Chapter 11 Adam
ADAM
Two weeks.
I've given her two weeks because Grayson told me to, because showing up too soon would look like desperation rather than change, because she deserves space to process what I did without me hovering at the edges of her life demanding forgiveness. It's been the longest two weeks of my life.
I've filled them with action (therapy sessions, hard conversations, the systematic dismantling of everything that went wrong) but the nights are still empty. The penthouse is too quiet. Today is the day I start making things right. The first step is Lorraine.
She's waiting in my office when I arrive, tablet in hand, already scrolling through the day's crisis management updates. She looks the same as always: polished, professional, ready to spin whatever narrative I need into a palatable story. I don't want palatable anymore.
"Lorraine." I sit down behind my desk. "We need to talk."
"I've been drafting responses to the latest coverage," she says without looking up. "The sympathy angle is working. Public opinion is shifting back in our favor, and I think if we schedule a few strategic appearances—"
"You're fired."
She stops scrolling. Looks up. For the first time since I've known her, Lorraine Duquesne looks genuinely surprised.
"Excuse me?"
"You're fired. Effective immediately. HR will process your severance according to your contract terms."
"Adam." She sets her tablet down, composing her features back into their usual professional mask. "If this is about the settlement offer, I can explain. The NDA was standard procedure—"
"You forwarded our marriage contract to a reporter," I say. No preamble. I can't do preamble right now.
She doesn't flinch. "I did."
"The original contract. The one with the confidentiality clause. The one that was supposed to stay between Daisy and me and our legal team."
"Yes."
I stare at her, waiting for the denial, the explanation, the excuse. It doesn't come.
"You're not even going to pretend you didn't do it?"
"What would be the point?" She crosses her legs, still calm. "You clearly have the email chain. I assume Legal found it."
"Victor approved the leak," I say, and my voice comes out harder than I intended. "That doesn't make it acceptable."
"It made it company strategy." She shrugs.
"Victor wanted the arrangement out before the renewal.
He thought the humiliation would make Daisy accept a quiet early settlement, and we could present you as the man honoring an old agreement.
Then we were supposed to sell Klaus the story that it had become real. "
"You didn't think to ask me?"
"Victor said he'd handle you."
The words sit between us, ugly and true. Handle me. Like I'm a problem to be managed, not a person to be consulted.
"That's not how this works, Lorraine. None of this works the way you think it does."
"That's exactly how it's worked for six years.
" Her composure cracks, just slightly. "I've been cleaning up your messes since you took over as CEO.
The bad press, the awkward interviews, the complete inability to seem human in public.
Victor and I have been running interference so you could focus on the parts of the job you actually care about. "
"By leaking my private documents?"
"By controlling the narrative before someone else did."
I stand up, move to the window, try to find some equilibrium. "The press release."
"What about it?"
"The one you drafted. With Daisy's fake quote." I turn back to face her. "The one scheduled to publish three weeks after a dinner she didn't know was her last public appearance as my wife."
Lorraine's jaw tightens. "You signed off on that release."
"I did." The admission tastes like ash. "And that was my failure. But you're the one who wrote it. You're the one who put words in her mouth: 'I wish Adam nothing but the best in his future endeavors,' without her knowledge or consent."
"It's standard language. Every divorce announcement reads like that."
"She's not every divorce announcement!" I'm shouting now, and I don't care. "She's my wife. She's a person. And you wrote her lines like she was a character in a script you were producing."
"Because someone had to." Lorraine stands too, finally showing some heat.
"You weren't going to do it. You never do.
You just avoid and delay and hope things resolve themselves, and meanwhile the company's stock price depends on your public image, which depends on managing your personal life, which you refuse to actually manage. "
"So you managed it for me."
"Yes. Because that's my job."
"Not anymore."
The words hang there. Lorraine goes still.
"You're serious."
"Completely."
"For doing exactly what Victor asked me to do."
"For leaking private documents. I approved the exit release; I own that decision." I move back to my desk, pull out the folder with the email chain, the draft press release, the timeline. "And for the contract leak. That alone would be enough."
