My name is Ethan. Every evening, I return to a house that is filled with expensive furniture and modern luxuries, but it feels like a hollow tomb. I sit in the silence, nursing a glass of whiskey, and the ghost of my ex-wife, Sarah, seems to linger in every corner. For five years, I was married to an angel, a woman whose heart was a sanctuary of kindness, but I was too blinded by my own ego and ambition to see her worth. Now that she is gone, the weight of my guilt is a pounding rhythm that never lets me rest.

When we were married, I was obsessed with the pursuit of success. I spent fourteen hours a day at the office, chasing contracts and earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, convinced that providing a life of luxury was the only thing that mattered. I treated Sarah like a background character in my own story. I would come home stressed and irritable, venting my anger on the silence she provided. I never asked about her day, never noticed the way she looked at me with hope, and never acknowledged the thousand small sacrifices she made to keep our home peaceful.

Sarah was the personification of gentleness. No matter how cold or indifferent I was, she always greeted me with a soft smile. I remember coming home late on a freezing winter night, my mind filled with the wreckage of a failed business deal. Instead of being met with complaints about my absence, I found a warm meal waiting for me and a heated blanket prepared. She knelt by my feet, helping me take off my shoes, her touch as light as a whisper.

"You work too hard, Ethan," she would say softly, her eyes filled with a pure, unselfish love. "I just want you to be happy."

But I didn't listen. I was a heartless fool who took her devotion for granted. I viewed her kindness as a given, something I was entitled to because I was the one bringing in the dollars. I ignored her birthdays, forgot our anniversaries, and stayed silent when she tried to share her dreams with me. I was a man of stone, ignoring the beautiful garden she was trying to grow in the desert of our marriage. I didn't realize that even the most patient soul has a breaking point until the day I came home to find the house completely empty.

There was no screaming match, no violent argument, and no drama. There was only a single letter left on the dining table, written in her elegant, steady hand. It didn't contain insults or demands; it simply said that she could no longer live in a house where she felt invisible. She had walked away with nothing but her dignity, leaving behind the designer clothes and expensive jewelry I had bought to replace my presence.

I am trapped in this wreckage of my own making. Every night, I sit in the dark and replay the moments where I could have been kind, where I could have held her hand, or simply said "thank you." I am a man who won the world but lost his soul. I realize now that true wealth isn't in the bank account; it’s in the quiet, gentle care of a person who loves you for who you are, not what you provide. My future is a long, silent road of regret, and I am finally learning the lesson that Sarah tried to teach me with her silence: love is a sacred gift, and if you treat it with neglect, it will eventually vanish, leaving you alone in the cold.

The darkness of the house seems to expand with every passing hour, mocking the high-end security system and the marble floors that I once thought were the pinnacle of achievement. I find myself wandering into the guest room, the only place that doesn't smell of my own ambition, searching for a trace of her scent or a stray hair on a pillowcase, but there is nothing left but the sterile scent of emptiness. I have tried to call her, to beg for a second chance, to promise that I have changed, but my words feel hollow even to my own ears. How can I ask for her return to a man who didn't even know the color of her eyes or the sound of her laughter when it was genuine? The silence is a physical weight on my chest, a reminder that I traded a living, breathing heart for a collection of status symbols that cannot hold me in the night.

I look at the stacks of business reports on my desk and feel a deep, visceral disgust. They represent the hours I stole from her, the dinners I missed, and the conversations I cut short. I have achieved the status I craved, but I have no one to share it with, no one to celebrate the victories, and no one to comfort me in the defeats. I am the architect of a lonely empire, standing atop a mountain of gold that feels as cold as ice. Every morning I wake up to the same realization: I am successful by the world's standards, but a complete failure by the standards of the heart. I would give every dollar I have earned, every award on my wall, and every square foot of this mansion just to see her smile at me once more with that uncorrupted, gentle love. But I know that bridge is burnt, and I am the one who lit the match through years of cold indifference. I am Ethan, a man who is finally wide awake in a house of dreams that turned into a nightmare of his own creation.