31. Christian
THIRTY-ONE
CHRISTIAN
“You look like shit.”
I felt like fucking shit.
Thirty days since she last said a word to me, and I was moping around every single night after Moonshine closed to take a seat on the chair, she sat in all those weeks ago and thought of her.
When she didn’t speak, I focused on the curve of her lips. How the lines on them changed when she felt differently. She tried hard to keep her composure around me, but she was Adelaide.
My Adelaide.
The same Adelaide who decided to hate my fucking guts.
Which she should.
She really fucking should.
Hasan took the seat opposite of me. Eyes judging the glass of whiskey in my hands. I didn’t drink it. I poured it only to swirl it around and remember the bitterness of it coating my mouth with its atrocious taste.
I’d like to fucking think that Adelaide was getting ready thinking about me. That when she arrived at my doorstep in only a hospital gown—looking distraught, reborn, and weak all at the same time—she thought of me and the comfort I’d shower her with.
The secret of Eda being behind her parents’ death is pure devastation and I couldn’t let her find out.
But the truth tasted harsh like this whiskey, and she’d smell it off me in a heartbeat.
I didn’t get to give her a wedding night and I fucking hated it.
Her, breaking, before me. I regretted it. So fucking much.
Regretting was better than allowing her to get close to me.
The more I pushed her away, the less love she’d feel.
“My wife is giving me the silent treatment and my dad is on the same side as Eda,” I lifted the glass to my lips only for it to be dragged out of my hands. “Of course, I look like shit.”
After placing the glass on another table, Hasan leaned back against his chair with arms crossed. “I call it being a bastard.”
“Bastard?”
Hasan raised a questioning glance in response to my forced chuckle.
This morning—with my ear against the door—I waited until the door on the other side of the hallway closed and then watched Adelaide as she sat on the island table. Staring at her from the top of the stairs as she drank her coffee, while looking through a file on her iPad. Her hair ran down her back in silky waves. I’d noticed that about her. She started experimenting with her straight hair, doing styles I’d never seen before.
My self-control was on a precipice of completely shattering with the new outfits she wore. Gone were the flowy dresses and skirts, in replace of them were pants, jeans, and tight skirts that hugged her ass. Around her, I was constantly hard.
My hand became chafed from how often I pleasured myself to the image of her in my mind.
Maybe I was the fucking bastard.
“Eda was out with your dad yesterday.”
No surprise there. It wasn’t like they hid it from anyone.
“Where’d they go?”
“Louis Pizza.”
If I weren’t in a shitty mood, I’d laugh. “Any update on Osama?”
He was pretending to work with Umaima during the day. At night, he’d try to crack my father’s code.
So far, no success.
Daniel Hayes trained Osama. The mentee was up against the mentor.
“Nothing yet, but we got an update from Rowlen.”
I waited for him to continue.
“The file is at the house.”
No . “You sure?”
Dark circles pushed Hasan’s cheeks down. He was trying fucking hard to figure it, digging himself into a grave. He must resent me for it. For making him go up against his sister’s best friend—a woman who he looked at as a sister.
Adelaide thought she was making all the decisions at Starlight right now.
But it was me and she had no clue.
After each meeting, Harry would forward an email with the rest of the board members CC’d. They would share their notes about Adelaide’s decision and leave it up to me.
It didn’t feel as good as I thought it would—taking that position from her when she finally felt free enough to do it. I never refused her decisions because sure, I was the fucking CEO of Moonshine and Starlight, but Adelaide Mikael was ten times smarter than me.
One betrayal after the other, they started blending into a big one and like discarded garbage at the side of the road, it started to stink up my sanity and my choices.
Hasan noticed it too.
Noticed the way I couldn’t focus on making the right choices.
“The only person who could get it is Adelaide,” Hasan said.
“Fuck no,” I shook my head. “We’ll figure out another way.”
Adelaide would get hurt and I promised her parents I wouldn’t let that happen.
“Christian, you need to start thinking about telling her.”
She’d be devastated if she found out the truth. I could bear her anger towards me, but she’d break herself apart knowing what Eda did with her parents.
Adelaide showed herself as calm and collected, but I knew better. She shivered with the contradictions of decisions. She hated being in the face of trouble, which is why I carried them for both of us.
She only needed to know what I wanted her to know.
“We don’t need the files; we have enough evidence gathered to fucking bury them.”
“The whole point of this was to avenge your mother, wasn’t it? Pictures and proof of Adelaide’s innocence are in those files.”
Fuck . He was right.
Bank statements. Pictures. Cheques. Proof of money embezzlement. It was all enough to keep these fuckers in prison and make them lose everything.
Adelaide going into that house alone with those men never sat right with me, but we’d decided it had to be done. But her snooping on her own with them around? Fuck no.
“I’ll get them.”
“How?”
“I don’t fucking know, but I’ll get them.”
Hasan considered speaking, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the table “Adelaide’s not the type to get mad if you confess the truth before she finds out herself.”
She’d put her priorities aside to make mine first.
I couldn’t let her do that.
