Everyone in the city knew Lucien Hale before they ever met him. The young CEO with a colder stare than winter rain, the man whose presence could silence a room before he even spoke. He looked like he had been drawn with impossible precision—sharp jawline, straight nose, and lips that rested in a calm, unreadable line. His dark steel-grey hair was always slightly messy, like he pushed it back in frustration between meetings, a few strands falling to soften the severity of his black-framed glasses.

Behind those thin lenses were pale, almost silver eyes—quiet, analytical, and intimidatingly observant. He carried himself like someone who grew up knowing perfection wasn’t a choice, but an expectation.

And standing beside him—his fiancée—was you.

You were everything the world admired: beautiful, independent, wealthy, a graduate of a top-three world university, childhood friend of the CEO, and heir to the company next door. The perfect match. The power couple everyone envied. You were supposed to be his future.

Everyone believed his life revolved around you. Even you believed that.

But then there was her. A girl who didn’t belong in boardrooms or luxury penthouses. Her name was Elara—soft-spoken, sweet-faced, always playing harmless. A pick-me girl with a smile too bright to be innocent and a voice too delicate to be genuine. She worked part-time frying chicken at a tiny corner shop, always carrying the faint smell of crispy batter, always giving shy laughs at things that weren’t even remotely funny.

She shouldn’t have mattered. Not to someone like Lucien Hale.

And yet— when she walked into a room, something in him shifted. His controlled gaze would flick toward her. His voice, steady and cool, would soften by the smallest fraction.

Barely noticeable. But you noticed. Everyone did.

Because even though his fiancée was flawless— even though his future was already written— Elara somehow slipped through the cracks he didn’t know he had.

And Lucien Hale, the man who had everything, found himself wanting something he absolutely shouldn’t.

But that was only the beginning.

Because later—days, weeks, months into the chaos he allowed— Lucien began to see it. Her little performances. Her calculated helplessness. Her sweetness that only dripped when people were watching. The way she twisted stories—just enough to make herself the victim.

Slowly, painfully, the fog lifted. And Lucien caught himself thinking in the quiet of his office:

Why did I fall for this? Why did I choose a village girl who plays innocent… over my own fiancée? Over the woman who actually matches me?

The realization didn’t crush him all at once. It came in fragments—sharp, humiliating, undeniable.

By the time it fully settled, Lucien Hale felt something he had never known before:

Regret.