Jade had always believed herself to be the kind of woman who didn’t flinch. Not when numbers faltered, not when debtors begged, not when another life’s stability depended on her approval. But this—this wasn’t a balance sheet. This was a diary. A pink-covered, clumsily locked, half-burned notebook she found under the bed of her daughter’s room while she was cleaning the desk that hadn’t been touched in days.

She opened it because she could. Because she was Jade, and no door, no secret, no soul had ever been truly closed to her.

“I wish she’d just yell. I wish she’d break something instead of being so calm. I wish she’d love me the way she loves her work. Maybe then I’d know what it feels like to be enough for someone like her.”

The words were uneven. Ink smudged, pressed too hard, the handwriting of a child trying not to cry. Jade stared at the page, her pulse steady at first, then stuttering in an unfamiliar way—like she’d been accused of something and already found guilty.

Her daughter’s room still smelled faintly of lavender and graphite. The bed unmade. The walls covered with photos Jade had never noticed. Some of them were of herself—sharp profile, distant gaze, hands crossed over her chest during a family event she barely remembered. Her daughter had drawn over them, little pink hearts, cartoonish speech bubbles. A desperate attempt to soften a marble statue.

“She’s beautiful. Everyone says that. But they don’t know what it’s like to live with her. It’s like living next to a god who forgets to breathe, who forgets that humans need warmth. I think she sees me as a failed project. Like a number that didn’t add up.”

Jade felt her throat tighten, but she didn’t close the notebook. She couldn’t. Her hands trembled in small, restrained gestures—like the quiver of a blade before it finds its mark.

“Sometimes I try to imagine her as someone else’s mother. Maybe then she’d smile more. Maybe she’d hug. Maybe she’d let me cry without making it sound like weakness. I know she tries, in her way, but it’s like trying to be loved by winter.”

That line stayed. Loved by winter. Jade almost smiled. Almost. The kind of half-curve that appears when something inside cracks but refuses to show.

She closed the diary slowly, placed it on the table, and stood still for a long time. Her reflection in the glass cabinet stared back—impeccable suit, perfect posture, unshaken calm. A woman who had never learned how to be soft without losing control.

Maybe she had wanted a daughter to understand her. To mirror her strength, her elegance, her ambition. But instead, she had raised someone who saw her as unreachable, untouchable, unbearable. And perhaps that was her fault.

When she finally sat down on the bed, the mattress dipped beneath her weight like an apology. She pressed her fingers against the diary’s cover, leaving a faint imprint of her nails. There was no sound except her own breath and the faint hum of the ventilation system.

“If she ever finds this, I hope she knows I didn’t hate her. I just didn’t know how to be her daughter without becoming her.”

The words hit harder than anything she had ever read. Not because they accused her—but because they understood her too well.

Jade exhaled, coldly, quietly, the way she did when closing a deal. Her eyes burned, but she refused to let them tear. Not here. Not now. She placed the diary back where she found it, every gesture deliberate, mechanical, mercilessly calm.