Chapter 195 Chapter one hundred and ninety- five

Chapter 195 Chapter one hundred and ninety- five
Lena's POV

The evening air inside the room had turned cold as twilight dissolved into the pitch-black void of the surrounding forest.

I sat on the edge of the plush bed, my hands resting flat over my stomach, watching the shadows lengthen across the cream wallpaper. The fire in the hearth flickered, casting long, dancing embers against the walls. The room was warm, immaculately appointed, and suffocating.

At precisely 7:00 PM, the heavy electronic lock on the door disengaged with its familiar, mechanical clack.
Wes walked into the room carrying a fresh tray of food.

He had discarded his coat, wearing only a dark knit sweater with his sleeves pushed up to his forearms. He looked entirely relaxed, his posture easy, his face a mask of smooth, impenetrable calm.

He set the tray down on the sitting table near the hearth, his eyes flicking casually to the untouched lunch tray sitting on the side counter. He didn't frown. He didn't snap.

He simply picked up the old tray, set the fresh one in its place, and smoothed the cloth napkin beside the silver cutlery.

"Roasted chicken, steamed vegetables, and wild rice," he said softly, his voice low and conversational. "You need the iron and protein, Lena. The kitchen prepared it without any heavy spices, just as you used to prefer."

I didn't answer him. I sat completely still, my eyes locked on his face, tracing the familiar lines of his jaw, the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the neat style of his dark hair.

He turned on his heel, taking a step toward the heavy oak door to leave, entirely satisfied with having delivered his directive.

"Can I ask you something?" I said into the quiet room.
My voice was barely above a whisper, but in the sterile silence of my cage, it sounded as sharp as a falling blade.

Wes stopped mid-stride. He didn't turn around immediately. He stood with his back to me for a full three seconds before slowly turning his head to look over his shoulder. His expression was cool, analytical, and mildly amused.

"You've been asking questions since I brought you here, Lena," he replied smoothly, his hand resting casually in his trouser pocket. "Questions about the accounts. Questions about Collins. Questions about my father's legal team. I'm afraid my answers remain the same."

I took a slow, deep breath, feeling the air fill my lungs, steadying the erratic flutter of my heart.

"This one's different," I said quietly.
Wes paused. He turned his body fully toward me, taking two slow steps back into the center of the room. He stood under the warm glow of the overhead recessed light, watching me with those unblinking, dark eyes that had once made my heart race in university lecture halls.

He didn't speak. He simply waited, inclining his head slightly, giving me permission to proceed.

I swallowed hard, looking straight into the eyes of the man who had held my heart for three long years—the man I had once planned to build an entire life with.

"Did you ever love me?" I asked.
The question hung in the warm, stagnant air between us, heavy and fragile.

Instead of answering immediately, Wes narrowed his eyes slightly. The faint, polite smile that usually rested on his lips completely vanished. His gaze became sharp, piercing, as if he were analyzing a complex piece of corporate data or looking for a hidden trap in a contract negotiation.

"Why are you asking me that now?" he asked softly, his tone laced with genuine curiosity. "You're in a high-security room, holding financial evidence that could dismantle my family's legacy, carrying my father's child, and that is what's on your mind?"

I met his gaze without flinching, keeping my chin lifted, refusing to let my eyes drop.

"Because I need to know if any of it was real," I answered, my voice steady despite the painful tightness in my throat. "I need to know if the last three years of my life before Sebastian were built on a complete ghost. I need to know who I was actually giving my heart to."

A long, excruciating silence stretched across the room.
The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Outside, the mountain wind howled through the high canopy of the pines. Wes stood motionless, staring down at me, his analytical mind visibly calculating the utility of the truth.

He wasn't weighing whether to spare my feelings; he was simply deciding if lying served any remaining purpose.
Finally, he let out a short, quiet breath.
"No," he said.

The single word didn't carry malice. It wasn't shouted in anger. It wasn't spat out as an insult.
He delivered it calmly, plainly, as if he were reciting an objective financial statistic or stating a undeniable fact about the weather.

I felt a cold prickle along the back of my neck, but I didn't pull away. "No?" I repeated softly.

"No," Wes repeated, stepping a bit closer, resting his hands loosely in his pockets as he looked down at me. "I didn't love you, Lena. Love is an emotional dependency. It's a chaotic, irrational weakness that compromises a person's judgment. I don't operate on those parameters."

He began to pace slowly near the foot of the bed, his voice reflective, almost academic.

"When I met you at the university, you were widely admired," he said, tilting his head as if recalling a distant corporate acquisition. "You were striking. You were exceptionally intelligent.

You were popular among the faculty and the students alike. You had a quiet, fierce grace that set you apart from the superficial heiresses my mother kept trying to push into my circle."

He stopped, turning his eyes back onto me, studying my pale face.

"You looked very good beside me," he said plainly. "In public, at galas, at private alumni dinners... whenever I walked into a room with you on my arm, people looked. Men who had spent decades building empires looked at you, and then they looked at me with a subtle, unmistakable envy. People wanted what I had."

I stared at him, my heart feeling completely hollow as his words stripped away three years of memories, brick by painstaking brick.

