rested on her stomach.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"I wanted your father to smile when he heard about you."

Instead...

He had called her a liar.

A tear rolled down her cheek.

She quickly wiped it away.

"No."

"I won't cry anymore."

"I'm not alone anymore."

"I have you."

Cross Group.

Vivian wrapped her arms around Damian's neck.

"It's finally over," she said with a satisfied smile.

"We don't have to hide anymore."

Damian said nothing.

His eyes remained fixed on the divorce papers lying on his desk.

Elena's signature looked strangely final.

Vivian noticed his silence.

"What?"

"You don't actually believe that pregnancy story, do you?"

Damian let out a cold laugh.

"Of course not."

"She only wanted to stop the divorce."

Vivian smiled.

"I knew it."

She kissed his cheek.

"You made the right decision."

Damian nodded.

Yet...

For some reason...

The office felt unusually quiet.

The taxi stopped outside the Cross Villa.

Elena looked at the house.

Three years ago, she had entered it as a bride.

Today...

She was leaving it as a stranger.

She walked inside.

The living room was silent.

Every photo on the wall reminded her of promises that had never been real.

She climbed the stairs and entered the master bedroom.

Half the wardrobe belonged to Damian.

Half belonged to her.

Not anymore.

She opened a suitcase.

One dress.

Another.

Then another.

She packed quietly.

No anger.

No hesitation.

Only silence.

When she reached the bedside table, her fingers stopped.

A silver photo frame.

It showed Damian placing a wedding ring on her finger.

She stared at it for a long moment.

Then she smiled bitterly.

"What a beautiful lie."

She placed the frame inside the drawer and closed it forever.

Next came the wedding ring.

She slowly removed it from her finger.

The pale mark it left behind hurt more than the ring itself.

She placed it inside a small velvet box.

Then she picked up a pen.

A single note.

You wanted your freedom.

Now you have it.

She placed the ring beside the note.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

That evening...

Marco Marchetti was reading documents when the front door opened.

He looked up.

"Elena?"

The moment he saw her face, he stood.

His daughter looked exhausted.

Her eyes were swollen.

Her smile was gone.

Without asking a single question, he walked toward her.

"What happened?"

Elena tried to answer.

No words came out.

Instead...

She fell into her father's arms.

The tears she had been holding back all day finally escaped.

Marco gently held her.

"It's alright."

"You don't have to be strong in front of me."

She cried silently.

After several minutes, she finally whispered,

"He divorced me."

Marco froze.

His face darkened.

"He... what?"

"He chose Vivian."

Silence filled the room.

Marco closed his eyes.

His daughter had given everything to that marriage.

And Damian had thrown it away like it meant nothing.

Marco gently lifted Elena's chin.

"Listen to me."

"You are still my daughter."

"You are still Elena Marchetti."

"No one can take that away from you."

For the first time that day...

Elena felt warmth.

Real warmth.

Not from a husband.

But from family.

She nodded slowly.

"I want to come home."

Marco smiled.

"You never left."

At the same moment...

Back at Cross Group...

Priya knocked on Damian's office door.

"Mr. Cross."

"What is it?"

"Mrs... Elena left something for you."

She placed a small velvet box on his desk before quietly leaving.

Damian frowned.

He opened it.

Inside lay Elena's wedding ring.

Beneath it...

A handwritten note.

You wanted your freedom.

Now you have it.

Damian stared at the ring.

For the first time since signing the divorce papers...

Something inside him felt unexpectedly heavy.

He couldn't explain why.

Outside the office window, thunder echoed across the city.

Far away...

In the Marchetti Mansion...

Elena stood before her bedroom window.

She gently placed both hands over her stomach.

"They think they destroyed us today."

A small smile appeared on her lips.

"They're wrong."

"They've only started a war."

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goodnovel comment avatar
Faisal Ali
I hope you upload more chapters faster
goodnovel comment avatar
Faisal Ali
Very good book ...️
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  • Too Late to Want Me Back   Chapter 52: The Thursday File

    "Play it again.""Elena, I've heard it.""Play the Thursday."David reached over and dragged the marker back.The file came to me on the Thursday. It came to me before the police had finished with the car."Stop." Elena put her finger on the table. "Now tell me what a claim file is.""You know what a claim file is.""Tell me anyway."David sighed. "It's the insurer's assessment. Damage, liability, payout figure.""And you can't write a payout figure until you know the liability.""No.""And you can't know the liability until somebody's looked at the car.""No.""So on the Thursday morning," Elena said, "before anyone had finished looking at that car, a complete file with a figure on it arrived on Piero Faranda's desk."David didn't say anything."Say it, David.""It doesn't prove anybody killed her.""I know it doesn't.""It doesn't prove there was another vehicle, it doesn't prove interference, it doesn't prove one single thing a court would look at.""I know all of that." Her voice

