Chapter 16
Grace
Dane took a deliberate, heavy step forward into the living room. “Grace,” Dane said, his deep voice level, his gray eyes fixed on Adrian. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I lied quickly, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to control it. “Dane, please.”
“Who the hell are you?” Adrian demanded. His voice was laced with the cold, absolute authority of a billionaire CEO who was accustomed to being obeyed instantly by everyone in his orbit. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Get out. This is a private conversation with my wife. You are dismissed.”
“A friend,” Dane said evenly, not moving a single inch. “She’s not your wife anymore. And from the sound of it, the conversation was pretty one-sided. She told you it can’t be fixed. If she wants you gone, you’re leaving.”
“I am not leaving,” Adrian snarled, taking a sudden, aggressive half-step toward him. “And you have no right to be here. This is none of your business.”
“She made it my business when she called me terrified at two in the morning,” Dane shot back, his square jaw clenching visibly.
He set his coffee mug down on a small side table with a sharp, decisive click.
“Now, do I need to physically remove you from this apartment, or are you going to walk down those stairs on your own?”
Adrian didn’t flinch. He didn’t even glance at the door.
Instead, he closed the distance himself, walking straight into Dane’s space.
“Try it,” he said, his voice dropping into the quiet, surgical register he used for taking companies apart.
“She is my wife. This is the last conversation in the world that matters to me, and you are standing in the middle of it. I have lost everything else, so believe me when I tell you I will go through you to finish it. Take your shot or get the fuck out of my way.”
The air in the apartment became instantly toxic.
Adrian’s hands curled into tight fists at his sides, his knuckles turning stark white. He looked ready. Worse than ready—eager. Dane shifted his weight seamlessly, dropping his center of gravity slightly, his broad shoulders tensing under the black cotton of his t-shirt.
If I didn’t stop it right now, one of them was going to end up in the emergency room and the other in handcuffs, and God only knew which would be which.
“Stop!” I yelled.
I stepped squarely between them, physically blocking their direct line of sight to each other.
I turned my back firmly on Adrian and looked up at Dane, pressing a hand flat against his chest to keep him from moving forward. His heart was beating with a slow, heavy, adrenaline-fueled rhythm under my palm. I could tell he was the one most likely to be reasonable.
“Go,” I told him, keeping my voice low and urgently firm.
Dane frowned, his gray eyes darkening with immediate, visceral protest. “Grace, I am not leaving you alone in an apartment with him when he’s acting like this. He’s out of control.”
“I can handle him,” I insisted, my fingers curling slightly into the fabric of his shirt. “Please, Dane. Just go before this gets worse.”
He stared down at me, his eyes searching my face rapidly for any sign of hesitation or fear.
He clearly hated the idea. He hated backing down from a threat like Adrian Wright.
But as his gaze shifted from the panic in my eyes to the set of my jaw, he understood that this wasn’t his fight.
He was a temporary, solid shield, but the war in my living room was mine to finish.
“Fine,” Dane said, his voice a low, unhappy rumble of concession. “I’ll go. But if you need me, all you have to do is call.”
He reached out and briefly, gently touched my shoulder—a silent, physical promise of support—before turning and walking down the short hallway toward the front door.
I waited until the door closed behind him. The apartment was suddenly, suffocatingly quiet.
I turned back to Adrian.
He was still standing in the middle of my living room, his face rigid. The angry energy had coalesced into something terrifyingly calm and laser-focused. He just stared at me, his dark eyes tracking my every movement.
“You need to leave,” I said. I crossed to the front door and pulled it wide open. The hallway was thankfully empty. “Now.”
“No.”
“Adrian, this is my apartment. We’re finished.”
“We are not finished,” he said softly. “Not even close.”
I stood there holding the door open, and he crossed the room in three unhurried strides, slammed his palm flat against the wood, and shut it with brute strength.
“Are you fucking him?”
The question hit me with the shocking, breathless impact of a bucket of ice water to the face.
I froze, staring at him in absolute disbelief. “What?”
“Are…you…fucking…him?” Adrian repeated. His voice was vibrating with a dark, ugly, possessive jealousy that I had never heard from him before, not even in our worst moments.
“Is that why you were in such a frantic rush to sign the divorce papers? Is that why you turned down the deed for the bakery without even reading the terms? Is he the reason, Grace?”
The sheer, arrogant audacity of the accusation was the final spark. It hit the massive powder keg of grief, exhaustion, and fury I had been carrying for three weeks, and it detonated.
