Chapter 8 - Reckoning in the Study
Two hours later, the estate was quiet.
Oliver and Emma were fast asleep in adjacent bedrooms under the care of a trusted nanny, exhausted by the night's terrifying adventure.
I sat in Adrian’s grand, leather-bound study, pressing a warm damp cloth against the superficial bullet wound in his shoulder. He sat shirtless in a high-backed leather chair, wincing slightly as I disinfected the torn skin.
“You’re an ER doctor,” Adrian murmured, watching me with those piercing gray-green eyes. “You should be stitching gunshot wounds in a hospital, not on your ex-fiancé in a New Jersey fortress.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t use a rusty needle,” I retorted, though my hands were gentle as I applied the sterile bandage. “What were you thinking, Adrian? Charging into a trap like that?”
“I wasn’t charging into a trap. I was clearing a path,” he replied softly. He caught my wrist, stopping my hand. He didn’t let go. “Six years, Sophia. Every single day for six years, I wondered if you were dead, if someone had found you, or if you simply hated me enough to disappear off the face of the earth.”
“I didn't hate you,” I whispered, looking down at the scarred knuckles of his hand. “I was terrified of you. Of your world. And when I found out I was carrying your child... the terror multiplied by a thousand.”
“Look at me.”
I raised my eyes.
“I built this empire to protect what was mine,” Adrian said, his voice dropping to a low, intense register. “When I lost you, the foundation cracked. When I found out tonight that I have a daughter—our daughter—nothing else in this world matters. Not the syndicate, not the territory, not Vasiliev.”
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“Things don’t work that way, Adrian. You can’t just step away from the table.”
“Watch me,” he replied, a grim smile touching his lips. “The restructuring has already begun. By noon tomorrow, the council will have a new chairman—one who doesn't deal in blood money. I’m done running shadows, Sophia. I want a home.”
