The CEO's Regret: You made me your lie, I become your Loss-Chapter 78: Real talk

The healing process for Amara was not a straight line or something she could easilyget over, it was a slow, agonizing crawl through the wreckage of her own expectations. Amara spent days in the quiet of her room, shielded by the thick, velvet curtains and the quiet, steady presence of Julian.

He moved through the space with a reverence that was almost holy. He didn’t demand she be okay. He simply existed as her anchor, ensuring she was the absolute center of his universe.

As the days bled into one another, Amara found herself comparing Julian to Seb. Seb had once promised her the world too a dazzling display of wealth and grand gestures that made her feel like a queen.

But sitting in the soft light of her bedroom, Julian bringing her tea with a gaze that held nothing but unvarnished adoration, she realized the fundamental difference.

It had been a performance, a theater of grand gifts and fleeting promises that vanished the moment her utility faded.

It was a quiet, relentless devotion. It wasn’t about the size of the gesture, but the intention behind it.

She realized with a jolt of clarity that she had never truly been loved before. She had been adorned, perhaps, but never held. Julian’s love was built on a foundation of unshakeable loyalty, actions that matched his words, and a devotion that didn’t waver even when she was at her most broken.

Amara began to breathe again. A hint of her old, vibrant self started to return, like a flower pushing through cracked pavement. She began to smile, not because she was forcing it, but because the darkness of the past was finally losing its grip.

Just as the atmosphere in the mansion began to lighten, the fragile peace was shattered.

The heavy oak door to her bedroom didn’t just open; it was shoved inward with a jarring, aggressive force.

Amara turned hoping to see Julian, her smile vanishing as if it had never existed.

Standing in the doorway, her hair disheveled and her eyes burning with a volatile, dangerous energy, was Amira.

She looked as though she had been dragged through a hurricane, her clothes wrinkled and her gaze fixed on Amara with the intensity of a predator.

Amira had always known how to bypass the security details she knew the hidden servant passages, the blind spots in the cameras, and the arrogance of the guards who still saw her as part of the family history. She was a ghost from a life Amara was desperately trying to leave behind.

Amira took a step into the room, her chest heaving. The air in the room turned cold, the scent of stale alcohol and unresolved resentment trailing behind her.

The room felt as though the air had been sucked out of it, replaced by the heavy, suffocating scent of stale alcohol and the raw, jagged edges of Amira’s confession.

Amara stood rooted to the spot, her mind reeling. The woman who had been her rival, her shadow, and her antagonist for years, the woman who had made her life a living hell was currently collapsed on her bed, shivering like a broken bird.

"What are you doing here?" Amara asked, her voice barely a whisper. The shock was absolute. "I thought you left."

Amira pressed her face into the duvet, her shoulders shaking with silent, heaving sobs. "I did. I was on the island with Seb... the one he used to keep you captive. I was trying to be you, Amara. I was pretending to be you." A bitter, broken laugh escaped her.

"But he’s not stupid. He found out. He saw right through the mask."

Amara stepped forward, her hand instinctively reaching out before she pulled it back, hesitating. "Why, Amira? What is it that you actually want?"

"Nothing," Amira murmured, her voice muffled and exhausted.

"Just... relax. Please." She gestured vaguely toward the door.

"You know your room is still just across from mine, right? It feels like nothing has changed you can go there and rest on your own bed."

"Has Mother seen you?" Amara added since Amira was not making any attempt to leave, her heart was racing.

"I don’t want to fight. My head is pounding," Amira groaned, pressing her palms against her temples. "And no, she wouldn’t care. Just... don’t tell her I’m here."

Amara sat on the edge of the bed, the distance between them feeling both miles wide and inches thin. She looked at the woman who had tormented her, trying to reconcile this broken creature with the venomous rival she had known.

"What happened to you, Amira? You were always so... you always blamed me for everything."

Amira let out a sharp, jagged breath. "Didn’t you ever bother to wonder why our father hated me?"

