The meeting room was shiny and new. It showed how much I had changed. Big glass windows looked out at the city, the huge business I built from nothing. I sat at the main table. Liam, my personal assistant, stood quietly by the door. I said yes to seeing Damian. Not because I was kind, but because I wanted to see how far he had fallen.
The door opened, and he walked in.
It was Damian, but he looked very different. His fancy suits were gone, and he wore a messy, old jacket instead. He used to walk with his head held high, but now he shuffled his feet. His eyes, which once had so much life, were now empty and dark. He looked older and thinner, like all his good luck had left him.
He stopped a few steps from the table and looked at me. I felt nothing. No old warm feelings, no sadness for him. Just a cold look at the mess he had become.
"Celeste," he started, his voice very quiet. "Thank you for seeing me. I know you have every reason not to."
I put my hands together on the table, showing no feelings. "Get to the point, Damian. My time is important."
He quickly looked away, then faced me again. "I've lost everything. Bianca left. My business failed. I have no money, and everyone looks down on me." His voice broke. "I came to you because... you're the only one I know who builds things, not destroys them. I need... help."
I couldn't believe he dared to ask. After all he did. After he threw me away like broken trash, he now came begging. A sharp, bitter feeling of winning went through me. This was it. The moment I had worked my whole life for.
"Help?" I repeated, letting the word hang in the air, cold and sharp. "You ruined my life, Damian. You shamed me in front of everyone, leaving me with nothing but money problems and a bad name. You chose money over everything we had."
He dropped his head. "I know. I was silly. Blinded by big plans, by Bianca's... lies."
"Lies?" I laughed, but there was no fun in it. "So, is it someone else's fault now?"
He looked up again, with clear pain in his eyes. "No. It's not. I chose to believe her. I chose to leave you. I threw away the only person who truly loved me, for nothing." He took a shaky breath. "I'm not asking you to forgive me, not yet. I'm asking for a chance. Any chance. I'll do anything. Work for you, clean floors, prove that I'm not that man anymore."
A slow smile touched my lips, but it didn't reach my eyes. This was the test. This was his chance to face what he did. My heart, which had been hard for so long, felt a small, strange feeling. It wasn't love. It was the feeling of being completely in charge. And with that, a small spark of fairness.
"You want to work for me?" I said out loud, leaning back in my chair. "You want to start at the very bottom? Fine. I might have a job for you. It won't be easy. You'll answer to everyone, follow every rule, and earn every single penny. You'll go through the kind of hard times you easily put me through. Only then, maybe, will you start to understand what your choices cost."
His eyes, still dark, showed a tiny spark of desperate hope. "Anything, Celeste. I'll do anything."
I looked at him steadily. "Good. Because this isn't about me. This is about you earning back your own respect. And maybe, just maybe, understanding what you truly lost."
The feeling of winning was huge, much deeper than just getting even. It was taking back my worth, making every lonely night, every hour I spent building this company, mean something important. The broken girl was gone. In her place was a woman who made the rules, who had the power to offer a way to fix things, not just for him, but for the last bits of her own pain. The game had changed. And for the first time in a very long time, I felt a strange, quiet peace.