Chapter 3 - The Offer on the Table
By midnight, the standoff had not ended.
Adrian refused to leave the brownstone stoop. He sat in his Escalade, while Marco delivered a steaming thermos of tea and a plush cashmere blanket up to my apartment door. I tried to ignore it, but at 1:00 AM, my nurse instinct kicked in. The temperature outside had dropped to thirty-four degrees.
I unlocked my door, walked down to his car, and knocked sharply on the tinted window.
The window rolled down instantly. Adrian looked up, his tie loosened, a tablet displaying financial ledgers sitting on his lap.
"Come inside," I snapped. "Before you catch pneumonia and accuse me of attempted murder."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Yes, ma'am."
Five minutes later, Adrian Moretti—a man who dictated terms to billionaire investors and underground crime bosses alike—was sitting on my modest velvet couch in Brooklyn Heights, holding a mug of chamomile tea.
The contrast was absurd. His tailored six-thousand-dollar suit looked completely out of place against my thrifty, colorful throw pillows.
"Vanessa Russo isn't my mistress," Adrian stated suddenly, breaking the heavy silence that filled the apartment.
I stood near the kitchen counter, my arms crossed over my chest. "I didn't ask."
"I don't care if you asked, you're going to hear the truth," he said firmly, setting his mug on the wooden coffee table. "Vanessa's father, Sal Russo, is trying to back out of our harbor distribution contract. Vanessa has an advanced stage of leukemia. She was at the hospital today for a specialized trial treatment that my foundation is funding. I was there because Sal refused to sign the peace treaty unless I oversaw her medical care personally."
I stared at him, my anger flickering for a fraction of a second before I hardened my heart again. "That's very noble of you, Adrian. Taking care of your ex-fiancée."
"She was never my fiancée, Claire!" Adrian stood up, pacing across the small rug. "Our families arranged a dinner ten years ago. It lasted twenty minutes before I walked out. The media created that story, and you spent three years using it as a shield to keep me at arm's length!"
"I kept you at arm's length?!" I laughed bitterly, pointing a finger at his chest. "Adrian, you slept in a separate bedroom four nights a week! You left for 'business trips' to Europe without leaving a number! You never introduced me to your family! You treated me like a secret you were ashamed to show the world!"
Adrian stopped pacing. He looked down at the floor, his expression filled with a terrible, dark regret.
"I kept you in the dark to keep you alive," he whispered softly. "My father was killed six months after we married, Claire. The Commission was ripped apart by a civil war. If any of those rival families knew how much you meant to me... if they knew you were my weakness... they would have used you to bleed me dry."
"So you alienated me instead?" I whispered, my voice trembling. "You made me feel unloved, unwanted, and completely invisible for three years just to keep your hands clean?"
"My hands were never clean!" Adrian took three fast strides across the room, stopping inches from me. He reached out, his big, calloused hands gently framing my face. "I was trying to keep YOUR hands clean! I thought if I kept you distant, if the war got too close, you could walk away without a scratch!"
His touch was electric. My heart hammered against my ribs, memory after memory of our rare, passionate nights rushing back into my mind.
"And now?" I choked out, looking up into his stormy gray eyes. "What about now?"
"Now, everything has changed," Adrian said, his thumb tracing my lower lip with intoxicating tenderness. "I don't care about the war. I don't care about the Commission. Tomorrow morning, my lawyers will draft a new agreement. I'm transferring 40% of Moretti Capital into an irrevocable trust for you and the baby. I'm buying the building next door to house a permanent security team. And I am moving into your guest room."
May you like
I gasped, shoving his hands off my face. "You are NOT moving into my apartment!"
"Try and stop me, Claire," Adrian murmured, his voice dropping into that deep, dangerous hum that used to make my knees go weak. "You carry my child. You will never be alone again."