"Father never hated you," Amara said softly. "He was just trying to..."

"Trying to what?" Amira snapped, her eyes flashing for a split second before the fire died out, replaced by a hollow, crushing defeat.

"He never wanted me. He didn’t even know I existed until it was too late. Arabella isn’t my mother, Amara. She’s my aunt."

The revelation hit Amara like a physical weight.

"My mother was Amabel," Amira whispered, the name sounding like a curse.

"The ’crazy’ twin of your mother. So, we’re cousins, yes but we’re half-sisters, too. Just like I tried to be you to get to Seb, my mother pretended to be her sister and slept with our father. She was never caught, Amara. Maybe she was just that good, or maybe our father knew exactly who he was with and just... liked it."

Amira looked up, her eyes glassy and haunted. "That night you saw me with Seb? I was heartbroken. I was actually sorry, Amara. But then you went crying to our father, and that was the night... the night I heard him call me a ’lying whore.’ He said I was just like my mother. My world just stopped that day."

She looked at her sister at the woman who had lived the life Amira had always coveted with a gaze so transparent it hurt to look at.

"I’m so tired," Amira said, her voice dropping to a fragile plea. "Can we just go back to when we were fifteen? Just for tonight? Before my world collapsed under the weight of the truth? Can you... can you hug me, sister?"

Amara stared at her, her heart caught in her throat. Every instinct screamed that this was a trap, a long-con, another piece of theater.

But as she looked into the eyes of the girl she had grown up with the girl who was now utterly unraveled the coldness in Amara’s heart finally gave way to a sorrow that transcended their rivalry.

With a trembling breath, she reached out and pulled Amira into her arms.

The embrace was stiff at first, a fragile bridge built over years of animosity. Amara felt the jagged, shallow rhythm of Amira’s breathing against her shoulder, a sound that carried the weight of every secret, every theft, and every desperate, misguided attempt to be someone else.

Amira’s grip tightened, her fingers digging into the fabric of Amara’s dress. It wasn’t the grasp of a rival, it was the desperate clutch of a drowning girl.

"I spent so long wanting to take your life," Amira whispered, her voice muffled against Amara’s neck. "I thought if I could just be you, if I could stand where you stood, be loved by who you loved that the part of me that felt... wrong... would finally go away."

Amara didn’t pull back. She held her, feeling the bone-deep tremors that shook Amira’s frame.

"You weren’t wrong, Amira. You were just hurt. You were just child caught in the wake of their wreckage, father should have never said that to you."

"But you had the light even as a child you were nothing like me," Amira countered, a flash of her old bitterness surfacing, quickly extinguished by exhaustion.

"Even when the world was cruel to you, you had this... this way of looking at the world that didn’t break. I looked at the world, and all I saw were gaps. Things I needed to fill with other people’s lives because mine felt like a void."

Amara stroked her hair, a gesture she hadn’t dared to perform since they were children, before the lines were drawn in blood and betrayal.

"You didn’t have to be me. You never had to be me."

"I know that now," Amira sobbed, the sound breaking into a ragged, helpless wail that she finally let out. "When I was on that island, staring at Seb, watching him look through me because he was only ever seeing the shadow of you... I realized I wasn’t just losing my face. I was losing the last shred of who I was. I was a mirror, Amara. And mirrors have no substance. They only exist to reflect what’s in front of them."

The confession hung in the air, stripped of the malice that usually shielded it.

"I don’t know how to exist without being someone else’s mirror," Amira continued, her voice trembling. "I don’t know who I am without the hate. I don’t know who I am without you to blame. It’s so quiet now, Amara. It’s so terrifyingly quiet."

Amara felt a hot tear track down her own cheek. For years, she had viewed Amira as a monster, a creature of pure malice designed to undo her.

But in the dim light of the bedroom, holding the woman who had been her undoing, she saw only the mirror of her own pain.