Chapter17
What had he done?
Pain and remorse swarmed him, gnawing at his heart until he could barely breathe.
He lurched out the door with a single thought in his head-
Find Grace.
He waited downstairs at Grace Studio in Northbridge. He waited outside her new apartment. The immaculate, untouchable titan of Stone Group had stubble shadowing his jaw, hollows under his eyes, and a suit wrinkled to ruin. Only his bloodshot gaze stayed sharp, fixed on every doorway she
might use.
When that lean, luminous figure finally appeared, his heart almost burst. He staggered into her path, voice ragged from fever and desperation.
“Grace… Grace Miller. I’m sorry–God, I’m sorry. I was wrong. I know everything now…”
He reached for her hand. She slipped aside–quiet, firm, out of reach.
“I know it’s too late… It’s pathetic. I was blind. I trusted Bella. You saved me and I—”
Grace listened without a flicker. It was the calm of someone hearing a story that had nothing to do
with her.
Only when he ran out of air and hope did she speak–her voice cool and steady as still water.
“Alexander Stone.” She used his full name, distant and polite. “I’ve heard the truth. Thank clearing up a few questions I had.”
you
for
She paused. There was no hatred in her eyes, no pleading, no heat at all–only a clean, frozen
release and the faintest thread of pity.
“But it doesn’t change anything. Our ending was set the moment you left me over and over–for her, the moment you chose to hurt me. Your love and your fury were built on a ridiculous mistake.
That‘ s… sad. I don’t hate you anymore; hate takes energy, and I won’t spend another drop of it on
you. But I will never love you again. We’re over. Completely.”
A final verdict–cold, precise, leaving nowhere to stand.
Each word drove in like an ice pick, shattering the last brittle shard of hope in Alexander’s chest.
Chapter17
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He watched her walk away–tall, sure, never once looking back. He reached out and caught only
cold air.
From that day on, Alexander lived like a penitent.
Over the board’s outrage and the Stone Group directors‘ alarm, he forced through a massive partnership–structured so lopsidedly it was practically a gift–and put Grace Studio in Northbridge in charge, fully aware it would cost his company dearly.
Quietly, invisibly, he cleared every obstacle from her path.
He squeezed out predatory competitors, smoothed snarled approvals, and slid dream collaborations within her reach–under a strict order that no one breathe a word of his
involvement.
He even guarded her like a ghost. When a cyclist lost control and veered toward her on her walk home, Alexander didn’t think he just lunged, shoving her hard out of the way. The bike tangled
with him instead, grinding his elbow and knee across raw concrete.
Grace,
—
still shaking, saw it was him. Surprise flickered; composure returned.
“Mr. Stone, are you alright? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
He swallowed the burn in his skin and pushed upright, dazed, eyes clinging to her. “As long as you‘
re okay…”
Her brow creased. “Thank you for pulling me back. But you don’t have to do this. Between us–it’s
settled.”
Settled.
The single word dropped him back into the abyss. She would rather be hit than owe him anything.
All his amends, all his effort–noise, at best. At worst, an intrusion.
He stood there as she walked away without a backward glance, blood stinging down his arm. The pain was nothing compared to the cold wasteland in his chest.
After that, Alexander went silent.
Stonecrest Estate, once a monument to power–and to every injury he had dealt her–became a gilded mausoleum, burying his late–blooming regret and his endless solitude.
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He stopped calling. Stopped showing up anywhere she might be. He even declined business where their paths might cross.
At meetings he barely spoke, staring through the glass at nothing until executives forgot to breathe. The old, decisive edge had been replaced by a depthless fatigue.
Only his chief secretary knew he hadn’t gone empty. In the back of his study, an encrypted server held a single private folder–every public article on Grace, every industry interview, every project image her team released, all meticulously filed.
He watched her work rack up international accolades. Watched her name appear more and more in top design journals. Watched her shed the brand of “Alexander Stone‘ s ex” and rise, step by step, as the respected designer known to the world as Jiang Wei,
And he watched from very far away.
