Chapter 14
Now, sitting alone in their abandoned wedding house, William felt the weight of his mistakes crushing him. This place, once meant to be the foundation of their future, now felt like a tomb. He deserved every bit of this pain.
The proposal that had been carefully planned–once supposed to be a milestone of their love–now sat hollow, an empty memory. The woman who should have been there, sharing that moment with him, was gone. She wasn’t just absent–she was lost.
The people in the room looked at each other in disbelief, struggling to comprehend how Victoria could have simply vanished. How could she have left without a word, without a sign, for ten whole years?
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Her silence, her departure, was the loudest message of all–a message that no one had given her a reason to stay.
He reached for the diamond ring, the one he had designed just for her, the one he had imagined slipping onto her finger in the happiest of moments. But now, all it symbolized was his failure, his inability to recognize what he had.
Tears blurred his vision as he thought of her -of what could have been, of the future he had carelessly thrown away. His calls went unanswered, his messages met with silence. He had so many things to say, so many apologies, so many regrets. But it was too late. She was gone, slipping away from him like sand through his fingers.
The suffocating weight of his loss pressed
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down on him, unbearable and unyielding.
“Victoria, how could you be so cruel?” he wondered. “How could you disappear so completely from my life without even a goodbye?”
Ava rushed to his side, holding him tightly as if she could shield him from his own guilt. “William, please. She doesn’t love your anymore. You need to stop this. It’s breaking my heart to watch you destroy yourself like this.”
But her words barely registered. As if on instinct, his mind flashed back to a moment in the early morning. He had asked her, his voice full of desperation, “Did Victoria call?”
Ava had hesitated, her face twisting with a lie. “No, no… um, she didn’t.”
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“Lies.”
His hands clenched. “Ava, I’m asking you again. Did you delete the call record? What did she say?”
Ava’s voice trembled with her denial. “I didn’t! William, please, you have to trust me.”
But just as he felt the breaking point, someone emerged from the shadows. A figure stepped forward and played a video, the screen capturing a video call–a call
that fold the truth he had been desperately
seeking.
The storm of truth was about to engulf him. And there was no escaping it.
He and Ava had developed a habit of staying on video calls until the early hours, sometimes even recording their
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conversations. This particular video showed Ava talking to Victoria late into the night.
“Is something wrong? It’s so late…”
“William? He’s so tired. He’s in the shower right now!”
“If you don’t need anything else, I’m going to hang up. We still have the second half of the night ahead.”
The room went silent.
Everyone in the room understood the unspoken tension in those words. They began to piece together the implications -how many times over the past year had Ava blurred the lines between “brother” and “sister“? How many moments had she taken for herself, letting Victoria believe something that wasn’t true?
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“William, listen, let me explain!” Ava’s voice trembled, desperate for him to understand.
But William couldn’t contain the fury bubbling up inside him. He shoved her away, his face stone–cold. “Ava, the favor your family did for me is repaid. Leave. Now!”
Ava, on the verge of tears, screamed, “William, I admit it–I was despicable! But I love you. That’s why I did all of this. We’ve grown up together! You’ve always been so kind to me. Why can’t I be the one if you’re marrying her?”
Her words grew more venomous with each syllable. “I’m younger, I’m prettier, I have more time to be with you! Victoria is gone. Let me take her place. Let me love you, okay?”
Her makeup, already smeared from hours of
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crying, had all but disappeared, leaving her raw and exposed.
William looked at her with a frigid
expression, his voice unwavering. “No. I have only ever loved Victoria Amelia. In this life, and the next.”
“Now, get out!” he spat, the words harsh and final.
Three months later, a new custom–made wedding dress arrived at his door. William staggered to the door, his body weighed down by a mountain of empty bottles. He hadn’t slept for days.
With shaking hands, he opened the massive gift box, the scent of the carefully wrapped fabric filling the room. His mind wandered back to the bridal shop, to the memory of Ava wearing the dress, pretending it was a
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game. She’d laughed, spinning in circles as if it all meant nothing.
But in that moment, he remembered something else–something more important.
He remembered seeing Victoria standing outside, talking quietly on the phone, her face bathed in the soft light of the shop window.
The image of her, standing there alone, lingered in his mind, a constant reminder of what he had lost, what he had pushed away.
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