Disillusionment At Ten O'clock Novels & Stories

She always stay late, just to entertain herself with some other stuff that can make her feel fine. As she glanced at the clock, it was already pass 7 pm. The office was nearly deserted, with only the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sounds of the city filtering through the windows. Marianne sighed, realizing that she had been avoiding the inevitable confrontation with Felix. The unresolved tension between them hung in the air like an unspoken truth.

I had discarded my SIM card, after all. "Impossible! This is simply impossible!" He frantically redialed my number, refusing to accept reality. "Sir, please look at Facebook," the butler said. He immediately showed Rudolf the trending news. Rudolf grabbed the phone; he saw the Medina Group's official statement and a copy of the divorce agreement, as well as a public announcement stating that the two families' cooperation was over, with all contact to be cut entirely. It hit him like a truck. Rudolf staggered, reeling in disbelief.

Kline Creative eventually declared bankruptcy, and Elliot was blacklisted as a debtor. The once-glorious businessman became a debt-ridden failure overnight. He had to sell his luxury house and car, moving into an old, rundown neighborhood. The friends and partners who once surrounded him now avoided him like the plague. But what hurt him the most was the complete change in how the industry viewed him. People called him a clueless fool, duped by a young schemer. Some even maliciously speculated that there must have been an inappropriate relationship between him and Yvette, or else he wouldn't have trusted her so blindly.

If only I can run down the hall and confirm that there are security cameras in the copier room… Not that it matters now. The hour that separates 9:00 and 10:00 feels like a single day squished into sixty minutes. I hate the waiting and want nothing more than to get my sacking over with, until 10:00 comes around, of course, and I am walking into the conference room feeling blurred and disconnected from the world, so stunned by my own carelessness. I sit down across from Grace, who has her hands folded on top of the table. I should just come clean, I tell myself. Try to redeem myself as much as I can.

When I woke up at four in the morning, I was planning to call the makeup artist when I noticed that my room was exceedingly silent. When I called, the makeup artist appeared perplexed and asked me, "But your fiance informed us last night that the wedding will be cancelled… You didn't know?" I rushed out of my room to find that Sean Wickham was leading his parents outside, and quickly asked, "Where are you going? Why didn't you tell me that you're calling off our wedding?"

"We're only thinking about Abend Group's future. Daisy really likes your bedroom, so why don't you let her have it? Once she gives birth, she'll return it to you. "I gave you the title of my wife, so I need to compensate Daisy in other ways. I promised her I'd repay her ten times over," Edward continued, trying to persuade me, but I couldn't listen any longer. His words made me nauseous. "Edward, how did we end up like this? There was a time when we truly loved each other. We vowed to love only one another for a lifetime in that chapel." He hadn't expected me to say that. He was stunned, as if recalling the happy moments we had once shared.

I woke to silence and cold sheets beside me. Dominic was gone. The indent from his body had already cooled, which meant he'd been up for a while. I lay there for a moment, listening to the city hum outside the windows—so far below we might as well have been in another world. The clock on the nightstand read 7:47 AM. I had no idea what time he'd left. I pulled myself out of bed and padded barefoot across the room. The penthouse felt different in daylight—less like a trap, more like a museum. Everything in its place. Nothing out of place. Nothing real.

Dahlia I wasn’t expecting them to still be awake. It was past eleven when I finally pulled into the driveway, my truck making that god-awful rattling noise it always made when I pushed it past sixty on the back roads. I’d lost track of time at Morning Dew again, hunched over vendor contracts until the numbers blurred and my head throbbed. My shoulders burned from leaning over the desk too long, and all I could think about was shoving something quick into my stomach, peeling off my clothes, and crashing face-first into bed.

Tears rolled down Isabelle's cheeks as she clutched my hand and said in a trembling voice, "Lucas, I really know I was wrong. We can register for marriage tomorrow—no, right now. The moment the city hall opens tomorrow, we'll be the first ones there. Give me one more chance, please?" Her face was filled with regret. I figured she really did regret it this time. But the cracks in our relationship weren't formed overnight. They had widened over seven years, until everything finally collapsed today. Naturally, there was no fixing us anymore.

He sat in the dark with his phone in his hand and the forty first floor window lit above him and the city doing what it always did around them both. He had been very certain about the sequence. At ten pm the building went dark. Floor by floor. The windows going black until the forty first joined them. The street is unchanged. LA unchanged. The building is suddenly absent from the skyline in a specific way. He looked at his phone. He waited. ⸻ The lights went out at ten pm. One second her screen was open. The next — nothing. Total. The kind of dark that had weight. She did not move.