The CEO's Regret: You made me your lie, I become your Loss-Chapter 110: The Internal Conflict

His thumb brushed lightly against her arm, a grounding gesture. "But it’s because of you," he said gently. "Because you matter that much."

A small pause. Then, softer. "I’ll support whatever you decide," he promised. And this time, it didn’t sound like a strategy. It sounded like surrender. Trust.

"But..." he added, his gaze sharpening just slightly, not with suspicion, but concern. "Promise me something."

Amara looked up at him, her eyes still heavy, still carrying everything she had been through, but present.

"Stay sharp," he said quietly. "Don’t let your guard down completely. Not right now."

His hand lifted, brushing lightly against her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Let me worry about the dangers," he murmured. "You just... don’t ignore them."

There was a softness in him now that hadn’t been there before. Not the CEO. Not the strategist.

Just Julian. Holding his wife like she was something precious. Something he wasn’t willing to lose again.

While Julian and Amara found a moment of reconciliation, a much darker storm was breaking in a secluded office on the outskirts of the city. Silas, the man the world knew as a Creed but whose blood told a different story stood by the window, his face contorted with fury.

"You gave it back?" Silas’s voice was a low, dangerous hiss. "The ten percent? The leverage I spent fifteen years cultivating? You threw it away for a ’thank you’?"

Sebastian didn’t flinch. He stood tall, his recovery now complete, his eyes colder than Silas had ever seen them. "I’m doing this my way, Silas. I don’t need a hammer when I can use a key."

"You may be my biological father," Sebastian said, the words dripping with a decade of resentment, "but you are a shame. I still can’t believe my mother slept with her husband’s half-brother, conceived me, and then forced the lie onto the man I called ’Dad.’ No wonder he hated me. No wonder he looked at me like I was a stain on the Creed name."

"Your job here is done. You gave me the entry point, and I took it. Now, leave. Go back into whatever hole you crawled out of and don’t let anyone find you. If the Vales start digging into the ’Kissado’ name, I won’t protect you."

As Silas retreated, silenced by his son’s cold authority, Sebastian slumped into his leather chair. His mind drifted back to the sterile, white walls of the intensive care unit months ago.

He remembered the door opening and a man he didn’t recognize, Silas sitting by his bed while he was still hooked to a ventilator.

"I am your father, Sebastian," the man had whispered, clutching his hand. "The Creeds lied to you. I have waited thirty years to claim you. I will do anything. I will bring you the Pedro empire on a silver platter if you just forgive me."

Sebastian snapped back to the present, his gaze landing on the empty space where Amara’s picture usually sat. He didn’t want the company; he wanted the woman. He knew that if he played the villain, Julian would always be the hero.

But if he played the victim the man who was lied to by his family, the man seeking redemption Amara would eventually open the door.

He picked up his phone and dialed a number he had kept hidden. "It’s time. Start the second phase. I want Amira to feel like she’s being sidelined by her sister. If we can’t break the cycle from the outside, we’ll let her sister tear it down from the within."

—

The atmosphere at the Pedro Corporation headquarters had remained brittle, even with the Creed shares back in Amara’s name. Julian had been true to his word, spending his mornings in the executive wing to consult, but everyone knew he was really there as a human shield.

On Tuesday morning, Amara arrived to find a small, understated package sitting directly on her mother’s old mahogany desk. It wasn’t wrapped in the flamboyant gold foil typical of the Vales, nor did it bear the sharp, corporate seal of the Pedro legal team.

It was a simple box of reclaimed wood, smelling faintly of cedar and expensive tobacco. There was no card, just a single, dried hibiscus flower tucked under the twine, a haunting echo of the one Julian had given her during their last morning in the hotel suite.

Amara’s breath hitched. She pulled the twine, her heart thudding against her ribs. Inside, resting on a bed of black velvet, was a vintage fountain pen the exact model her father had lost years ago during the 2011 expansion.

Engraved on the side in faded gold were the initials P.P. Pedro Piers. And there was a small, hand-written slip of paper lying beneath the pen. The handwriting was elegant, slightly slanted, and painfully familiar to anyone who had dealt with the Creed archives for years.

"A piece of the legacy that should never have been sold. I found this in Silas’s private collection before I sent him away. It belongs with the daughter, not the creditor. S."

Amara slumped into her chair, the cool wood of the pen resting in her palm. It felt like a physical connection to her father, a ghost reaching out through the chaos.

Just then, the door swung open. Julian walked in, a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of security reports in the other. He stopped mid-stride, his eyes immediately locking onto the wooden box and the unfamiliar pen in Amara’s hand.

"That wasn’t there when I did the sweep this morning," Julian said, his voice dropping into that low, protective register. He set the coffee down, his gaze shifting from the gift to Amara’s pale face. "Who sent it?"

Amara’s fingers moved almost on instinct.

The moment Julian’s gaze lingered too long on the pen, she closed her hand around it quickly, protectively like the simple object had suddenly become something fragile... or dangerous.

Her heart skipped. "It’s... it’s just an old family heirloom," she said, her voice softer than she intended, a slight tremor betraying her. "One of the staff must have found it in the archives."

The lie came too easily. Too quickly. And the moment it left her lips, she felt it settle uneasily in her chest. Amara didn’t lie to Julian. Not like this.

But the memory of their last argument, how cold he had become, how sharp his words had been, how quickly love had turned into distance still lingered. It had shaken her more than she wanted to admit.

She didn’t want to go back there. Not again. Not when everything already felt so fragile. And then there was Sebastian.

Just the thought of his name was enough to shift something in Julian to harden him, to pull him into that calculating, guarded version of himself that left no room for softness.

Amara swallowed, her grip tightening slightly around the pen. She couldn’t.

"I’m sorry," she blurted suddenly, her voice small, her composure slipping. "It’s from Seb..." She cut herself off, her breath catching as if she had said too much already.

Julian stilled. That was all it took.