Chapter 290
That girl had once been the only warmth in Charlotte’s otherwise fractured world.
In the darkest stretches of her life, when nightmares felt endless and escape impossible, that woman had been there—steady, kind, unshakably present. She had given Charlotte something to hold onto when everything else was collapsing.
And then, without warning, that light had been extinguished.
Charlotte still couldn’t accept it.
Not easily. Not cleanly.
Because people didn’t just give up on life like that. Not over heartbreak. Not over pain. There had to be something more—something wrong, something cruel behind it.
Ethan paused.
The glass in his hand stopped halfway to his lips.
For a brief moment, the haze in his eyes cleared. Something sharp flickered beneath the surface—too fast to catch, too heavy to ignore—but it was gone almost instantly, buried again under alcohol and control.
He gave a low, careless smile.
“You mean her?” he said lightly. “She’s just… someone from the past.”
Charlotte’s fingers tightened around her glass.
“Someone from the past?” Her voice was steady, but only just. “Was she important to you? And where is she now?”
Ethan didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he tilted his head back and drank the rest of the glass in one go. The alcohol hit faster this time, loosening whatever restraint he still had left.
When he finally spoke, his voice was flat.
“She’s dead.”
The words were simple.
Clean.
Final.
Charlotte’s breath caught.
Even though she had already feared it, hearing it spoken so casually made something inside her collapse. A cold wave ran through her chest, sharp and suffocating.
She lowered her eyes quickly, as if that alone could hold everything together.
“…How?” she asked quietly. “Was it illness?”
Ethan let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Illness?” He leaned back slightly, fingers still around the glass. “Something like that. When you hand your life over to someone else, and it all falls apart in the end… that’s also a kind of sickness, isn’t it?”
His tone was lazy, almost indifferent.
But something in it didn’t belong to indifference at all.
Charlotte felt a chill spread through her spine.
“Someone must have hurt her,” she said suddenly, sharper than she intended. Her voice trembled despite herself. “That person… deserves to die.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
Ethan didn’t react to the emotion behind them. He only swirled the wine in his glass, watching it move as if it were the only thing worth attention.
“Deserves to die?” he repeated, amused. “No one’s innocent. People just stand on different sides and call it justice.”
Charlotte stared at him.
He looked… untouched.
Polished. Controlled. Almost elegant in the way he dismissed something that had once mattered enough to end a life.
That was what made her chest tighten.
To him, it was just a story.
To someone else, it had been everything.
After a long silence, Charlotte spoke again, quieter this time.
“Ethan… you have everything. Power, status, control over your life. Do you ever feel… Is it boring? Like nothing excites you anymore?”
He lifted his gaze to her at that.
A faint smile formed.
“Oh?” he said. “Are you planning to make things interesting for me?”
Charlotte ignored the teasing.
“I’m just asking,” she said, eyes lowered. “What do you actually want?”
This time, Ethan didn’t answer immediately.
For once, the question seemed to land somewhere deeper than surface conversation.
He leaned back slightly, the glass resting loosely in his hand.
“Probably…” he said at last, voice slower now. “Fame. Freedom. Happiness.”
Three words.
Big enough to sound simple.
Heavy enough to be impossible.
Charlotte frowned slightly. “That doesn’t sound hard for you to get.”
“I don’t mean superficial things,” Ethan said, gaze steady now. “Not money, not comfort. I mean… something real. Family. A lover. Friends who don’t disappear when things get ugly.”
His eyes stayed on her as he spoke.
“People like Khloe… she has the Hunt family. She has people who stand behind her no matter what.”
A pause.
Then, quieter:
“I don’t have that.”
The alcohol in his system didn’t soften his words.
If anything, it made them more honest.