35. CHAPTER 32
Orion
I hadn’t expected the silence to feel this loud.
Weeks had passed since the argument in my office, and the house had fallen into a tense, uneasy routine.
We moved around each other like two planets locked in the same orbit—close enough that gravity still pulled at us, distant enough that we never collided.
I kept the distance by design. I was a man who knew how to manage a crisis, and Léa was the most beautiful disaster I’d ever encountered.
If I touched her now, I wouldn’t just collide; I’d implode, and I couldn't afford to fall apart while my father was fading into nothing.
So yes, it wasn’t a peaceful silence, but we kept on with it anyway.
Everyone went about their business: my mother in the east wing, the staff moving through their daily duties , Léonie in her studio, me in my office, but it felt like nothing was happening.
No laughter. No small talk at breakfast. No shared glances in hallways. No fights. Absolutely nothing.
And somehow, the lack of fighting hurt more than the argument itself.
She stopped coming by my office. I stopped lingering near her studio door.
Still, that didn’t stop her scent from drifting into my senses whenever we were in a closed space and how much of my discipline it took to hold back. A man starving in a house full of the only thing that could feed me.
Occasionally, we crossed paths, of course. At breakfast sometimes. Passing each other in the hallway. In the library on opposite sides of the room. She’d nod. I’d nod. Our staff pretended not to notice how every shared space felt like a truce line neither of us wanted to step across first.
There were moments—small, stupid ones—that almost broke me.
Her laugh floating down the corridor as she spoke to Mrs Lewis, or Isabella. The sight of her drawn up on the couch in the library, her sketchpad in one hand, a glass of wine on the side table. Somedays she sits in the garden alone and spends hours there.
That was when I discovered she’d taken on gardening too for fun with the help of Jean Luc, the head gardner.
He claimed she only meant to observe, but she kept returning over the next few afternoons, asking questions until he finally handed her gloves and let her tend the flowerbeds herself.
She planted whatever he gave her, determined to make a habit of it.
I mostly watched from a distance. From the terrace, or my office window, and sometimes from the home surveillance even though it couldn’t catch inside the green house.
I could sense on some days, that she was tempted to speak. I’d feel her eyes on me when I wasn’t looking at her, the weight of unsaid words thick between us. I’d wait for her to say something, anything at all. But pride carved a massive gap between us, and neither of us crossed it.
We lived like polite strangers. Married. Awfully quiet, and slowly deteriorating.
Still, I knew exactly where she was at any given hour. I could feel the drop in the house’s temperature (maybe the effect was only on my skin) when she moved from her studio to the kitchen. I counted her footsteps through the ceiling— a wordless rhythmic torture I’d brought upon myself.
When the silence became too loud, I’d pull my phone from my pocket. Watching her was a compulsion I couldn’t quit.
I’d open the interface and watch the tiny stable pulse of the red dot on the map that the diamond on her finger reported back to me.
Library. Studio. Kitchen. It was a pathetic substitute for actually touching her, but it was the only way I knew she was still within my reach.
As long as that dot remained within the walls of this house, I could breathe.
As long as it stayed here, I hadn't lost her yet.
But there were many days when the discipline failed.
I’d be crossing the foyer, my mind occupied with budget reviews or my father’s medical charts, and then I’d see her.
She wouldn't even be trying. She’d be dressed in something simple—sometimes an oversized sweater that slipped off one shoulder, or a simple robe that clung to her frame in the mornings, and my body would react before my brain could even process the threat.
Heat hard, and insistent would light up my body in the most brutal way.
My pace would falter, my muscles tightening as my gaze dragged over her—taking in how the sweater slipped, or the robe skimmed her hips, and the way her bare skin kept flashing in places it had no business showing.
My cock would thicken in an instant, straining against the constraint of my trousers.
It was fucking maddening. I’d mutter a curse under my breath, jaw clenched so hard it ached.
In those moments, I was a minute away from starting a fight, from saying something cruel or biting just to force her to look at me.
I wanted the friction. I wanted her eyes to blaze with that familiar fire, to feel the electric charge of her anger, anything to break this sterile, frozen peace we were stuck in.
I wanted to goad her until she screamed at me, just so I’d have an excuse to grab her and bridge the distance I had spent weeks building.
