The CEO's Regret: You made me your lie, I become your Loss-Chapter 116: The Silent Sacrifice
That night, the bedroom felt like a cage. Julian emerged from the shower, the scent of sandalwood filling the room. He climbed into bed and pulled Amara against his chest, his lips grazing her neck.
"I missed you today," he murmured, his hand sliding down to her hip. "How are you feeling?"
Amara froze. The doctor’s warning echoed in her head: No intimacy. She desperately wanted to tell him the truth that she was doing this for them, for the baby they both wanted, but she couldn’t risk the disappointment if it failed.
"Julian, stop," she whispered, gently pushing his hand away. "I... I’m really not feeling well. The doctor said it might be a viral infection. I don’t want to get you sick. Let’s just... let’s just sleep."
Julian pulled back, his expression a mix of confusion and hurt. He looked at her for a long beat, the silence between them stretching until it felt like a physical barrier.
"Okay," he said softly, though the word felt cold. He turned onto his side, the space between them in the king-sized bed feeling like an ocean.
Amara lay in the dark, tears stinging her eyes. She touched her stomach, unaware that the pills Amira was still slipping into her nighttime tea were already changing the chemistry of her body, preparing it for a miracle that wasn’t Julian’s.
The silence in the Pedro mansion was becoming a heavy, suffocating thing. While Amara lay in bed, nursing the strange, hollow ache in her abdomen and the guilt of pushing Julian away, Julian was descending into a different kind of darkness.
He had retreated to the security hub in the basement a room lined with monitors that usually guarded the Pedro wealth, but now felt like a vault of secrets. He had been obsessively scanning the corrupted files from the night Madam Pedro died. Most of the internal cameras had suffered a synchronized glitch at 10:00 PM, but one exterior camera, tucked under the ivy of the east wing, had captured a stray sliver of movement.
Julian leaned in, his eyes narrowed as he adjusted the contrast on the grainiest frame of the night. At 10:14 PM, mere minutes before the medical examiner estimated the heart failure occurred, a figure moved across the wet grass.
It was brief, a flash of dark fabric and a distinct gait. The height, the way the shoulders squared, and the flick of long hair... it looked exactly like Amira.
Julian’s blood ran cold as he replayed Amira’s statement to the police. She had claimed she spent that entire night at Leo’s apartment across town. She had wept as she told the officers she "wasn’t there to save her mother."
If that shadow was Amira, she hadn’t been across town. She had been standing outside her mother’s window in the middle of a storm.
"It’s just the shadows," Julian whispered to the empty room, his hands trembling on the keyboard. "The rain is distorting the lens. Amira is a lot of things, but she wouldn’t..."
He trailed off. He remembered the look in Amira’s eyes when they had returned the hunger for the Foundation, the resentment toward Amara. He needed the full footage from the neighboring estate’s gate cameras to confirm the timeline before he said a word to Amara. He couldn’t break her heart again without absolute proof.
The next morning, Amira was in the kitchen, carefully stirring a herbal recovery tea for Amara. She watched the steam rise, her face a mask of sisterly devotion.
"Is she awake yet?" Amira asked Julian softly as he entered the kitchen.
Julian studied her. He looked at her hands, the same hands that might have been gripping a railing in the rain two weeks ago. "She’s resting. She’s still not feeling well."
"Poor thing," Amira sighed, pouring the tea into a porcelain cup. "I’ll take this up to her. The doctor said hydration is key for her... condition."
Julian watched her walk away, the tea tray steady in her hands. He felt like he was living in a house full of ghosts and vipers. He needed to get to Leo. If Amira was lying about where she was that night, Leo was the only one who could break her alibi.
Upstairs, Amara took the tea from her sister, her stomach churning at the bitter aftertaste she had grown used to. She was counting the days until her review.
She felt different, heavier, her moods swinging like a pendulum, her skin sensitive to every touch. She attributed it to the procedure, never dreaming that the pills Amira was feeding her were working in tandem with the miracle Sebastian had planted.
"Just three more weeks, Amara," Amira whispered, stroking her sister’s hair. "Then everything will be exactly how it’s supposed to be."
—
The air in Leo’s architectural firm was clinical and sharp, a stark contrast to the thick, emotional fog of the Pedro mansion. Julian leaned against a glass drafting table, his smile practiced and easy, though his eyes remained as cold as flint.
"I’m just checking on the family, Leo," Julian said, his voice a smooth baritone. "Amira has been so distraught since the funeral. I wanted to make sure she actually had that support system she claimed. Are you sure she was with you that whole night? The night Madam passed?"
Leo didn’t even look up from his blueprints. "The whole night, Julian. We didn’t leave the apartment until the call came in the morning. Why the sudden interest in our schedule?"
"Just gauging how serious you two are," Julian joked, clapping Leo on the shoulder. "If she’s already moving in for entire nights, I might need to start preparing a wedding toast."
Leo chuckled, falling right into the trap. He leaned back and began sharing crude, intimate details of their night together, details meant to prove his manhood but which only proved to Julian that Leo was a well-rehearsed liar.
Julian laughed along, but his mind was already miles away. Leo isn’t just a boyfriend, Julian thought as he walked to his car. He’s an accomplice.
