---- Chapter 17 Desmond Day POV: His name was Dr. Alan Mcdaniel. A celebrated psychologist, specializing in trauma. Young, successful, respected. He was everything | used to be, but with a core of decency | had never possessed. | hated him instantly. | found his office and walked in without an appointment. He looked up from his desk, his calm, intelligent eyes registering no surprise. "Mr. Day," he said, his voice polite. "| don' t believe you have an appointment." "Stay away from her," | snarled, dispensing with any pretense of civility. "Ariel is my wife. My woman. You have no right." He leaned back in his chair, his expression a mixture of pity and contempt. "She is not your wife, Mr. Day. And your possessive, antiquated language tells me everything | need to know about the kind of 'love' you offered her." His words hit a nerve, raw and exposed. "You know nothing," | spat, advancing on his desk. "| know that she came to me a broken woman," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "And | know who broke her. So, |' Il ---- thank you to leave her alone and let her heal in peace." Rage, white-hot and blinding, consumed me. | lunged across the desk and grabbed the front of his shirt. "She doesn't need healing! She needs me!" He didn' t flinch. With a speed that surprised me, he twisted out of my grasp and shoved me back. The move was so unexpected that | stumbled, and he used the opening to land a clean, sharp punch directly on my jaw. Pain exploded in my head. | staggered back, tasting blood. The sight of my own blood sent me over the edge. | charged at him, and we fell to the floor in a clumsy, flailing tangle of limbs. "Stop it! Both of you!" Ariel' s voice. She stood in the doorway, her face pale with shock and horror. She rushed into the room, her eyes wide with concern. For one, insane, hopeful moment, | thought she was rushing to me. But she ran straight past me. She knelt beside Alan, her hands fluttering over his face, where my ring had left a small cut. "Alan, are you okay? Did he hurt you?" He was Alan. | was 'he' . | stood there, my heart shattering into a million irreparable pieces. The way she looked at him, the terror in her eyes for his safety... that was how she used to look at me. ---- She loved him. It was over. Truly, finally over. There was nothing left for me here. There was nothing left for me anywhere. | turned and walked out of the office, out of the building, out of her life. | was a ghost, a specter of a man, wandering aimlessly through a city that was not my own. | didn't see the car that ran the red light. | just felt the impact, a brutal, jarring force that sent me flying through the air. Then, darkness. When | woke up, | was in a hospital. Again. My body was a landscape of pain, but the physical agony was a welcome distraction from the hollow emptiness in my soul. Ariel never came. | didn' t expect her to. Evelena did. She stood at the foot of my bed, her expression unreadable. "She's happy, Desmond," she said, her voice not unkind. "Let her go." | knew she was right. | booked a flight home. | didn' t say goodbye. | just left. Back in Silicon Valley, | was a king in exile. My company was still afloat, barely, but | had lost the will to fight for it. My executives begged me to rally, to find a way to save what we had built. | walked into the server room, where the culmination of ten years of work, of IPO prep, of market analysis, was stored. | began feeding the files into the industrial shredder, the sound ---- of tearing paper a symphony of destruction. Then, | called an all-hands meeting. "Effective immediately," | announced to the shocked faces of my employees, "l am transferring one hundred percent of my shares in this company to you, the employees. It's yours now. Do with it what you will." | walked out of the building | had built, leaving behind the stunned silence of the people who had once called me a visionary. | sold the house. | sold my cars. And then, | just started driving, with no destination in mind. | transferred the last of my money to a national cancer ---- research charity. And then, | walked out of the hospital, got in my car, and drove off into the desert sunset, a man with no fortune, no future, and no name, finally, blessedly, at peace. Epilogue Ariel Payne POV: The news of Desmond' s death reached me through a forwarded news article from a former colleague. He had died alone, in a small hospice in a town |' d never heard of, his body unclaimed until they found his donor card. His vast fortune had been given away. He had simply... erased himself. | was in my third year of university, studying to become a psychologist. Alan was sitting across from me in our small, sunlit apartment, reading a book. "He chose his ending," Alan said, looking up at me, his eyes full of that deep, quiet understanding that | had come to love so much. "For a man like Desmond, a man defined entirely by his ambition and his public image, losing everything was a form of death. The cancer was just a formality. He engineered his own destruction, Ariel, from the moment he started to believe that his success was more important than his soul." | looked at him, my brilliant, compassionate Alan, and my heart swelled with a love so profound it almost hurt. "You' re so smart," | murmured. ---- He grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "And you' re a little sunflower now, instead of the sad little raincloud | first met. | threw a cushion at him, and he caught it, laughing. He pulled me into his arms, his embrace warm and safe. "Ariel Payne," he whispered into my hair, his voice suddenly serious. "I love you. Will you let me take care of you, for the rest of our lives?" | hid my face in his chest, my cheeks burning. "| have to finish my degree first," | mumbled. "And start my career. | have to be my own person." "| know," he said, kissing the top of my head. "And | will wait. For as long as it takes. |' Il be right here, making you your favorite soup, whenever you need me." | closed my eyes and nodded, a silent yes. Outside the window, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, their delicate pink petals dancing in the gentle spring breeze. It was a new season. It was a new life. And it was all mine.