All Chapters of TOO LATE TO WANT ME: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

~MATT~ Everywhere seemed too quiet. I stood in the center of the living room. I stared at the chair where Tyla usually sat during this time of the evening but it was empty. Back at the office, there was no one on her desk. I hadn't noticed how much space she actually occupied until that space was completely vacant. Worse, the office was sliding into complete disarray. The temporary replacement PA the HR department had scrambled to give me was some guy named David and he was doing absolutely trash. Today alone, David had completely messed up my schedule and misfiled three critical structural reports. Because of his incompetence, I had almost entirely missed a critical negotiation deadline for our upcoming company merger. I had ended up shouting at the top of my lungs in the boardroom. Tyla had never once let an oversight like that happen. She handled multi-million dollar merger accounts seamlessly, yet I had never given her an ounce of credit for it. “Mummy went on a long trip.

~TYLA~ “The layout of your latest server design is impressive, Mr. Harrison,” I said, swirling the champagne in my glass. “But if you don’t increase the data capacity at the core level, the system could struggle under heavy enterprise traffic.” The middle-aged investor stared at me, his eyes widened in shock and admiration. We had been speaking business in the corner of the ballroom for ten minutes. At first, he had probably assumed I was just a beautiful piece of arm candy accompanying Vincent. “You… you understand the back-end architecture?” Mr. Harrison stammered, completely stunned. “I’m sorry, Ms. Tyla, I didn't realise you were actually part of the tech company.” “She didn't just join us, Harrison,” Vincent’s deep voice boomed as he stepped up beside me. He had a proud smile on his face. “Tyla is the original architect of our entire operating framework.” Mr. Harrison’s jaw nearly dropped. When I spoke so brilliantly about the future of our technical solutions, he was so de

~Tyla~ Vincent, who was completely oblivious to the anger crackling between the two of us, stepped forward with a smile as he gestured towards him. “Tyla, let me introduce you. This is Cassian Virell, he controls the entire international shipping and logistics grid.” I almost rolled my eyes at the introduction while staring at him. I had been deeply insulted earlier and this same man was the one who judged me without knowing a single thing about me. He had labeled me as just another pathetic social climber trying a cheap trick to catch his eye. And looking at his face now, it was clear he didn't care either. He scanned my face instead. His eyes dropped to the small evening bag still in my hand for a second as if he expected me to pull out another shredded tissue and ruin another expensive shirt again. "Mr. Virell," Vincent said. “Tyla is the mind behind our core system architecture. The framework she built five years ago is the reason our data processing speeds outperform the cu

~TYLA~It was time to focus. I pulled my chair closer, resting my chin in my hand as I scrolled through the old Project Genesis databases.I had been terrified that five years away would make me rusty but to my surprise, the moment my fingers touched the keyboard, the old muscle memory kicked right back in.I found myself genuinely enjoying the work. I had almost forgotten how satisfying it felt to solve a difficult syntax error or optimise a lagging database query.In this world, everything followed logical rules. If you put in the right input, you get the right output. It was completely unlike my marriage, where no matter how hard I tried, the output was always pain.Suddenly, there was a loud buzzing noise from my phone but I didn't look up immediately as my fingers finished the line of code I was writing.When I finally reached out and flipped the phone over, my entire body froze.The name flashing brightly across the screen made my breath hitch in my throat.Matt Wilson.I stared

~TYLA~.I sat back in my leather chair. I stared blankly at the double monitors, but my mind wasn’t on the lines of code today.I took a sip from my coffee as I tried to focus.I was still thinking about the relentless buzzing of my phone from the day before.Matt had tried to reach me multiple times, and even though I hadn't answered, the desperation in those back-to-back calls lingered in the back of my mind no matter how I tried to ignore it.It felt strange knowing that the man who ignored me for five years was now desperately trying to get me to pick up.There was a knock at the door that caught my attention.Vincent walked in without waiting for an answer. He had a folder tucked tightly under his arm.However, he had a huge smile on his face that caught my attention immediately as he stepped into the room."Good morning, partner," he said, pulling up a chair and sitting down across from my desk.He dropped the heavy folder on my desk as he spoke. "You might want to put your coff