AIDEN’S POV
A week.
Seven days. Seven endless, torturous days since I last saw her. Since her eyes—those piercing, stormy eyes that once held so much warmth for me—burned with nothing but hatred. Since her voice, trembling with fury and pain, had cut through me like a blade: “Don’t ever show your face to me again.”
I hadn’t. I couldn’t. Not when the memory of her words left me hollow, a shell of the man I once was.
The past week had been a blur of self-imposed isolation. My office had become my prison, the walls closing in as I drowned in a sea of regret. I replayed every mistake, every misstep, every moment I had taken her for granted.
It was a cruel, unrelenting loop, and I couldn’t escape it. Sleep was a distant memory. Food tasted like ash on my tongue. Even Luke, my most loyal fr
