---- Chapter 30 The memories, once so painful, now just felt... distant. | saw our lives laid out before me, a blueprint of our shared history. | remembered him as a teenager, relying on me to edit his school papers, to be his steady, reliable sounding board. He needed my mind, my stability. | remembered him in college, using my design skills to help him win a prestigious competition. He needed my talent. | remembered the day he realized | was in love with him. | saw the calculation in his eyes. He needed my love, my unwavering devotion, to build his empire. | was the perfect partner, the perfect future wife for a man like him. Loyal, brilliant, and completely, utterly his. And | remembered the moments when the performance had slipped, when a real emotion had broken through. The genuine laughter, the moments of shared vulnerability. | believe, in his own twisted, selfish way, he had come to love me. He had become so used to me, so dependent on my presence, that he couldn't imagine a life without me. | was his foundation. But then Clara, his first love, his 'what if, had come back into the picture. And he had wanted it all. He wanted my stability and her excitement. He wanted my loyalty and her passion. He ---- thought he was a good enough architect to build a life with two different, conflicting designs. He had been wrong. The plane landed in Paris. | walked out of the airport and into the arms of my new life. A life | had designed myself, from the ground up. A life built not on debt or lies, but on a foundation of my own strength, my own resilience. Liam would spend the rest of his life haunted by the ghosts of what he had lost. He would live in a beautiful, empty house, filled with regret. He had finally realized | was the most important thing in his life, but it was a lesson learned far too late. Some structures, once they are demolished, can never be rebuilt. Especially when the architect has left the country and taken the blueprints with her.