The CEO's Regret: You made me your lie, I become your Loss-Chapter 71: Shane Martins

Seren’s small hands pressed against the cold glass of the door. The sound of the "code blue" alarm felt like it was vibrating inside her own chest.

"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

Each cry was thinner than the last, raw and ragged, as she watched the doctors crowd around the bed, their shadows dancing frantically against the privacy curtains. She reached for the handle, but the world suddenly felt too big, and she felt too small.

Just as her knees began to give way, a firm, warm weight settled on her shoulder. It wasn’t the frantic touch of a nurse or the clinical grip of a guard. It was steady. Solid.

"It’s okay, Seren," a voice murmured, deep and laced with a grief that matched her own.

Seren froze, her tear-stained face tilting upward. She blinked through the haze of salt and fear. "Seren, right?" the man asked softly.

She recognized those eyes. She had seen them in the glow of a cracked phone screen late at night when her mother thought she was sleeping. "Mister... are you Mommy’s friend? I saw your picture. On her phone."

The man didn’t just stand there. He sank to the floor, his trousers hitting the linoleum without a thought. He knelt until he was eye-level with her, his expression shattering into a thousand pieces of regret.

"Seren..." his voice broke. "I’m your daddy. I’m your real father."

The girl’s breath hitched, a sob catching in her throat like a physical stone. "You’re my real daddy?"

She lunged forward, her tiny fists bunching into his shirt, holding on as if he might evaporate like a ghost. "Where have you been? Why weren’t you here?"

"I know," he whispered, pulling her into a protective embrace that smelled of rain and old wood. "I know, sweetheart. It’s okay. Daddy is here now. I’m going to take care of everything. I promise."

Seren pulled back just enough to look toward the room, her eyes wide and terrified. "Daddy... Mommy is bleeding a lot. There’s so much red. I’m so scared."

The man swallowed hard, his jaw tightening as he looked at the closed door, masking his own terror for the sake of the child in his arms. "Don’t cry. Don’t be scared, Seren. I’ve got you."

The door swung open with a heavy thud. A doctor stepped out, peeling off surgical gloves, his brow furrowed with the kind of exhaustion that usually precedes bad news.

The man stood up, keeping Seren’s hand firmly in his, his posture shifting from a grieving father to a man demanding an answer from the universe.

"Doctor," he said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous tremble. "How’s Elara?"

The silence that followed was longer than any heartbeat.

The air in the hallway seemed to thin, turning cold and brittle. The doctor didn’t look up from his clipboard; he couldn’t meet the man’s eyes.

"You should go in and say your goodbyes," the doctor said, his voice flat with the exhaustion of defeat. "We’ve tried everything. There’s nothing left to do."

"What do you mean?" Shane’s voice cracked, a jagged yell that echoed off the sterile walls. "There has to be something! Use another machine, call another specialist, there has to be something!"

"We are sorry," the doctor replied, stepping back as if to distance himself from the grief. "The police have already been notified. Since she was in custody, they’re processing the paperwork. You don’t have much time."

The heavy door creaked as Shane pushed it open. The room was a graveyard of beeping monitors and tangled plastic tubing. Elara looked so small beneath the white sheets, her skin the color of parched parchment.

"Elara?" Shane’s voice was a ghost of itself. He stepped toward the bed, Seren’s small hand anchored in his, her fingers trembling violently.

"Mommy! Mommy, don’t leave me!" Seren lunged for the side of the bed, her tears falling onto the sterile blankets.

Elara’s eyelids fluttered, an effort just to look at her daughter. Her voice was a dry rattle, a mere shadow of the woman she used to be. "I’m sorry, baby... I’m so sorry. I won’t be able to watch you grow up from now on." She wheezed, her hand twitching toward Seren. "You need to stay with your daddy, okay? He’ll keep you safe."

"No!" Seren wailed, burying her face in her mother’s arm. "I don’t want to! I want to stay with you!"

