Chapter 10 - THE WOMAN ADRIAN WAS AFRAID TO LOVE|
Adrian moved Sera and Daniel to a secure residence outside Chicago.
The house belonged to an old family friend and had private security, reinforced doors, and enough space for Daniel to recover without being seen.
Sera should have felt relieved.
Instead, she felt trapped between the father she'd lost and the man she was beginning to love.
Adrian had become distant again. He took calls behind closed doors, canceled meals, and answered her questions with careful half-truths.
On the third night, she found him in the library, staring at an old photograph of his mother.
“You're doing it again,” she said.
He didn't look up.
“Doing what?”
“Deciding that the people you love are safer when you keep them at a distance.”
His jaw tightened.
“Vincent may be responsible for my mother's death. Your father spent seven years hiding from him. If the ledger exists, it could expose people who would kill to keep their names out of it.”
“And your solution is to make decisions for everyone?”
“My solution is to keep you alive.”
“I'm alive right now, Adrian. But I can't keep falling in love with a man who treats me like a problem to manage.”
The words hung between them.
He finally looked at her.
“You love me?”
Sera laughed sadly.
“That is the part you heard?”
He stood.
“I don't know how to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Care about someone without calculating every possible way I could lose them.”
She stepped closer.
“Then stop calculating.”
He looked almost angry.
“You think it's that simple?”
“No. I think it's difficult. I think it will scare you. And I think you have spent so long being afraid that you've mistaken loneliness for control.”
Adrian looked away.
For several seconds, she thought he would retreat behind another wall.
Instead, he took her hand.
“I haven't slept through a night since my mother died,” he admitted. “I keep thinking that if I had noticed something sooner, if I'd asked the right question, if I'd been less trusting—”
He stopped.
Sera wrapped her arms around him.
“You were her son. You weren't responsible for everything that happened to her.”
He closed his eyes.
For the first time, Adrian allowed someone to hold him without pretending he was unbreakable.
Later, they sat together on the library sofa, their hands intertwined.
“I don't want to be your weakness,” Sera whispered.
“You aren't.”
“Then what am I?”
He looked at her with an honesty that frightened him.
“The reason I remember what strength is supposed to protect.”
She kissed him.
This time, there was no urgency, no argument, and no fear of what the kiss might change. There was only the quiet recognition that something real had begun between them.
Then Adrian's phone vibrated.
Marcus had sent a photograph.
It showed the secure residence's front gate.
Beneath it was a message from an unknown number.
We know where the girl sleeps. Give us the ledger, or she will learn what happened to her mother.
Sera read the message over Adrian's shoulder.
“My mother?”
Daniel appeared in the doorway, his face drained of color.
He looked at the photograph.
Then he whispered something that made Adrian go completely still.
“Sera's mother wasn't killed in an accident.”
May you like
He swallowed.
“She was murdered because she was Vincent Vale's daughter.”
