All Chapters of Ashes Of His Regret : Chapter 101 - Chapter 110

DAMIEN'S POVShe wentto bed, while I stay in the living room.Making calls.I called Marcus first."It's done," he says. "Julian's arrested. Evidence is everywhere. We won."Won."How's Esmeralda?" he asks."Processing.""Is she okay?""I don't know. She's..different, a little bit quieter.""That's normal. Revenge has a cost.""I know.""Do you? Because you look like you're questioning this whole thing."Am I?"I'm questioning what it did to her. She came home shaking. Empty. Like she hollowed herself out to destroy him.""She'll be okay. Give her time.""Will she? Or did we just—" I stop. "Did we just turn her into someone she's not?"Marcus is quiet."Damien. She chose this. You didn't force her.""Didn't I? I gave her the tools. The resources. The plan. What if she only went through with it because I made it possible?""Or what if she went through with it because Julian destroyed her and she needed justice?""Justice. Revenge. What's the difference?""About eight years of your lif

ESMERALDA’S POV I wake up to the sound of Damien’s alarm, but for a few seconds, I don’t move, lying there with my eyes still closed as my body tenses before my mind fully catches up, as if some part of me already remembers everything waiting on the other side of consciousness.Then it comes back all at once...Julian, the confession, the arrest and my eyes slowly open to the ceiling, though I’m not really seeing it, because I’m still in that hotel room, still hearing his voice, still feeling the exact moment everything shifted beyond repair.“Esmeralda.”Damien’s voice pulls me out of it, and when I turn my head slightly, I see that he’s already awake and fully dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed like he hasn’t slept at all, his posture controlled in a way that tells me he’s being careful with me.“You’re awake,” he says.“Barely,” I murmur, pushing myself up as a dull heaviness settles behind my eyes.He hands me a cup of coffee without asking, and I take it, more for the comfor

The elevator opens to the fourteenth floor of Morrison Manufacturing, and the first thing I notice is the silence. Not the kind of silence that means nothing is happening. The kind that means everyone knows something has. Heads lift from monitors. Fingers pause over keyboards. A woman near the window pretends to shuffle papers she's clearly already read. They all know who I am. They know what I did to get here. What was done to me first. I keep my chin level and my steps even as I cross the floor toward what is now my office. My office. I've said it to myself a dozen times this week, in the mirror, in therapy, in the quiet of the house at two in the morning when sleep refuses to come. I own Morrison Manufacturing. I, Esmeralda Voss, who once sat across from her ex-husband while he signed away her father's legacy with a smile on his face I own the company Julian used to do it. There is a kind of justice in that which Dr. Chen says I shouldn't rush to feel. Let it settle, she told m

ESMERALDA'S POV Vivienne talks for twenty-three minutes.I don't interrupt. I sit in my boardroom with my phone pressed to my ear and I listen to the way her voice wavers when she describes the call, to the careful legal language she's clearly been trying to memorize, to the places where she stops and breathes because the alternative is crying and Vivienne Laurent does not cry in front of people.Not even me. Not anymore. That version of us is over, the one where she was the woman who chose him and I was the one left bleeding. We've rebuilt something smaller and more honest since then, and I don't take it for granted."They were very polite," she says. "That was the part that frightened me. They were almost gentle about it. Like they'd practiced how to speak to women who've been hurt by him.""They probably had," I say."They said it wouldn't be contentious. That all they needed was for me to speak to his character during the early years. Before—" She stops. "Before things changed. A

Monday morning, and I'm three steps out of the Morrison Manufacturing entrance when the world turns into noise.They're already positioned four of them, maybe five, I lose count because they're moving and the flashes are immediate and there's a microphone I don't recognize being extended toward my face before I've fully processed what's happening."Ms. Voss can you comment on reports that you've agreed to cooperate with the prosecution's sentencing case against your ex-husband?""Mrs. Hale… does your husband's involvement in the Morrison acquisition create a conflict of interest in your testimony?""Esmeralda! Is it true Julian's legal team is filing a motion to have your testimony excluded—"I keep moving. You do not stop. You do not respond. You do not give them a frame to fill.I move toward the car at the curb. Theo is already holding the door. Smart, efficient Theo.But the cluster of reporters shifts faster than I expected, spreading to cut off the sidewalk, and I have to slow m