Elara turned her gaze toward Shane, her eyes swimming with a lifetime of regrets. "Shane... I regret everything. I shouldn’t have done it. Pretending to be Seb’s savior... just for the money." A single tear tracked through the dust and blood on her cheek. "I lost the baby... and now my life. Maybe this is my punishment."

Shane dropped to his knees by the bed, catching her cold hand in both of his. He squeezed tight, as if he could pulse his own life force into her veins. "It’s okay, Elara. Don’t say that. You’ll get better. We still have Seren. My mom... she loves kids. She’ll take such good care of her, I promise. We’ll be a family."

Elara’s grip suddenly tightened with a final, desperate strength. "What about you, Shane? Promise me... don’t seek revenge for me. Don’t go down that path." Her breath hitched, becoming shallow and uneven. "I’m a bad person. I’m not worth it... please..."

The monitor gave one long, flat, agonizing drone. Her hand went limp in his. The light in her eyes didn’t fade; it simply vanished.

"Elara?" Shane whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Elara! Open your eyes! Elara!"

But the only answer was the steady, rhythmic sobbing of a child who had just lost her world.

The doctors swarmed the room once more, a flurry of blue and white as they tried one last time to pull her back from the edge. But the monitor remained a flat, unwavering line, a cruel hum that filled the silence where Elara’s voice should have been.

It was over.

Shane stood frozen, his knuckles white as he looked at the woman he had once known, now a memory under the harsh fluorescent lights. A dark, cold fire began to kindle in his chest, consuming the grief and replacing it with something much sharper.

"Amara... Seb..." he whispered, the names tasting like poison on his tongue. "You’ll pay with your lives for this. I promise you."

He didn’t wait for the nurses to bring a shroud. He scooped Seren into his arms, the little girl’s sobs hitching in her chest as she buried her face into the crook of his neck. He walked out of the room without looking back, his footsteps heavy and deliberate on the linoleum.

He was nearly at the sliding glass doors of the lobby when a hand clamped onto his forearm. A police officer, looking weary and suspicious, blocked his path.

"Hold it right there," the officer said, glancing at the crying child and then at Shane’s hardened expression. "Where do you think you’re going? I need to see some ID."

Shane didn’t flinch. He adjusted his grip on Seren, shielding her from the officer’s clinical gaze.

"Shane Martins," he said, his voice dropping into a low, resonant growl. "I’m Seren’s father. I just got out of prison. You can speak with my parole officer if you have a problem, but I’m taking my daughter home."

Just then, an older woman stepped forward from the shadows of the waiting room, her face etched with a mixture of sorrow and resolve. She reached out, her hand trembling slightly as she touched Seren’s back.

"This is my mother," Shane continued, his eyes locked on the officer. "She’s a retired teacher with a clean record. She’ll be taking care of Seren while I... settle things. You can verify everything."

The officer hesitated, pulling a radio from his belt to run the names. The silence in the lobby was suffocating, punctuated only by the distant siren of an incoming ambulance. After a tense minute, the officer sighed and stepped aside, nodding toward the door.

"The story checks out, Martins," the officer said, though his eyes remained wary. "Just make sure you stay within the lines. Your parole officer won’t be happy if you disappear."

Shane didn’t answer. He walked through the automatic doors and into the biting night air, the weight of his daughter in his arms and the weight of a blood oath in his heart.

Meanwhile, on the Island, the sun was setting, bleeding a bruised, deep purple over the horizon. The paradise had turned into a gilded cage.

The air in the room seemed to crystallize, growing cold and brittle as the blue light from the laptop screen reflected in Seb’s hollow eyes. The headlines were a jagged blade: "Attempted Homicide: Elara Langford in Custody," followed by the breaking update "Suspect Pronounced Dead at General Hospital."

The math was simple, but the answer was devastating. If Elara was dead in a hospital bed and the real Amara was recovering from Elara’s attack back home, then the woman standing in the doorway was a ghost with a stolen face.