"Victor approved—"
"I don't care what Victor approved. This is my company, my marriage, and my decision." I hold the door open. "Security will escort you to collect your things."
Lorraine stares at me for a long moment. Her jaw sets (anger, maybe, or disbelief), and then she picks up her tablet and walks out without another word. One down. The next step takes me to Hamburg.
Klaus Brandt's kitchen is warm and cluttered, filled with copper pots and the smell of something baking. He meets me at the door with flour on his hands and confusion on his face.
"Adam." He wipes his hands on his apron. "I did not expect to see you. After the dinner—"
"I came to tell you the truth." I step inside, closing the door behind me. "My side of it. All of it."
Klaus leads me to his kitchen table, the same table where we've negotiated contracts and shared meals for years. He pours us both coffee and sits down across from me, waiting with the patience of a man who has built his fortune on listening.
"There was no fiancée," I begin. "When I first told you I was engaged, it was a lie. I invented her because I knew you preferred working with family men, and I wanted this partnership badly enough to fabricate one."
Klaus's expression doesn't change. "I suspected as much, after your wife's speech."
"The contract Daisy described, the one where I offered to drop a lawsuit against her father in exchange for marriage, that was real. I sat in a conference room with a woman I'd never met and offered her a business arrangement because I needed a wife fast and she needed her father's debts cleared."
"And she said yes."
"She said yes because she didn't have another choice.
Her father was about to lose his house, his business, everything.
I took advantage of that." The words taste like ash, but I force myself to say them.
"I told myself it was mutually beneficial, that we both got what we wanted.
But what I wanted was a prop for photo ops, and what she wanted was to be loved, and I gave her one while leaving her to hope for the other. "
Klaus is silent for a long moment. The oven timer goes off behind him, and he ignores it.
"Why are you telling me this now?" he asks finally. "The renewal is already in jeopardy. This confession does not help your position."
"I'm not here to help my position." I meet his eyes. "I'm here to end the deal before you can. You trusted me. You trusted us. You invited my wife into your home and asked her about our love story because you believed in something that was never real, and that was my fault. I'm sorry."
"You are ending the renewal."
"I'm telling the truth. Something I should have done five years ago."
Klaus stands and walks to the oven, pulling out a tray of pastries that fill the kitchen with the smell of cinnamon. He sets them on the counter and stands with his back to me, and I wait, because I've done what I came to do and the rest is his choice.
"My wife died seven years ago," he says finally. "Did you know that?"
"I heard. I'm sorry."
"We were married for forty-three years. Not all of them good.
We fought like cats when we were young, and I was not always the husband she deserved.
" He turns to face me. "But I loved her.
Every day, even the bad ones, I loved her.
And when she was dying, when the doctors said there was nothing more to be done, I held her hand and told her I would trade everything I had built for one more year with her. "
"Klaus—"
"She laughed at me." His eyes are wet. "She said I was a fool, and that one year would not be enough, and that I should stop being dramatic and let her die in peace." He smiles, sad and fond. "That was Marta. Sharp tongue until the very end."
I don't know what to say, so I say nothing, until I remember I didn't fly to Hamburg to be forgiven. I came to do the hard thing first, before he could do it for me.
"I'm not here to save the partnership, Klaus," I say. "I'm here to end it myself. The renewal is off. Meridian withdraws. You shouldn't have to be the one who walks away from a man who lied to you, so I'm doing it before you have to."
Klaus is quiet for a long moment. Then he nods, slowly.
"You came here to kill our deal," he says, "and you have.
Good. I could not have partnered with a man who lied to me about something so fundamental, but I would sooner shake the hand of a man who ends it himself than the hand of one who makes me do it for him.
" He walks back to the table and sits down.
"But the man who sits in my kitchen and confesses his sins because it is the right thing to do? That man, I can respect."
"I don't deserve your respect."
"No. But you might earn it, if you do what you came here to do."
"What do you mean?"
"You came to tell the truth." Klaus picks up his coffee. "But telling me is the easy part. I am an old man in Hamburg who bakes pastries and cries at opera. Your wife, your Daisy, she is the one who deserves the truth. She is the one you should be sitting with right now."