THE CEO’S REGRET: THE FIRST LOVE’S RETURN AND THE SHADOW’S DEPARTURE

The neon lights of Saigon’s skyscrapers shimmered on the rain-slicked asphalt, casting long, wavering reflections of a city that never sleeps. Inside the grand ballroom of a five-star hotel, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to the humid night outside. The clinking of crystal flutes, the murmur of the elite, and the soft strains of a jazz quartet created an air of suffocating opulence.

This was Long’s night. His company had just finalized a massive merger with a foreign conglomerate—a triumph the press had been fawning over for a week.

I stood in a shadowed corner near the bar, nursing a glass of water where the ice had long since melted. I tried to make myself invisible. The ivory gown I wore was a self-reward, bought with six months of careful savings, yet standing amidst a sea of designer labels and custom tailoring, it felt painfully provincial.

For eight years, I was his shadow. For four of those, I was his secret. I had paved Long’s path to success with my youth and my silence. When he was just a low-level director with a failing firm, I was the one who worked the backrooms, securing 80% of his vital contracts through sheer grit and humility.

The grand doors swung open. The room fell silent as all eyes turned to the entrance. Long strode in, the picture of success in a hand-tailored black suit. But it was the woman on his arm that made my breath catch in my throat.

She was stunning—a vision in a daring red gown, wearing a diamond necklace I had seen the invoice for in Long’s briefcase just a week prior. This was Uyen. His first love. The woman who had left him to study abroad when he had nothing, only to return now that he was at the pinnacle of power.

Long took the microphone. His voice, once my sanctuary, now felt like a needle to the heart. “Tonight, I want to introduce a key addition to our team. Ms. Uyen will officially take over as the Creative Director of the group. With her modern vision, I believe she is the fresh breeze we need to soar higher.”

The applause was thunderous. No one mentioned Thuong. No one remembered the secretary who stayed up all night drafting the contracts or the woman who drank herself to a gastric hemorrhage to entertain clients on the director’s behalf. I was merely a tool whose utility had expired.

Uyen’s eyes scanned the crowd, settling on me with a smirk. She whispered something into Long’s ear, and they approached.

“Hello, Thuong,” Uyen said, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Long told me you were quite… helpful. It’s a pity. That dress looks a bit dated, doesn’t it? Perhaps a secretary’s salary isn’t enough to keep up with the times.”

I tightened my grip on the glass. “Thank you for your concern, Ms. Uyen. What I wear isn’t important; what I accomplish is.”

Uyen’s smile stiffened. She reached for a glass of red wine from a passing tray but “tripped,” sending the crimson liquid cascading over my white dress.

“Oh my goodness! Look what you did!” Uyen cried out, though her eyes danced with malice. “Are you so jealous that you tried to push me?”

Long stepped forward, his face darkening. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He didn’t look for the truth. “Thuong, what is wrong with you? Uyen is a lady of high standing. Do you have any idea what her clothes are worth?”

It was a slap in the face in front of the city’s elite. I looked at the man I had loved—now a cruel stranger.

“Clean her shoes,” Long commanded, pointing at Uyen’s heels. “Don’t embarrass me further.”

The silence in the room was absolute. The bitterness of eight years finally boiled over. I didn’t cry. I picked up a half-full glass of wine from a nearby table, drained it in one gulp, and slammed it onto the floor. Crash. “Dirty shoes can be cleaned by a professional,” I said, my voice ringing clear. “But a dirty soul can’t be washed clean with gold. Keep her, Long. I’m done serving you.”

I turned and walked out into the rain, leaving behind a stunned ballroom and Long’s pale face. For the first time in years, I felt light.

Back at the luxury apartment that was less a home and more a gilded cage for Long’s convenience, I sat at the desk. I wrote a resignation letter—brief, cold, and final.

The door slammed open. Long staggered in, reeking of alcohol and Uyen’s perfume. Seeing me pack, he scoffed. “Playing the victim now? Who do you think you are without me?”

He snatched my resignation letter, tore it into pieces, and threw them into the air like cold snow. Then, he pulled a stack of high-denomination bills and a black credit card from his wallet, hurling them at my face. The edge of the cash cut my cheek.

“Take it and buy a new dress! Buy back your cheap dignity!” he roared. “You’re an orphan. If I hadn’t dragged you out of the mud, you’d be eating dirt. Leave this shadow, and you’re a zero.”

I stopped and looked at him. I realized then that I was never his partner; I was just a lucky charity case in his eyes. I gathered the money, the card, and the company car keys, and placed them neatly on the table.

“I am an orphan,” I replied calmly. “I don’t have Uyen’s status, but I have these hands and this brain. I won’t take a cent. My labor over the years has more than paid for your ‘charity.’ From now on, we are strangers.”

