Lahat ng Kabanata ng The Night My Best-Friend Ruined Me: Kabanata 111 - Kabanata 119

Adrian’s POVJulian’s accusation should have bounced off me.It did not.It hit harder than the shove, harder than the rain, harder than the blood in my mouth and the pain in my ribs. For a second, all I could do was stare at him, because the words made no sense and yet somehow they made too much sense at the same time.I think you orchestrated Leo’s kidnapping.The sentence kept repeating in my head like it had not fully landed yet.Then it landed.And something in me went cold.Cold in the way a person goes cold when rage stops being loud and turns into something very still.I had spent too long trying to explain myself to people who had already decided what kind of man I was. Too long trying to prove I was not my father, not Edmund, not the version of me that had once believed control was the same thing as protection.And now Julian stood in front of me, bleeding and furious, telling me I had taken my own son.My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.“You think I would do that?” I said, m

Julian’s POVPain had become background noise by now.It was just there, sitting under everything else like it had every right to be part of the room.I kept moving anyway.That was the only thing I could do.Aria had left the apartment with that look in her eyes, the one that said she was done waiting for anyone to save her. I understood it. I also hated it, because I knew exactly what kind of danger she would walk into when she got that look. The kind that makes people stop thinking in straight lines. The kind that makes them take impossible chances because sitting still feels worse.And Aria was hurting enough to do exactly that.So I tracked her.Not because I wanted to spy on her. Not because I thought I had any right to keep tabs on every move she made. I did it because somebody had to. Because Leo was still missing. Because Veronica Vale was still out there. Because Adrian had made himself into a variable I did not trust. Because Aria was acting out of fear and fury and the kin

Adrian’s POVFor one second, I did not move.I could hear my own blood in my ears. That was all. The noise in the corridor dropped away, and the only thing I could see was Julian’s hand at Aria’s back and Aria leaning into him like the world had finally become too much to stand alone inside.Then he kissed her.My jaw tightened so hard it hurt.I felt the hit of it all at once. Not confusion. Not hesitation. Just a clean, sharp blast of fury that went straight through my chest and left everything else cold behind it.Of all the moments to see, it had to be that one.Not when Leo was safe. Not when Aria was breathing. Not when I had something useful in my hands.Right then.I could have stayed there and let the rage take over in a stupid, useless way. I could have walked out and made the whole building hear me. I could have shoved Julian into the wall and wasted precious minutes on a fight that would not save my son.Instead I did something colder.I turned the fury away from them and

Julian’s POVBy the time I forced myself to stop staring at Adrian’s message, I had already gone through anger, suspicion, frustration, and something far more irritating.Respect.I did not like that part. I liked it even less because it meant I had misread him. Not fully. Not in the way that mattered. He had not walked away from Aria and Leo after all. He had been moving in the shadows while everyone else assumed he had folded. That should have made me feel better.It did not.It made everything worse in a different way.Because now I had to admit Adrian was more dangerous than I wanted him to be. Not because he was selfish in the ordinary sense or because he was careless. He was dangerous because he was capable. Capable enough to hide a rescue plan while looking like he had abandoned them. Capable enough to make Aria doubt him, then still move pieces in the background. Capable enough to make me look like an idiot for assuming I had the whole board in front of me.I hated that.I hat

Adrian’s POVThe moment Aria’s scream hit the corridor, something in me snapped into place.The anger from before had nowhere to go now except forward, and that was better. Better than standing still with the image of Julian kissing her burned into my head like a brand. Better than thinking about betrayal. Better than standing in a hallway and letting every ugly feeling decide what I did next.Leo was still in this building.Aria was still in this building.That was enough.I moved fast, low, and without the luxury of thinking about anything except the layout in front of me. Vale security was already converging, which meant my window was shrinking by the second. I used the corridor map I had half memorized while moving through the facility earlier, cutting left when they expected right, ducking through a maintenance passage I had noticed on the way in, then coming out one level below where the main sweep was happening.My shoulder still hurt from the earlier fight. My side did too. Ev