Chapter 6.

Adrian’s POV.

“And Adrian—”

I paused at the door, hand on the handle, the brass cold against my palm.

“Make sure the coffee’s black,” she said without looking up, her attention already back on the contract like I’d stopped existing. “Just the way you used to make me get it for you.”

For a second, I almost said I never asked you to get my coffee. The defense was there, automatic, but it died before it reached my mouth. I’d said get me a black coffee without looking up from my screen, and she’d done it, every morning, without a word.

So I didn’t speak. I nodded instead, the movement feeling wrong, foreign in my body, like I’d borrowed someone else’s muscles, and I stepped into the hallway as her office closed behind me with a soft click that somehow landed heavier than any slam.

By the time I reached the elevator, the silence had turned into weight. I watched my reflection in the steel doors and saw everything that hadn’t changed—charcoal suit, tailored to the millimeter, shoulders back, chin level, the face they still printed on magazine covers and donor galas, Adrian Voss, untouched.

The doors slid open and I stepped inside, and that was when it shifted, nothing anyone else would see, just a quiet, internal realignment, like the walls of my life had been pulled in while I wasn’t looking, not broken, not yet, just contained.

The floors ticked down in soft chimes. I walked out empty-handed.

The next morning, Henry Lawes moved through the documents with surgical precision, page after page of clauses that didn’t ask so much as dictate—NDAs with penalties that would bankrupt me twice over, behavioral terms outlining how I spoke to her, when I was permitted in rooms she occupied, what I wore to her office, employment language braided through marital ones until I couldn’t tell where husband ended and assistant began.

Husband. Assistant. Asset.

The title changed with the page, but the outcome never did. I signed them all, my signature steady from the first line to the last, clean and controlled as if consistency was the last thing I owned and I wasn’t giving that up too.

“You’re making a mistake.”

Robert Vance’s voice was low when we stepped into the corridor, his knuckles white where he tapped the folder, the glass wall beside us throwing back two versions of me, both looking older than they had that morning.

“This agreement binds you to her,” he said. “You walk away, she pulls her shares, the stock tanks, the board feeds you to the press. This isn’t leverage, Adrian. It’s containment.”

I leaned my forehead against the glass and let the cold bleed into my skin, the building humming around us, indifferent.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“You always have a choice.”

“Not this time.”

I straightened, the breath I let out coming sharper than I meant it to. “Dorian owns the board. Magnus owns whatever’s left of my name. Elena’s the only door that isn’t locked.”

“At what cost?” Vance asked, but I didn’t answer because the contract didn’t list it.

I left the building as the sky went bruised orange and violet, the kind of sunset that looked beautiful in photos and meant nothing when you were standing under it.

My phone buzzed before I reached the car, an unknown number I ignored once, then twice, before answering on the third.

“Voss.”

“Mr. Voss, West Pacific Bank. Regarding The Meridian. Payment was due by five p.m. today. Locks change at nine a.m. tomorrow unless the balance is cleared.”

My hand tightened on the wheel until the leather creaked, the number settling into place—three hundred thousand, six in personal, the rest gone.

“I need forty-eight hours.”

“You’ve had ninety days, sir. Remove your belongings tonight.”

The call ended, leaving nine a.m. locks changing, expected at Elena’s office by seven, and two hours to pack up five years.

The memory hit without permission, my office early morning, light still gray through the windows, Elena by the desk setting down black coffee with hands that tried to make no sound. I hadn’t looked up, just told her to have legal send the Warrington contract in ten. She’d nodded and disappeared, and I hadn’t thought about it again until now.

Now I’d be the one carrying the cup, and it didn’t sting, it just settled, heavy and final.

*

The penthouse didn’t feel like mine anymore when I walked in, too quiet, like the rooms had already decided I was gone, the art on the walls meaningless now as I moved through it on autopilot.

Bedroom. Closet. Suitcase.

I reached for suits first because that was muscle memory, then stopped with my hands on the hangers, the thought coming clearly.

What did an assistant wear?

I put the suits back and pulled jeans, dark shirts, a black sweater, things that didn’t ask to be noticed.

The suitcase zipped shut, the sound staying in the room after it was done as I stood there knowing that tomorrow none of this would be mine—the view, the silence, the expensive emptiness—and that I’d be back at the Voss estate, the house I’d spent five years avoiding, the house where it all started to crack.

My phone lit up again, one voicemail from Isabel.

I deleted it without listening. There was nothing left to say.

But the quiet didn’t come back. The memory pushed through anyway.

Her apartment, late, the door unlocked because I never knocked anymore, Dorian’s mouth on hers, his hands already where they didn’t belong, her back against the wall, not resisting, not surprised, not even hurried—just there, like it had always been this way. She saw me and didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away, only paused like I’d walked in at the wrong time, like I was the interruption.

No explanation, no denial, just it’s over—the wedding, the deal, us—and she walked past me like I was furniture, while Dorian didn’t move, didn’t need to.

I set the phone down and went to the window, the city still there, lit up and moving, millions of lives continuing without me. It didn’t feel like I belonged to it anymore.

Eight p.m.—eleven hours left.

I set the alarm for 5:30 and lay down without turning on the lights, the sheets cold as the estate rose in my head uninvited—long halls, oil portraits, every room watching, living there again, working for her, knowing every mistake would be seen and remembered.

It should have felt like a nightmare, and it did, but under it, threading through the fear, was something worse, not dread of humiliation but anticipation of her, of what she’d become in five years, of what she’d do next, of whether she’d look at me tomorrow and see nothing or something that belonged to her now.

Sleep dragged me under piece by piece, and the last thing I saw wasn’t the board or Dorian or the bank, but Elena, the fire in her eyes no longer wild but controlled, deliberate, not pain but power.

And I was about to learn exactly what that meant.