Chapter 156 Grit

Chapter 156 Grit
The house was too quiet.
Ethan had always loved silence, but this silence felt different. Heavy. Suffocating. It wasn't peace; it was the echo of everything he had just lost.
He lay on his back in the center of his bed, staring blankly at the ceiling as if it held answers. His room, usually meticulous and untouched, looked lived-in for the first time. His phone lay face-down beside him, vibrating every few minutes, calls, messages, notifications, people demanding statements and explanations. He had spent all of yesterday doing the damage control everyone expected from him, speaking to board members, legal advisers, and the few friends he didn't completely distrust. But today?
Today, he didn't have the strength to be Ethan Sinclair.
He didn't have the strength to be anything.
His chest rose and fell slowly, the weight of exhaustion pressing deeper into him. Losing his position as CEO of Sinclair Group was a blow, humiliating, unfair, a direct wound to everything he had built with discipline and sacrifice. It had been his life, his identity, the one place he could control the narrative. Now it was slipping through his fingers, tainted by rumours and twisted stories he couldn't defend himself from.
But that wasn't what tore at him most.
It was Lena.
He swallowed hard, his jaw tightening. If he was being honest with himself, losing the company wasn't the part that hurt the most, it was losing her. Or rather, pushing her away so badly that she left. He had replayed that moment over and over, her expression, the hurt in her eyes that he pretended not to see. He had been cold, harsh, defensive... and he had watched her walk away because of it.
A man like him wasn't supposed to feel this kind of ache.
He wasn't supposed to miss anyone.
His phone buzzed again. He didn't bother checking it. He didn't want more sympathy calls, more reporters pretending to care, more shareholders offering advice loaded with judgement. He didn't want another headline notification painting lies in bold letters. The media was having a feast, twisting the story into versions he didn't even recognize anymore.
"CEO Ousted Amid Scandal."
"Sinclair Empire Shaken as Board Suspends Young Leader."
"Marriage in Crisis? Sources Claim Wife 'Walked Out' After Domestic Conflict."
He had stopped reading after that one.
He turned onto his side, dragging a hand over his face as exhaustion stung behind his eyes. He had barely slept. His mind wouldn't rest, too many questions, too many regrets, too much noise he couldn't control.
He felt... defeated.
It was a foreign feeling, one he had never allowed himself to experience. He had survived worse, loneliness, pressure, betrayal from people he once trusted. But this time, his armor wasn't holding. Everything felt too heavy, and for once, he didn't know how to fix it.
A soft knock echoed distantly from the hallway, someone at his bedroom door. He didn't answer. Another knock, more hesitant. Still, he didn't move. The world could wait. He needed one moment, just one, to fall apart without witnesses.
He exhaled shakily, letting his eyes fall shut.
He didn't want to process any of it. Not the company... not the humiliation... not the cold emptiness Lena had left behind.
He just needed to breathe. To exist. To feel nothing, even if only for a few minutes.
Because if he let himself feel everything at once... he wasn't sure he would recover from it.

Lena stood on the cracked pavement, staring at the building that once held her father's life's work. The old gallery stood silent before her, its faded signboard hanging loosely by one rusted hinge, the once, vibrant colours washed out by years of rain, sun and neglect. Dust clung to the windows, turning them opaque, as though the building itself had decided to hide from the world.
Her heart squeezed.
She wrapped her arms around herself as a cold evening breeze brushed past, lifting strands of her hair. For a long second, she didn't move. She simply stood there, breathing in the familiar scent of old wood, dried paint, and a hint of turpentine that seemed to linger in the air no matter how much time had passed. She had spent most of her childhood here, running between easels, colouring on stray canvases, humming as her father painted with soft jazz playing in the background.
Now, silence.
Finally, she pushed the door open. It groaned in protest.
Inside, the gallery looked even smaller, emptier than she remembered. Paintings that once adorned the walls were gone; her father's favourite wooden stool sat abandoned in a corner, one leg uneven, still bearing dried flecks of paint on the seat. The place felt like a memory frozen in time.
As soon as Lena stepped in, the weight she had been running from slammed into her chest all over again.
Her knees buckled. She sank to the floor beside the wall, unable to hold herself up any longer. She drew her knees to her chest, rested her forehead on them, and allowed the silence to swallow her.
The whole world seemed to be attacking Ethan, and it was because of her.
The media had turned ruthless. Headlines dragged him through the mud, calling him irresponsible, unworthy, reckless. She had seen the trending posts, the comments, the analysts tearing apart his leadership and questioning his competence. Each criticism had pierced her like a dagger.
And every time his name was slandered, every time a new article surfaced, she whispered the same sentence to herself:
I caused this.
Her carelessness had destroyed a relationship that hadn't even been given the chance to fully bloom. What she had with Ethan... it was fragile, delicate, new, yet it had been the first thing in years that made her heart beat differently. He had let her into parts of his life no one else had seen. He had begun to trust her. He had begun to soften with her.
And she broke it.
The thought burned until her eyes stung. A sob tore its way out of her chest. She pressed a hand to her mouth to stop the sound, but the tears were relentless and unstoppable.
She had tried to sit still at Penny's place, but her thoughts had been dragging her under, suffocating her. She needed air. Space. Somewhere familiar. Somewhere that reminded her of who she was before all of this, before Ethan, before contracts, before the world suddenly turned upside down.
Her gaze drifted across the gallery. A spiderweb stretched across an old paintbrush jar. The art stands were covered with white dusty sheets. It looked lifeless... but she could see the potential.
A tiny thread of hope flickered in her chest.
She still had some money from the contract. Not much, but enough. Enough to do something. Enough to restore this place, to give it life again. She could repaint the walls, fill this room with colour, laughter, passion, just as her father once did.
Maybe... maybe she could start here. Maybe reviving the gallery would help her revive herself too.
She wiped her face with her sleeves, swallowing hard. Her heart still ached, but for the first time since the chaos began, a sense of purpose quietly settled beside the pain.
She couldn't fix Ethan's situation. She couldn't undo the damage.
But she could do this.
Lena placed her palm on the dusty floor, grounding herself. "Dad," she whispered, voice cracking. "Help me. I need to feel like myself again."
Her voice trembled, but the resolve behind it strengthened.
She wasn't running anymore.
She would survive this storm, even if it meant rebuilding from the ruins.