A Billionaire's Regret For A Ghost

Two years after my death, I was a ghost trapped beside my grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer's. She still thought I was alive, still trying to contact my ex-boyfriend, Liam.

"Do you regret it, Chloe?" Liam's voice was biting and cold. "It's useless. Even if you got down on your knees and begged me, I would never give you another chance."

He thought I was still alive. He thought I was manipulating my grandmother to get to him.

But I was a ghost, and nothing more. I had left this world a long time ago.

Liam was supposed to hate me forever, right up until someone told him the truth.

"She's dead! She's been dead for two years. And you killed her."

Liam's world shattered.

He came looking for me in the most extreme way possible.

Chapter 1

I was dead.

My soul went neither to heaven nor to hell. I was trapped in the realm of the living, tethered to my grandmother's side.

In her wrinkled hands, she clutched my battered, worn-out cell phone.

She dialed Liam Hayes's number over and over again. It would ring and ring, but no one ever answered.

She wandered into a sleek, glass-walled plaza in a Silicon Valley tech park, asking everyone she met, "Excuse me, have you seen my precious girl and her boyfriend?"

Most people ignored her—some shooting her impatient glares, others offering polite but dismissive apologies. Yet, Nana didn't give up. She kept asking, moving from one person to the next.

My heart ached for her. I wanted so badly to tell her to stop looking, to just go home. But no one could hear the words I spoke.

Just then, a large crowd surged out of the company's main building.

I turned my head instinctively and caught sight of a familiar figure.

It was Liam.

Maybe it was because I had been dead for so long that I almost didn't recognize him at first. Or maybe he had just changed that much.

The man who had once struggled bitterly for startup funding was now a billionaire. Flanked by a beautiful, young executive assistant, he was wrapping up a high-profile product launch.

Facing the swarm of reporters, the soft, youthful vulnerability that once marked his face was gone, replaced by sharp, hardened angles.

He was no longer the struggling entrepreneur hunched over a keyboard writing code, surviving on lukewarm coffee and big dreams.

He was a tech titan now.

Seeing the commotion, Nana pointed a trembling finger at Liam and excitedly told a passerby, "Look, that's my Chloe's boyfriend. Isn't he handsome?"

Then, she noticed the woman beside him and muttered in confusion, "Why isn't my Chloe with him?"

Grandma suffered from Alzheimer's. After I died, her condition deteriorated rapidly. She frequently forgot that I had passed away.

Seeing the news of Liam's company going public triggered an episode, driving her to this tech park. Deep in her fragile mind, she still believed that the startup Liam and I founded