The last remaining filter holding back my rage shattered.
I didn’t think. I reacted purely on instinct.
“How dare you,” I hissed, stepping right into his personal space. “How dare you stand there, after you spent the night under the same roof as the woman carrying your illegitimate child, and ask me if I’m sleeping with someone else!”
Adrian stood his ground, his jaw locked, his dark eyes blazing with equal fury. “He was in your apartment at eight o’clock in the morning, Grace! Don’t treat me like an idiot!”
“He was sleeping on my couch because I was terrified in my own home!” I screamed, not caring if the other tenants heard every word.
“He was here because I heard a noise on the fire escape, and the man who was supposed to protect me—the man I married—broke my heart and my life so that I couldn’t even sleep in my own bed!
I called him because he showed up! You didn’t! ”
“I tried to show up!” Adrian yelled back, his legendary corporate control finally snapping, his voice echoing loudly off the thin walls. “I offered you the patisserie! I told you I would change everything to fix this!”
“You can’t fix this with money!” I shoved him hard, slamming both of my hands squarely against his chest.
It was like pushing a brick wall; he barely moved, but the physical contact felt necessary. The dam had broken, and seven years of suppressed, managed resentments came pouring out in a violent flood.
“You lied to me for months, Adrian!” I screamed, shoving him again. “You watched me inject myself with massive doses of hormones that made me sick! You watched me cry on the bathroom floor over every single negative pregnancy test! And you couldn’t even tell me the damn truth!”
“I did it to protect you!” Adrian roared, reaching out and grabbing my wrists, hauling me closer, refusing to let me push him away again.
“You were breaking down, Grace! The IVF was destroying you! I couldn’t watch you go through it again!
I couldn’t watch you grieve another failure!
I thought if I just provided the result—if I just gave you the baby you wanted so badly—you wouldn’t have to suffer the physical process! ”
“You don’t get to decide that for me!” I wrenched my hands free, my chest heaving with exertion, tears of pure rage burning my eyes.
“It was my body! It was my choice! It was my grief, Adrian, and you took the right to feel it away from me because of your own selfishness! And then, after all of that, you had the absolute nerve to kiss her!”
“I thought it was you!” he screamed, the sheer agony in his voice matching the desperate violence in his eyes. He stepped closer, backing me against the front door. “I’ve only ever wanted my wife!”
“I am not your wife!” I screamed, the absolute, devastating finality of the statement tearing through the apartment, tearing through my own throat. “I am gone, Adrian! It’s over! I hate you!”
The silence that followed the declaration was absolute, ringing in my ears like the aftermath of a bomb blast.
We stood inches apart, our chests heaving in ragged synchronization. The air was thick and heavy with seven years of unspoken resentments, terrifyingly efficient manufactured lies, and absolute, devastating, world-ending heartbreak.
Adrian stared down at me. The violent fury in his dark eyes slowly shifted, transmuting into something else. Something far darker, far more dangerous, and infinitely more tragic. It was a raw, naked, bleeding desperation, a hunger so profound and absolute it felt physical.
“You don’t hate me,” he breathed. His voice dropped to a ragged, broken whisper that sent a shiver straight down my spine.
“I do,” I sobbed, the tears finally blinding me, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
“Liar.”
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t ask for permission.
Adrian closed the final inch between us. His hands tangled in my sleep-tousled hair, his fingers gripping my scalp, and he crashed his mouth against mine.
The kiss was a violent explosion.
There was no gentleness in it, no hesitant questioning, no soft romance.
It was a brutal, desperate collision of pure, unadulterated fury and agonizing, bottomless grief.
His mouth was hard, demanding, consuming.
He was punishing me for leaving him, and he was punishing himself for breaking us in the first place.
He kissed me like a man drowning, trying to steal the last breath of air from my lungs.
I gasped sharply against his lips in pure shock, my hands automatically flying up to his chest to shove him backward.
But my fingers didn’t push.
Instead, they tangled fiercely in the lapels of his ruined, expensive suit.
The sudden, overwhelming shock of his touch, the familiar scent of his skin mixed with the sharp, metallic tang of his panic, instantly short-circuited my rational brain.
The fury was still there, burning hot and violent in my chest, but as his mouth moved over mine, the anger suddenly twisted, inverting on itself, morphing into a desperate, highly destructive, undeniable need.
He tasted like black coffee. He tasted exactly like the man I had loved for seven years.
I didn’t push him away.
God help me, I pulled him closer.