  • Too Late to Want Me Back   Chapter 51: Ten Past Seven

    "Say it, then.""I don't want you back."Elena's face did something small and she turned it towards the windscreen."That's not what I mean.""Then say what you mean.""Back is the flat on Sardi and the two of us not talking about your father." Damian's hands stayed on the wheel with the engine off. "Back is me arranging things at you until you stop asking for any of them. I don't want back.""Then what?""Sunday."She looked at him."I want you to come on a Sunday. Not this one, he's asked me and that's his. Another one." His jaw moved. "And then I want to ask you again the week after, and I want you to be able to say no without it meaning anything, and I want to keep asking.""That's it.""That's it.""You gave away a controlling share in eleven seconds and you're frightened of asking me to a bus stop.""Yes," Damian said.Elena sat with it."I'm not going to answer you tonight.""I didn't ask you to.""I'm going to think about it for a week, and I might come back with something you

  • Too Late to Want Me Back   Chapter 50: What You Do About Me After

    "Say it again for the record," the chair said."I'm not taking it.""Mr Vale, with the twenty percent you hold a controlling position. Without it you don't.""I know what I hold.""You've spent five months proving that share is yours.""I proved it was never his," Damian said. "That's a different thing."David read it into the minutes in a flat voice, and every word of it took something away from the man standing at the end of the table.Luca sat through all of it with his hands between his knees, understanding none of it."What's happening?" he said, when the room started moving. "David. What just happened?""Do you want it in the legal words or the real ones?""The real ones."David turned his chair round."He's just given you ten percent of Marchetti Group," he said. "You can't sell it for fifteen years. When the company pays out, you get a tenth of it, whether you turn up to a meeting or not, and nobody in this building can take it off you, including him."Luca looked at him."Tha

  • Too Late to Want Me Back   Chapter 49: Forty Minutes

    "There's a bench," she said."I know where the bench is.""Then walk to it, Marco. I'm not standing at a gate at my age."He came through and neither of them said anything about the fact that he'd come through.They sat down. He put his hat on his knee."I'm not going to explain myself," he said."I know. That's why I let you in.""I've had thirty years to put it into an order that sounds better and it doesn't get better.""No.""If I start, you'll listen, because you were always polite. And then we'll both have to sit through it.""So don't start."He turned the hat around by the brim."What would you like me to say?""Something ordinary," she said. "Anything ordinary. I've had nothing ordinary since 1994."He looked at her."Do you still take sugar?""Two.""You took two before.""I take two now. What else."He thought about it."I had a dog," he said. "For eleven years. A grey thing, bad-tempered, he'd only sit with me.""What was his name?""Nico.""Is he dead?""Six years ago.""

  • Too Late to Want Me Back   Chapter 48: Nobody's Boy

    He washed his cup.Damian watched him do it from the doorway. Rinsed it, dried it with the cloth by the sink, put it back in the cupboard in the same place, closed the door."There's a machine," Damian said."I know. I saw it.""You can use it.""It's one cup."The kettle was still warm. Luca stood beside it with his hands at his sides, in a kitchen he'd slept above for two nights, waiting for something."Sit down," Damian said."Where?""Anywhere. It's a chair."Luca sat on the one nearest the door.He'd made the bed upstairs both mornings, tight, corners tucked. He'd asked before opening the fridge. On the first night he'd stood in the hall for ten minutes because nobody had told him which light he was allowed to turn off."Can I ask something," he said."You don't have to ask to ask.""How long am I here for?"Damian pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down."There's a warehouse on Vitelli," he said. "Stock reconciliation. Two men do it and one of them's leaving."Luca frowne

  • Too Late to Want Me Back   Chapter 47: At the Gate

    Alexander stopped four feet from him and didn't come any closer.Damian came down the steps and stopped at the bottom of them, which was as far as he was going to go."Say it out here," Luca said. "Not inside. Not in an office.""Here is fine.""They all know, don't they. Every one of them knows and I'm the last.""Yes.""Then say it."Alexander looked at him for a moment."I'm your father."Nothing moved on the whole street."I didn't marry your mother and I never lived with her, and I've never once in all these years been in a room where I could say that sentence." He didn't soften a word of it. "I'm not going to ask you for anything and I'm not going to explain myself, because there isn't an explanation that survives being said out loud to your face."Luca stood very still."All right," he said."All right?""I've got questions. Small ones. Answer them the way you answered that.""Go on.""I was six. I had a chest thing and I was eleven days in the little hospital on Via Serra." Lu

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