You Had Me, You Lost Me, You'll Never Find Me novel Chapter 87

The stifling summer heat wrapped around the city like an inescapable net as night fell.

The streets below the corporate tower bustled with pedestrians, including countless couples walking hand in hand.

While Finley went to retrieve the car, Ashton stood in the shadows, lighting a cigarette.

Suddenly, a young man pulled up on a scooter nearby to pick up his girlfriend. The girl, her face glowing with youthful innocence, looked up at him with a brilliant smile.

Her expression was pure, burning devotion.

It was agonizingly familiar.

Ashton let the cigarette burn halfway down without taking a single drag.

Through the drifting smoke, his eyes were devoid of emotion. He looked like an empty vessel, watching someone else's romance unfold, or perhaps not seeing them at all.

The boy laughed and told her to get on. The girl suddenly leaned in and kissed his cheek. The boy looked surprised, fighting a massive grin as he mumbled something. She hopped on, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, and they drove off into the night.

For some inexplicable reason, Ashton couldn't tear his predatory gaze away until they vanished completely into the crowd.

A sudden, violent memory of Sylvia crashed into him.

To his absolute shock, this was the very first time since the breakup that he felt the crushing weight of missing her.

Dark storm clouds rolled across the sky like a tidal wave.

The wind picked up, sending dead leaves spiraling across the pavement. A storm was coming.

The familiar Porsche Cayenne pulled up, flashing its hazards.

Ashton crushed his cigarette under his heel and got in. He didn't speak a single word the entire ride.

When he arrived at the estate, Harrison and Eleanor were waiting for him, along with Reina.

Ashton washed his hands and headed straight to the grand mahogany dining table. His parents occupied the head seats, with Reina seated on the left. Seeing him approach, the butler immediately pulled out the chair beside Reina.

Ashton ignored it and sat directly across from her.

"Oh, stop it," Eleanor quickly interjected. "He's exhausted from running the empire. If he hadn't held the company together single-handedly these past few weeks, we would have faced absolute chaos. The boy knows what he's doing."

Reina lowered her head, looking utterly humiliated. Ashton's blatant disregard had stung deeply.

Eleanor noticed the shift in her mood. After dinner, she pulled Reina aside and showed her photo albums of Ashton's childhood.

There were pictures of him as a toddler before Eleanor moved overseas, and snaps from the rare birthdays they actually managed to attend.

Even as a child, Ashton looked like a miniature adult. His face was always stoic, though a faint glimmer of joy shone in his eyes when his parents were actually there.

But those moments were few and far between.

By the time he was a teenager, he had evolved into a creature of pure ice. In every photo, he stood with his hands in his pockets, his sharp, predatory features exuding total detachment.

As he grew older, the photos became almost non-existent.

Eleanor harbored deep regrets. By choosing to stay overseas with her husband, she had abandoned her son in Boston, missing his entire childhood. The emotional chasm between them was now impossible to bridge.