Collateral Damage
The meeting room hummed with quiet voices, aides shuffling papers, the muted ring of phones echoing down the corridor. His secretary stood at the door, tablet in hand, waiting for the signal to usher in the first wave of lobbyists and business associates.
But Ethan Hale didn’t move.
He sat at the head of the polished oak table, hands clasped, gaze fixed on the glass wall that overlooked the city.
His reflection stared back at him—controlled, composed, untouchable.
Except it wasn’t. Beneath the iron shell, something twisted relentlessly, burning a hole straight through his chest.
Clara’s face.
Her wide, tear-glossed eyes when he’d said the words.
The way her voice had fractured on a single question: You regret it?
The silent devastation as she walked away, robe pulled tight around her trembling frame.
Ethan ground his jaw, trying to banish the image. It didn’t belong here, not in his world of contracts and strategy and politics. He had no room for such fragility. No room for mistakes.
“Sir?” His secretary’s voice cut carefully into the silence. “They’re waiting outside.”
“Cancel it.” His reply was clipped, sharp.
“But—”
“Cancel the meeting,” Ethan repeated, eyes narrowing. The tone left no room for negotiation.
The door clicked shut a moment later, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He leaned back in his chair, loosening his tie with one hand.
What the hell was happening to him?
He had told himself Clara was like every other woman in his circle—trained smiles, hungry eyes, emotions wielded like currency. Marriage, to him, had always been a performance, a business transaction dressed in lace and rings. Nothing more.
But Clara…
Clara was different. Too different. She wasn’t cold, calculated, or ambitious.
She was fragile, transparent, unbearably genuine.
She didn’t know how to hide the hurt in her eyes or mask the trembling in her hands.
She bared her soul without realizing it, and that raw vulnerability gnawed at him in ways he couldn’t explain.
He didn’t want to hurt her.
God, he hadn’t meant to.
But what choice did he have? He wasn’t capable of giving her what she craved. Affection. Love. The kind of fairy tale devotion that belonged in her books, not in his world.
He had tried once—long ago. And the wreckage of his parents’ marriage, the bitter memory of his mother’s selfishness, still carved scars into his bones. Marriage was a battlefield, not a sanctuary. Love was weakness, and weakness got exploited. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—walk that path again.
So he had lashed out.
Better a cruel truth now than shattered illusions later.
At least, that was what he told himself as he loosened his grip on the armrest, realizing his knuckles were white. His temples throbbed, not with the remnants of last night’s headache but with the memory of Clara’s tears.
He closed his eyes, but they haunted him still.