"You made me look successful, Lena," he added, his tone entirely devoid of shame. "Considering your educational background you, were the perfect counterpart for a young man destined to take over the Lancaster Group."

A bitter, quiet laugh escaped my throat before I could stop it. I looked down at my hands, resting in my lap, remembering the late-night study sessions, the anniversaries, the quiet moments when I had believed we were building an unbreakable bond.

"So what was I to you, Wes?" I asked, looking back up, my eyes burning with unshed tears. "A trophy? A prize?"

"No," Wes corrected instantly, his voice sharp and precise. "A prize is something you win by luck or chance. A prize implies you were given to me."

He stepped closer, leaning forward slightly, his dark eyes locking onto mine with an icy, terrifying intensity.
"You were an achievement," he said cleanly.

The word hit me harder than a physical strike. An achievement. Not a human being. Not a partner. A line item on a ledger of personal conquests. A milestone to be checked off on his path to absolute perfection.

"When you left..." Wes continued, his voice dropping an octave, "after you found out about the Serena..."

He paused, a faint, hollow shadow passing over his features.

"I didn't miss you, Lena," he said softly. "I didn't lose sleep over your absence. I didn't grieve the loss of your voice or your presence in my apartment."
He took a slow, deliberate breath, his expression hardening into something cold and terrifyingly empty.

"I hated losing."
The absolute, unvarnished cruelty of his honesty washed over me in a wave of freezing cold. I sat stiffly on the mattress, my chest heaving as I stared at the monster sitting in the body of the boy I used to hold.

"You cheated first," I reminded him, my voice cracking under the weight of the realization. "You broke us. You destroyed what we had."

Wes gave a small, slow nod of his head. "I know. It was a tactical error on my part. I allowed a temporary distraction to compromise an valuable asset."

There was no apology in his eyes. There was no regret, no shame, no human remorse whatsoever.
"But you still shouldn't have chosen him," Wes said suddenly, his tone shifting, a dark, venomous thread finally cutting through his calm facade.

I frowned slightly, the sheer hypocrisy of his words biting into my skin. "What?"

"You shouldn't have chosen him," Wes repeated, his hands coming out of his pockets, his knuckles tightening. "After everything... after you walked away from me, you turned around and gave your devotion to my father."

He stepped right to the edge of the bed, looming over me, his posture stiffening with a deep, festering resentment that ran far deeper than anything involving me.

"Watching my father become the man everyone admired..." Wes whispered, his voice trembling slightly with a quiet, psychotic rage.

"Watching the entire world bow to his integrity, his brilliance, his legacy... while I was expected to stand in his shadow and play the grateful, dutiful son..."

He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his breath warm against my cheek, his eyes wide and dark.
"And then watching him get you..."
Wes hissed, his voice a chilling murmur. "Watching him take the one achievement I had built, watching him hold you, watching you give him the love and loyalty you once gave to me... That was something I couldn't forgive."

He stood up abruptly, smoothing the front of his dark sweater with two quick, precise movements of his hands. The sudden burst of raw, ugly emotion was instantly stowed away behind his impenetrable corporate mask.

He looked down at me one last time, his expression completely blank, as if the terrifying confession he had just uttered had never happened.

"Eat your dinner, Lena," he said quietly. "I'll have Marcus collect the tray in an hour."

He turned on his heel, walked briskly to the heavy oak door, and knocked twice. The guard outside disengaged the electronic lock, the door swung open, and Wes stepped out into the dark hallway without looking back.

The heavy door closed with a firm, echoing thud, and the hydraulic deadbolt snapped into place with a definitive, metallic click.

Silence descended over the room once more.
I sat completely motionless on the edge of the plush bed, staring at the closed door, the crackle of the fireplace the only sound in the suffocating space.
Slowly, I lifted my hand and pressed it flat against my chest, right over my heart.

For months after our breakup—long before I had ever allowed myself to see Sebastian as anything more than my intimidating, brilliant boss—I had carried a quiet, aching grief inside me. I had spent countless nights lying awake in my apartment, mourning the loss of the sweet, attentive, brilliant boy I had met in college. I had grieved the future we didn't get to have, the promises that had been shattered, the love that had turned to dust.

But as I sat in the dim light of my cage, a profound, startling realization washed over me, cold and clear as mountain water.

The ache in my chest was completely gone. The lingering grief was gone. The sorrow had vanished entirely.
Because you can only mourn someone who once existed. You can only grieve a human being who was real.
The man I had loved... the sweet, protective, brilliant boy I had given three years of my life to... had never existed at all. He was a phantom, an elaborate, carefully constructed facade designed by a sociopath to acquire an "achievement."

There was no Wes to mourn. There was only the empty, calculating monster who was currently trying to destroy the man I truly loved.

I let out a long, quiet breath, feeling a strange, fierce weight lift from my shoulders. The terror didn't disappear, but the ghost of my past was finally, completely dead.

I stood up from the bed, walked over to the sitting table, and pulled out the chair.
I picked up the silver fork, looked down at the roasted chicken and rice, and began to eat.

I ate for my baby. I ate for my strength. I ate for Sebastian—the man who had loved me with a real, fierce, unselfish soul from the very beginning.

I was no longer a captive grieving a lost past. I was a survivor preparing for a war.