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Chapte18
Any time good news about her broke, the liquor cabinet in Alexander’s study swung open.
He didn’t invite anyone in. He sat alone in the dark, city lights fanned beneath the floor–to–ceiling glass, pouring the strongest thing he owned, glass after glass. When the screen showed her accepting another award–composed, luminous–he sometimes laughed under his breath. The laugh always cracked into tears, hot and sudden, burning his throat with whiskey and his chest with
something he didn’t know how to name.
Pride for her. Remorse that cut to the bone. Loss he could never repair. All of it settled into a cold,
endless stillness.
Quietly, like guarding a secret he could never say aloud, he kept clearing thorns from her path.
If a shameless rival tried to kneecap the rising Grace Studio (Northbridge), the next morning that company found itself mired in a brutal compliance probe.
If her slot at an international exhibition “mysteriously” vanished, the host received pressure no
one could refuse and corrected the roster at once.
When a core teammate’s family faced a medical crisis, world–class specialists suddenly opened
time for a consult.
It was all seamless, traceless, never pointing back to him.
He no longer wanted her gratitude. He was terrified she might learn the truth. This was just how he
convinced himself to go on existing–bare–minimum penance, and even that felt pitiful.
Time moved. A year. Two.
One day, a thicker report landed on his desk. It detailed another milestone for Grace–then included
a candid photograph.
Grace stood shoulder to shoulder with a refined, bookish man in the Sevonna Art & Architecture
Bookhouse. The two of them leaned over the same title, the same wry smile tugging at their mouths. The man looked at her profile with open respect and something warmer.
The file identified him as Adrian Westcott–an internationally noted architect, legacy pedigree, and impressive work of his own. He and Grace aligned across several disciplines. They’d been classmates once, years ago, if only in passing. A recent cross–discipline project had brought them back into each other’s orbit. Their contact was increasing. Grace did not seem opposed.
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“Adrian Westcott…”
Alexander said the name out loud. His fingers went cold. The harmony in that still image–easy, unforced–was a needle finding the sorest point in his heart.
He had held her for five years and had never earned something that gentle.
Jealousy and possessiveness surged so hard he almost snapped and issued the order–erase the
man, erase his company, clear him from Grace‘ s line of sight like any other obstacle.
Then her eyes rose in his mind–calm, remote, faintly pitying.
We ended a long time ago.
What right did he have? On what authority?
Pain rampaged through him. He curled his hands into fists until his nails bit blood from his palms, half hoping the sting would drown the thing trying to split him in two.
He closed himself in the study for a day and a night. By dawn, the floor was carpeted with crushed paper and empties. Exhausted, he finally called his most trusted aide, voice scraped raw.
“Look into Adrian Westcott and Westcott Holdings. Quietly. See if they’ve hit any trouble.”
The answer came fast.
A major Westcott redevelopment overseas–Westcott Overseas Redevelopment – Meridian Bay- had been frozen by a sudden policy shift. The family’s cash flow was on the brink. Adrian had been shuttling nonstop to keep the project from collapsing.
Alexander read the report and sat with it for a very long time.
Then he did something even he found hard to believe.
He didn’t squeeze the Westcotts. He did the opposite. He reached into an ultra–discreet international line, and through a third–party vehicle–clean on paper, airtight in logic–he moved in a critical infusion of capital and quietly opened the right local doors. The crisis faded without fanfare.
He left no trail.
The Westcotts would chalk it up to luck and a timely investor.
When it was done, Alexander stepped onto the empty terrace at Stonecrest Estate and watched the
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sky pale at the edges. Something in him felt dead for good; something else, sharp and aching, settled into a strange, quiet peace.
He understood at last.
Love, at the very end, was not possession. It was release.
It was wanting her happiness–even if that happiness had nothing to do with him. Even if someone else delivered the gentleness he had never learned to give.
He had shattered any claim on her. What remained was to make sure the man beside her would be good enough good enough to bring her respect, shelter, and the steady love he had failed to offer.
That final act of “making way” was all he could give her now. It was also the last, most honest punishment he could give himself.
Days later, he convened the Stone Group board and announced a seismic decision.
He would step down as CEO in phases, retaining only the chairmanship. Day–to–day operations would pass to the professional team he had been grooming for years. He himself would live abroad
long–term to focus on the global charity he had founded anonymously–the Stone Global Education
& Environment Trust.
The world reeled. No one could fathom why Alexander Stone, at his prime, would walk off the
summit.
He finished the handover without farewells.
Before he left, he went alone to Stonecrest Estate, the house that held a thousand injuries and a
handful of faint, warm memories. He looked once, without lingering, and turned away.
When the StoneAir A800 rolled toward the clouds, he watched Northbridge shrink to a miniature
city.
This time, he knew, he was leaving her world for good.
Chapte18
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