CEO's Regret After I Divorced-Chapter 373 Claire’s Revenge

Serena’s POV

The car’s leather seats felt cold against my back, but nothing compared to the ice spreading through my chest.

"She was hysterical," Cedric said, his voice disturbingly calm while his knuckles turned bone-white around the steering wheel. "She was blocking our way."

"She’s pregnant." The words scraped out of my damaged throat. I kept seeing her fall—the instinctive way her hands flew to protect her stomach, the color bleeding from her face like spilled milk.

Cedric’s jaw locked so tight I could hear his teeth grinding. "They’re fabricating this entire scene, Serena. Don’t let them manipulate you."

But doubt had already sunk its claws into me. "Ethan... he really is Serena’s brother, isn’t he?"

A pause. Too long. "Yes."

"Then what was he talking about?" My heart hammered against my ribs. "What did he mean?"

Cedric glanced at me, his eyes hardening with something that looked like desperation disguised as determination. "They’re too emotional right now. They’ve confused you with someone else."

"He said Serena disappeared three years ago." The coincidence felt like a noose tightening around my throat.

"Serena, this has nothing to do with you." His voice carried an edge now, sharp enough to cut. "Don’t overthink it."

But my mind was already spiraling. If Maya could be bought off by Ryan, why would her husband—a Quinn family heir—participate in such an elaborate lie? Would they really sacrifice their own family member for money?

The questions multiplied like cancer cells, spreading until I could barely breathe.

"I’ll speak with the Quinn family myself," Cedric said urgently, reading the doubt written across my face. "I’ll clear this up. They won’t bother you again." He exhaled sharply. "Don’t take today to heart. They’re just... desperate people."

His words felt hollow, rehearsed. Everything about this felt wrong—the timing, the coincidences, the raw desperation in Maya’s eyes that no amount of money could fake.

"By the way," he continued, clearly scrambling for safer ground, "Nancy knows you’re coming home. She’s been waiting for you."

At the mention of my daughter, something in me finally unclenched. "Okay."

Two days of house arrest—because that’s what it felt like—and I was climbing the walls. My throat still felt like I’d swallowed broken glass, but I couldn’t stand another minute of Cedric’s hovering concern and Nancy’s worried glances.

I needed to work. Needed normalcy. Needed to escape the suffocating web of questions that had taken residence in my skull.

"You should rest longer," Cedric had argued that morning, his hands gentle but firm on my shoulders.

"I’ll be fine," I’d insisted, already reaching for my coat. "Sally can handle the talking."

Now, stepping out of the car at Elegant Realm’s entrance, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. The morning air felt sharp against my skin, loaded with the kind of tension that preceded storms.

That’s when I saw her.

Claire barreled toward me like a woman possessed, her face twisted with something beyond anger—something feral and broken. Before I could even process what was happening, ice-cold water exploded across my face.

"It’s all because of you!" she screamed, her voice cracking with hysteria. "You destroyed everything! My hope, my career, my entire fucking life!"

Water dripped from my hair, soaked through my silk blouse, pooled at my feet. I stood frozen, shock rendering me speechless. This wasn’t the timid, insecure Claire I remembered—this was something darker, someone transformed by pure hatred.

She lunged for my hair with clawed fingers, but security finally intervened. The commotion drew a crowd—pedestrians with phones out, employees spilling from the building like ants from a disturbed hill.

"Have you completely lost your mind?" Sally appeared beside me like an avenging angel, positioning herself as a human shield. "You did this to yourself, Claire! How dare you attack Serena?"

Claire thrashed against the security guards, her eyes wild with the kind of desperation that made people dangerous. "What do you know about anything? If Serena Lancaster hadn’t recorded those videos, hadn’t set me up, I wouldn’t be living this nightmare!"

Her screams echoed off the building’s glass facade until one of the guards finally clamped a hand over her mouth, reducing her accusations to muffled snarls.

"Are you okay?" Sally turned to me, worry creasing her features.

I wiped water from my face with trembling fingers and nodded. My throat burned too much to speak, but my mind was crystal clear. This woman—this broken, raging woman—knew something.

"Don’t worry about her," Sally said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. "The police will handle this."

But Claire had teeth. She bit down hard enough to make the guard yelp and jerk his hand back. In that split second of freedom, she unleashed her final poison:

"Serena Lancaster, I only regret that fire didn’t finish the job! I should have made sure you burned!"

The world tilted.

Fire.

The word hit me like a physical blow, stealing what little breath I had left. Slowly—so slowly it felt like moving through quicksand—I turned to face her fully.

"That fire," I said, my voice barely above a whisper but sharp as surgical steel. "You had something to do with it?"

"Yes, so what? I wish I’d burned you alive!"Her eyes blazing with hatred. "A vicious woman like you belongs in hell!"

The crowd gasped collectively. The fashion week fire might have happened days ago, but all of London still whispered about it. Such a major accident hadn’t occurred in years.

Privately, everyone had speculated it was arson, but without an official police statement, these were just theories. Now, with someone publicly attacking me and admitting the truth, the murmurs grew louder.

"Was it really this employee? What kind of grudge is that?"

"She looks mentally unstable. Has she gone mad?"

"If working at a place like this drives people crazy, who’s really at fault here?"

"Probably crushed by capitalism, poor thing."

The crowd’s sympathy was shifting in the wrong direction. People instinctively sided with perceived underdogs. I was visibly the boss of Elegant Realm, dressed in expensive clothes that screamed wealth. Claire looked painfully ordinary, appearing weaker by comparison.

Sally heard the whispers and immediately lashed out. "Claire stole design sketches from our studio and sold them to competitors! You ungrateful snake! No company would hire you after that!"

"As your boss, Serena only fired you—she was already being generous!" Sally’s explanation dampened some of the hostility directed at me.

Claire spat on the ground, her face twisted with hatred. "So what? Does that give her the right to deliberately set me up and humiliate me?"

"Is that how you treat people?" Her eyes burned into mine. "Serena Lancaster, you vicious woman, you deserve to die!"

As soon as the words left her mouth, police sirens wailed in the distance. Within minutes, they had Claire in handcuffs and were escorting her to their vehicle.

An officer approached me, notepad ready for the standard questioning. Sally jumped in, explaining the situation with righteous indignation, but my mind was elsewhere. I kept staring at Claire being pushed into the police car, her words about the fashion week fire echoing in my head.

This definitely wasn’t an accident.

Before Sally could finish, I cut in. "Officer, Claire just implicated herself in the recent fashion week fire. Please question her thoroughly about it."

The officer’s expression turned serious. "We’re actively investigating that incident. Do you have new information, miss?"

"The woman you just arrested admitted to it right here," I said firmly. My voice still hurt, but this was too important. "Regardless of whether she’s telling the truth, it deserves investigation."

"I understand," the officer nodded, making quick notes in his pad. After asking a few more questions, he returned to his colleagues, and they drove away with Claire still hurling obscenities from the backseat.

"Let’s get you inside and dried off," Sally said softly, guiding me toward the building entrance. "You’re freezing."

I let her lead me, but my thoughts remained outside with Claire’s words. Someone had tried to kill me. Someone wanted me dead.

And I had a sinking feeling that this was just the beginning.