Semua Bab CEO’s regret: Winning my wife back : Bab 31 - Bab 40

—ELEANOR.-“Fancy meeting you here.”Brianna’s voice cuts through the air with a falsely innocent sweetness, the kind that makes your skin crawl. She offers a sheepish smile, her eyes glinting with something too sharp to be kindness. It’s the kind of smile that peels back like a mask. Polite, but vengeful underneath.My fingers nearly curl into themselves, a raw instinct to shield the soft places she used to puncture with her words.Arthur tenses beside me. He doesn’t hesitate—he steps forward, creating a subtle but firm barrier between me and her. Protective. Commanding.“What are you doing here?” he asks, voice low and edged, already tired of the game she’s trying to play.Brianna halts, her expression snapping like a branch underfoot. Her anger simmers just beneath the glossy surface of her carefully done makeup. She raises a perfectly arched brow and fixes her piercing gaze on him.“What do you mean by that?” she scoffs. “I’m my father’s daughter. I’m a Brown, Arthur. Of course I

—ELEANOR.~*~All I can hear now is the hush of silk gowns shifting in chairs, the delicate clinks of silverware being set down, the occasional clear of someone’s throat.And then nothing.Silence.A suffocating one.I inhale— slow, deliberate— trying to remember what my hands used to feel like before the accident. Brianna’s smug smile lingers in the back of my mind.But I push her out.I think of something that fits this setting. Something classic. Something real.My fingers move— almost automatically—as I begin the haunting, familiar notes of a famous classic everyone should know.The first movement. Soft. Melancholic. Devastating.The first three notes echo like raindrops in the stillness.My heart pounds in my chest.The weight of a hundred eyes press into my back.But then— I find it. That still place. The old rhythm. Like I’ve slipped through time and into something that once loved me, and then I see my students and I’m reminded of the joy I get from playing.I smile briefly.M

—ELEANOR~The bathroom walls feel like they’re shrinking.My fingers are numb from gripping the metal doorknob, the damn thing refusing to budge no matter how many times I twist or pull or knock against it. I can’t even hear the party music anymore— just my breathing. Too loud. Too fast. Too close to breaking.It’s way too cold in here and I can’t take it. While the party is warm and has heaters every where the bathroom feels like the bottom of the ocean.I press my palm against the door and rest my forehead there, trying not to panic. I’d been knocking earlier, softly at first, then with more urgency, even calling out when I heard someone pass. But each time, footsteps faded away. I walk back into each and every one of the bathroom stalls hoping I’d find something, anything to help me break the door.Who the hell locks someone in a bathroom?I don’t need to guess when I see a note in the last bathroom stall, a small note placed atop of the toilet’s golden tank, looking like it was

—ELEANOR.-Cassandra looks like she’s seen a ghost. Her lips are parted, her eyes wide, and for a moment, I swear even the pearls around her neck seem to stiffen in shock. But she isn’t alone. Every single person in the room—guests in sparkling gowns and crisp tuxedos, champagne glasses hovering midair—stares as though someone just ripped the curtain off a long-hidden scandal.And in the center of it all, Brianna.She’s glowing. Not with embarrassment or guilt—oh no, not her, but with the smug satisfaction of someone who has just dropped a grenade in a room full of people and is waiting to watch the debris. She basks in the muted gasps, the whispered speculations, the shifting of feet and darting eyes.It makes me want to shove my fingers down her throat.Why? Why in God’s name was I even trying to save her before? To offer her a lifeline when she clearly delights in sabotaging me at every turn? She’s poisonous. Her grin curves upward like a knife, sharp and cutting.“Eleanor.”My na

—ELEANOR.-The air shifts the second the soft classical music fades, replaced by the elegant swell of a waltz. The violins sigh, the piano hums gently, and within moments, the room transforms. Couples are already moving, drawing close, hands clasping as though they’ve been waiting all evening for this cue.I stand still, clutching my glass, watching as guests laugh and glide across the floor like they’ve rehearsed this their entire lives. There’s an ease in the way they pair off, like magnets finding their match.But I’m not in the mood to dance. Not tonight.I should be smiling, keeping up appearances, but my mask feels too heavy. Too cracked. My stomach hasn’t settled since Brianna’s outburst earlier, her words still echoing in my head like a cruel refrain. And as if that wasn’t enough, there was Alex Hillcove— the tall man in the beige suit whose familiar nose had made my heart plummet.For a split second, I’d thought he was Leon. Shit. I still hate myself for that.And the panic