BONDS UNBROKEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chapter Thirteen

When Christopher finally left, silence returned to Marcellus’s office. He sat unmoving, staring at the glass wall until his reflection seemed to stare back at him with that same cold mask he wore before the world.

But the truth was far from cold. His chest felt like it was caving in.

Flashback -

The last time he had seen Briella before everything changed, they had been seated beneath a sprawling oak tree at the edge of the park. She had been bent over her notebook, scribbling with furrowed brows.

“You’ll wrinkle your forehead if you keep scowling like that,” he had teased.

She had thrown a leaf at him and said, “Then you’ll have to live with me wrinkled, won’t you?”

He had laughed. She had laughed harder. For a brief moment, the world had been simple.

Now, standing from his chair, he walked toward the window as if distance could clear the ache inside him. “I came back for you, Briella,” he whispered to the empty room. “But I don’t know how to reach you anymore.”

—

At the same time, across the city, Briella sat at her desk long after her staff had gone home. The glow from her lamp cast a golden halo over the papers she had barely touched. Her mind wasn’t on work. It hadn’t been all day.

She had practiced professionalism. Cold greetings, steady tone, eyes that betrayed nothing. She had mastered the art of pretending he didn’t affect her. But every time she saw him, the mask cracked, and memories slipped through.

Flashback -

She saw them racing through the rain, soaked to the bone, laughing like children even though they were nearly grown. Marcellus had thrown his jacket over her head, shouting, “Keep running, or you’ll catch a cold!”

She had stuck her tongue out and shouted back, “Then you’ll catch it with me!”

Even now, the sound of his laughter echoed in her ears.

Briella pressed her palms flat on the desk, forcing the memory away. She had built her life on discipline, on moving forward when everyone else had tried to hold her down. She would not let Marcellus’s sudden return undo the woman she had become.

But when her eyes drifted to the framed photograph of three smiling faces—hers, Genevieve’s, and Marcellus’s—her heart betrayed her resolve.

“Why did you have to come back like this, Marci?” she whispered, her voice breaking. “Why couldn’t you be the same?”

She wiped the tears quickly, straightened her papers, and stood. Tomorrow, she would walk into the office as CEO Briella Tristan again. Cold. Professional. Unshaken.

Yet inside, her heart kept beating to a rhythm only one person had ever created.

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✨ End of Chapter Thirteen ✨