“Adelaide would be gutted to hear the woman she loves killed her parents.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“Rowlen showed us proof, Hasan.” Delusional thoughts were written on his face. We knew Eda wasn’t a good person, but a murderer? It never fucking crossed our minds.
“You should still tell her.”
“She doesn’t talk to me and when I try to, she gives one-word answers or doesn’t reply,” I confessed. “Tell me how the fuck I’m supposed to tell her when she acts like a fucking brat?”
The lack of her voice in my life was equivalent to death. I needed to hear her speak to me. I needed Adelaide.
I was mad.
Frustrated .
I had so many fucking secrets and I wanted Adelaide to stay away from them as far as possible. Seeing her in so much pain was enough to put a bullet through my vein and remind me how much pain I’d caused her.
It was because of me.
The doctor told me her rupture happened once.
Seven years ago.
A week after we broke up.
I’d caused her stress and pain and heartbreak. There was no way I could do that to her again.
“Telling her the truth would only hurt her.” More than I already did.
Hasan shook his head in resignation. “A month ago, she was ready to tell you she loved you but instead you pushed her away.”
How the fuck did he know about that?
His chest rose and fell. “Ever since you came back into her life, all she sees is you.”
A sharp pang tore through me.
I’d been so fucking blind if I was the only who didn’t notice.
“This isn’t her burden to bear,” I said with no room for argument.
“Since when is that your choice to make?” He raised a brow, “It’s about her and her family. Who are you to decide it’s too much for her?”
“Her husband ,” I clarified. “And as her husband, I’ll decide what’s best for her.”
“As you wish.” Hasan pressed his lips in a tight, thin line. “But one of the main points of being married is to be able to share those burdens with your wife .”
I stayed silent because else could I fucking do with him staring at me like that?
“I get it. You think you can only have one or the other, that’s why you’re pushing her away.” He studied me, tearing apart the hundreds of masks I kept in place with pure fucking insanity.
His prediction was unnervingly accurate.
Hasan tugged at his ear, sympathy in his gaze. “You can have both the girl and get revenge.”
“How?” The question came out on an impulsive whim. “I’ll be caught dead before fucking sharing this with her.”
He stood, shaking his head at me as if there was nothing more, he could say to make me listen. At least he got that right. He grabbed the half-full glass and slid it over, his eyes heavy and strained, locked onto mine.
“The truth’s heavy right now, but the longer you keep it hidden, the more it’ll start feeling like a lie. Like all lies, it’ll come out.”
Here I thought he’d give me an actual fucking answer, but we were back to square one.
Hasan gave me the briefest smiles when he realized I wasn’t going to give him a fucking answer. “Make sure you attend the gala tonight with her in your arms and not with her walking in front of you like last time. ”
The bastard .
The amber liquid burned my throat as I forced the burn down my throat.
Tonight’s event was important.
Tonight, I’d see if Hasan was right.
If it really was possible to get revenge and be happy with Adelaide too.
Pacing back and forth in front of Adelaide’s door, I hesitated to knock on it. If she didn’t walk out in the next five minutes, we’d be late.
It’d be rude for me to show up late since I was a guest speaker.
I bet she did this on purpose—knowing how much I fucking hated being late to events.
Oh, fuck it.
Right before I could bang on the door, it swung open and knocked me off my feet.
Adelaide stood with a snarky tilt to her dark coloured lips, wearing a low-cut satin dress. She curled her hair and kept it down—she never did that. Around her neck curved a diamond choker matching the studs on her ears. They had to be made by her. The diamonds aligned with her signature pattern.
A pattern she did when she was stressed out.
I analysed her with careful precision. One skim and I would’ve missed the way her legs squeezed together beneath the dress. I would’ve missed the way her tits heaved with fast-paced breaths.
There was a slit that started much too high for my liking, exposing her curvy thighs. The same thighs I’d dreamt about every fucking night.
Dark eyes, dark gaze, dark everything .
Adelaide Mikael looked ready to walk all over me.
Not sparing me a second of her time, she brushed past me.
A whiff of her natural rosy and musk scent sent me over the edge, and I grabbed her wrist, spinning her around to face me.
My heart was racing but Adelaide met it with a bored look.
Her eyes narrowed at my hands, then turned into slits when they darted up to meet mine.
She looks so fucking beautiful. I want to stay inside with her and spend the rest of the night admiring her. I want to apologise and kiss her and tell her about what’s weighing on my mind .
I cleared my throat. “You should cover up.”
It was early August and thirty degrees in New York, she didn’t need to cover up, but I’d rather not spend the rest of the night plucking eyes out of sockets from whoever looked in her direction.
Adelaide pulled her chest out and lifted her chin in a form of defiance.
Still giving me the silent treatment, I see.
It took plenty of effort to not look down and notice the way her tits pressed against the fabric of her dress.
She yanked her wrist back and turned around, strutting down the hallway toward the stairs .
I rubbed a hand over my jaw with curved lips.
Adelaide didn’t wake up one day and become a different person.
She woke up and settled into the woman I always loved.