Master of his heart (Brielle and Max)

What was her life, really, if not a long nightmare that kept offering brief moments of light before snatching them away?

In this dream, she believed happiness was within reach. She kept lifting her head above the water, thinking that with enough effort and if she just refused to give up, she could make a change. But as beautiful as it was cruel, hope granted her the belief in endless possibilities while also subjecting her to that unbearable cycle of raised and dashed expectations.

Brielle felt nothing but a numbing sensation, more terrifying than despair, more harrowing than pain.

Everyone said she wasn't good enough for Max, so she silently strategized, thinking it would bridge the distance between them.

Now, for the first time, she realized how cruel time and distance could be, how arduous the path to success was.

Her heart felt as though it had been hammered, contracting violently, throbbing with pain.

She wiped the blood from her palm, unable to cry.

By the time she returned to the base of the mountain, her hair was soaked through by the rain, and she wished someone would tell her if she still had family or if her parents were gone.

If they were gone, could someone point her to their gravestones? Feeling so hurt, she longed to weep before their final resting place.

Clutching the steering wheel, Brielle's lips pressed into a tight line.

She first drove to Pearl Estate to wash her hair and change her clothes. But when it came time to leave, her footsteps felt heavy. After getting drenched, her body was feverish and devoid of strength. What she didn't know was that, when she stood in front of the gravestone, out in the rain, Max had been watching from a distance, racked with guilt and too scared to even offer her an umbrella. Now that Brielle was gone and the cemetery was empty, he climbed the overgrown steps.

had never thought of himself as selfish. As a

Mark's gravestone, he

there to

stabbed through his heart as he placed the flowers

with

capsizing in sorrow, and it

while before he

take good vel

her.

he ensure she wouldn't

of

an umbrella at another path at the base of the mountain, watched

moment of thought, he slowly walked up the

spring rain

murmuring something. Patrick quickly raised the umbrella over Max's head. "Sir, let's head

and he nodded, but on the slippery path down, he fell, his expensive

glanced at his mud-splattered shoes and trousers, and merely frowned despite his mild obsession with cleanliness. Patrick, in his haste, nearly

of Dorsey International and his Chief Assistant, both experiencing such