But I never did. I’d always force my feet to move, retreating into the cold sanctuary of my office before my body made decisions my discipline wasn’t ready to sanction.
I'd pushed my back into the closed door, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, waiting for the urge to subside.
I was the master of my own empire, yet I was a prisoner to a woman who wouldn't even look me in the eye.
So far its been six weeks in total. Six damn weeks of torture.
I had been spiraling enough to come home early, if only to drink and pretend nothing was unraveling.
Marcus, Julian and Elias had called to come in to visit my father. We rarely allowed visitors in his wing but Marcus was my father’s godson. We made exceptions for family.
We stood around the bed in a silence that felt less like respect and more like a dress rehearsal for a funeral. Even Marcus, usually the loudest man in Paris, looked genuinely remorseful. My father’s eyes were open… glassy, fixed on a point on the ceiling that didn't exist.
“Does he... does he know we’re here?” Marcus asked, his voice uncharacteristically small.
“Barely,” I said. The word felt like lead in my mouth. I didn't tell them that sometimes he looked at me and called me by his own brother’s name “Lars”. Severin’s late father. The first time he called me by that name was the day I knew we were truly losing him.
Julian stepped forward, his hand rested on my shoulder and he pressed hard, twice, pulling a smirk from me. Elias moved to the side of the bed. He’d always been my father’s favorite, the one with an old spirit that matched the Henrik Kade gravitas.
“Still out-stubborning the doctors, I see,” Elias mumbled, with a weak smile on his lips. “The old man is just waiting for the wine vintage to improve before he makes his exit. You know how much he loves his wine.”
A brief smile crossed my lips. Some of the heaviness I'd been carrying lifted.
Elias always knows what to say at times like this—moments when everyone else stumbled over their sympathy or said too much…or too little.
We eventually retreated to the gardens, the air in the east wing having become too fragile to breathe through. The late-afternoon sun had sank low. A bottle of whiskey sat between us. I tipped the glass in my hand, and the amber burned a path down my throat.
I was half-listening to Julian drone on about an acquisition gone wrong in Peru when my gaze drifted toward the studio windows.
She’d left the house early today. Stratum surveillance showed she was out with Isolde. I had just watched a bit of the clip to see them go shopping. Same voyeuristic ritual I used to assure myself she was still smiling, even if I wasn't the reason for it.
Severin’s men would watch over them and let me know if the air around her so much as felt off. They had orders to report any approach, or suspicious glance from a stranger—anything at all.
Marcus was already half drunk. Elias was relaxed, observant as always. Julian wore a conceited little expression, clearly waiting for an opportunity to corner me.
His eyes followed my line of vision, as always. Then he leaned back in his chair, swirling his glass with a smugness that made me want to break his jaw.
“You’re not even in the room with us, are you, Orion?
” Julian’s voice was a needle, pricking my bubble of detachment.
“You said she wasn’t home... yet you’re still watching the windows like a dog waiting for its master,” he drawled, cocking an eyebrow.
“Do you actually miss your wife, or are you just still tracking her like an asset?”
Marcus snickered. The way he'd made himself comfortable, you'd think his name was listed beside mine on the estate documents.
I ignored them, taking another slow, controlled sip of Scotch. The burn was nothing compared to the heat of the humiliation crawling up my neck.
“Look at him,” Marcus said, slapping my shoulder and sending a drop of my drink over the rim. “Our man is pussy-whipped and in denial. Six months of sleeping in separate rooms and he’s still checking the GPS every ten minutes. It's pathetic, Orion. If she's that much trouble, let her run.”
I glared. “Say that again and I’ll—”
Julian cut in, swirling his glass lazily. “All that pent-up frustration from not getting laid in a long time is eating at you.” He titled his glass, his eyes scanning me with the cold detachment of a shark. “You still haven’t done it, have you? You haven't touched her.”
Fucking Julian.
Always airing my shit before I could shut it down.
Of course I’d touched her. My skin still burned with the memory of it, but not in the way Julian meant. Not in the way that resulted in an heir or her willing submission. But I wasn’t about to lay out the intimate details of my failure for their entertainment.
I felt the urge to wrap my fingers around his throat. Bastard.