Lahat ng Kabanata ng Too late for regret, Mr Ashford: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 9

"Nothing in this world will ever come before you, Elise."Julian Ashford had spoken those words four years ago, with his forehead pressed against mine and rain still clinging to his wedding tuxedo, and I had believed every syllable. Tonight, sitting in a hospital corridor with a sonogram photo trembling in my fingers, I was finally ready to believe them again."Mrs. Ashford?" Dr. Okafor stepped out of her office with a warm smile. "Congratulations, you are eight weeks along, and everything looks perfect."My hand flew to my stomach before I could stop it. "You are certain it has been eight weeks?""I have the heartbeat on my screen to prove it." She laughed softly and passed me a tissue, because I had not realized I was crying. "Is your husband waiting outside? I would love to congratulate him as well.""He is at work." The lie came out smooth, because I had told it so many times before. "I am going to tell him tonight, because it is our anniversary.""Then you have chosen the perfect

"I am so sorry, Mrs. Ashford, but we were not able to save your baby."Dr. Okafor said it softly, with her hand resting on the rail of my hospital bed, and for a long moment I did not understand that the words were meant for me. The room was too white, and the machine beside my head beeped too evenly, and my body felt like a house that had been emptied while I slept. Then my fingers drifted beneath the thin blanket and pressed against my stomach, and I found only flat, aching silence where a heartbeat had been."When?" My voice scraped out like paper. "How long ago?""Two nights ago, during the surgery. The impact caused severe internal bleeding, and the placenta detached before the rescue team reached you." She paused, and her eyes shone with tears she was too professional to let fall. "You lost a great deal of blood, and the paramedics told me it was nearly forty minutes before they could cut you free. We did everything we possibly could."Forty minutes. I turned the number over in

"Your husband's company has been breathing through our lungs for four years, Miss Carrington."Naomi Chen set the final ledger on the table with a quiet thud, and the weight of it rattled my untouched coffee. We sat in my father's old office on the fifty-second floor of Carrington Capital, surrounded by dark walnut shelves, framed maps of cities he had helped to build, and a view of the skyline that made the Ashford Tower look like a toy. A week had passed since I had walked out of that mansion, and the cast on my wrist had finally been traded for a brace."Explain it to me again," I said. "Slowly, please."Harold Pierce lowered himself into the leather chair across from me and folded his gnarled hands. "Four years ago, Ashford Group was seventy-two hours from bankruptcy. A holding company called Larkspur Trust wired four hundred million dollars into their accounts on the final night, and the money arrived with no interviews and no press release.""Larkspur was my mother's favorite fl

"Your father wrote this on the worst night of his life, and he made me swear to hand it over only after you took his chair."Naomi Chen stood in the doorway of my new apartment at eleven o'clock at night, still wearing her office suit, with a small steel case tucked under one arm like a sleeping animal. She had not knocked. I had given her a key on the first day, along with every spare set of everything I owned."I took his chair six days ago, Naomi.""Then I am six days late, and I apologize." She stepped inside and glanced around the living room with her sharp lawyer's eyes. "You have lived here a week, and you have not unpacked a single box."She was right. The penthouse sat on the thirty first floor of a building Harold had chosen for its private elevator and its three separate exits, and it held a sofa, a lamp, and a skyline. Moving boxes stood against the far wall in a neat, abandoned row. I had worn the same cardigan for two days, and the brace on my wrist had begun to itch in

Elise's POV"Seven days in that chair, Mrs. Ashford, and you have already cost us the summer bonuses."Edmund Whitlock did not stand to say it. He leaned back in his leather seat halfway down the boardroom table, a lean man of sixty with a silk bow tie and a smile like a paper cut, and he let my married name drop into the room like a glove thrown at my feet."It is Ms. Carrington," Harold said quietly."Forgive me. The paperwork still says Ashford, and so does half of Seattle." Whitlock spread his manicured hands. "I only wish to understand our leadership. Last week this board learned that our new chief executive spent four years in a rival's kitchen. This week she freezes bonuses, reorders the executive floor, and fires our head of communications before lunch.""I fired him after lunch," I said. "He had been sending you quarterly reports that rounded every loss up into a gain."A ripple ran around the table. Two directors found something fascinating in their coffee, and a woman at th