“If you walk out, don’t ever think about coming back!” Long yelled, his voice wavering. “I can crush you like an ant in this city!”

I pulled my suitcase to the door. “Then let’s see how a ‘giant’ like you survives without the ‘ant’ who built his hill.”

I moved to a tiny 15-square-meter room in a far-flung alley and broke my SIM card.

Back at the office, chaos erupted. Uyen thought being a secretary was about looking pretty and sipping tea. On her first day, she answered a call from the Deputy Director of the Planning Department—a vital government contact I had spent a year courting.

“Hello? Who’s this? Long is busy. I’m his fiancée, Uyen. Call back later,” she chirped.

The line went dead. That official, a man of strict discipline who hated nepotism, immediately canceled the project. When Long found out, he was livid, but Uyen played the victim, blaming me for not leaving a “VIP contact list.”

Long didn’t realize that my “diplomatic notebook” didn’t exist on paper or in a computer. It was in my head—the birthdays of partners’ parents, their favorite teas, the unspoken rules of the trade.

Within a week, the office turned pink with Uyen’s tacky decorations. Long’s morning coffee was cold or too sweet. Documents weren’t filed; meetings were missed. Uyen even deleted a crucial email for a billion-dollar deal in Da Nang because she “didn’t want Long bothered by spam.”

When Long lost that contract, his rage was terrifying. But Uyen used her tears to manipulate him. “You’re yelling at me over money? You promised to protect me! Do you still love that secretary?” And Long, blinded by his obsession with his “First Love,” softened again.

But the sharks in the business world smelled blood.

Long’s health began to fail under the stress of alcohol and missed meals. One night, doubled over with gastric pain, he whispered my name into the empty apartment. “Thuong… the medicine… a glass of water…”

But there was no one.

His sister, An, who had just finished her Master’s degree abroad, saw through Uyen’s facade immediately. She hired a private investigator and dropped a thick file on Long’s desk.

“Open it,” An said coldly. “See what kind of ‘queen’ you threw Thuong away for.”

The file contained photos of Uyen in Western nightclubs, gambling debts totaling billions, and a dismissal notice from her university for cheating. She wasn’t a “Creative Director”; she was a bankrupt socialite looking for a gold mine to pay off the mob.

Then, a final blow arrived. The hotel manager from the night of the merger sent a USB drive. The security footage showed Uyen thieving her own diamond necklace and pinning it to her dress to frame me.

Long watched the video over and over. He saw himself commanding me to clean her shoes. He saw the heart-shattered look in my eyes. He collapsed into his chair, a guttural cry of regret escaping his throat.

I had found peace at a remote coastal resort, working as a manager for a kind man named Hung. One afternoon, a disheveled man appeared on the beach. It was Long—haggard, eyes sunken, clothes wrinkled.

He fell to his knees in the sand. “Thuong… I was a fool. I kicked her out. I know the truth. Come back. I’ll marry you today. I’ll give you everything.”

I looked at him with nothing but pity. “You don’t need me, Long. You need the convenience I provided. You kicked her out because she lied to you, not because you love me. I am a human being, not a spare button you can toss away when the shirt is new and look for when it’s cold.”

Long tried to use money again, promising me the world. I laughed. “I am respected here for my talent. I eat well and sleep soundly. Your money can’t buy this peace.”

Hưng, my fiancé, stepped out and placed a protective hand on my shoulder. Long flew into a jealous rage, but Hung stood like a fortress. “I have only known her a few months, but I treat her like a treasure. You had eight years and treated her like trash. Leave.”

Long’s phone rang. His accountant screamed through the line—Uyen had used a pre-signed authorization to drain 5 billion from the company’s emergency fund before fleeing.

The “First Love” had delivered the killing blow.

Uyen was caught at the airport trying to flee to Cambodia and sentenced to 15 years. Long’s company spiraled toward bankruptcy. Out of a final sense of duty to the eight years of my life I had invested there, I sent an anonymous “Crisis Management Plan” to his email.

It saved the company, but it was my final goodbye.

Years later, I saw Long from a distance at a park in Hanoi. I was walking with Hung and our two-year-old daughter. Long looked like a successful CEO again, but his eyes were hollow. We locked eyes for a second. I gave him a small, polite nod—the kind you give an old acquaintance you no longer know.

Long stood still as we walked past, the laughter of my daughter ringing in the air. He realized then that the ultimate punishment wasn’t losing his money or his fame. It was being forced to live the rest of his life in the silence of his own regret, watching the happiness of the woman he was too arrogant to keep.

Would you like me to develop a specific scene further, perhaps focusing on the dialogue between An and Long when the truth is revealed?