Chapter 10
Naomi woke at 2:13 in the morning to voices downstairs.
Adrian’s side of the bed was empty.
They had begun sleeping together again, carefully, slowly, but intimacy did not mean all wounds had disappeared.
She walked toward his study.
The door was open.
His security chief stood inside.
“We intercepted the package before it reached the house,” Cole said. “Photographs of Mrs. Vale leaving the clinic. Ultrasound copies.”
Naomi froze.
Adrian sat behind his desk.
His face was terrifying.
“Who has seen them?”
“Three men.”
“Find every copy.”
“We already have two.”
“And the third?”
“Marzano.”
Adrian rose.
“Then tonight ends differently.”
The tone chilled Naomi.
Cole saw her first.
Adrian turned.
Everything in his face changed.
“Naomi.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I knew exactly what happened.”
Her stomach tightened.
“That sounds familiar.”
Adrian closed his eyes for one second.
When they opened, the rage was still there, but aimed inward too.
“You’re right.”
He turned to Cole.
“Leave us.”
The man left.
Adrian came around the desk but stopped several feet away.
“Someone paid a temporary employee at the clinic for access to the printer queue. He copied the ultrasound report.”
Fear moved coldly through Naomi.
“They know about the baby.”
“Yes.”
“Your enemies.”
“Yes.”
“And what were you going to do?”
His silence lasted too long.
“Adrian.”
“I was going to remove the problem.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
Her eyes filled.
“I told you no violence around this child.”
“Not around the child.”
“Don’t play with words.”
His jaw clenched.
“That man endangered you.”
“And if you disappear every person who frightens me, what kind of life are we building?”
“One where you survive.”
“There it is again.”
He stopped.
Naomi pressed a hand against her abdomen.
“You said you understood.”
“I do.”
“No. You understand when understanding costs you nothing. Tonight you’re afraid, so suddenly my boundaries become optional.”
His face drained.
She continued, because if she stopped, she would cry.
“You cannot build me a door and then lock it the first time danger comes.”
For perhaps ten seconds, Adrian looked like a man fighting every lesson his life had ever taught him.
Then he returned to the desk.
Picked up his phone.
Called Cole.
“Handle it legally.”
Silence on the other end.
“Sir?”
“You heard me.”
“We can—”
“Evidence to the hospital. Attorneys. Civil action. Criminal charges if the hospital wants them. Nobody touches Marzano.”
Adrian looked at Naomi while he finished.
“If he comes near my wife personally, we reassess. Until then, nobody touches him.”
He ended the call.
The anger remained in his face.
So did the fear.
Naomi approached him.
“That was difficult.”
“Yes.”
“You hate it.”
“Deeply.”
She almost laughed.
Then he whispered, “I don’t know how to keep you safe without becoming the man you were leaving.”
That was the moment her anger broke.
Naomi crossed the final step and put her arms around him.
Adrian held her cautiously.
“I’m not asking you to become harmless,” she whispered. “I’m asking you to remember that I’m a person beside you, not something you own.”
His arms tightened.
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
Weeks later, on a rainy October evening, Naomi entered his study looking for a book and found the wedding album open on his desk.
A photograph had slipped from between the pages.
She picked it up.
It was not one of the formal portraits.
Someone had captured them between photographs.
Naomi was laughing.
Adrian was not looking at the camera.
He was looking at her.
Completely.
Openly.
Almost painfully.
She turned the picture over.
His handwriting covered the back.
I loved her here and still did not know how to tell her.
Naomi’s throat closed.
Behind her, the doorway creaked.
Adrian stopped.
“You found that.”
“How long has it been here?”
“Since the wedding.”
“You wrote this then?”
“Two days later.”
She looked at him through tears.
“You knew?”
“I knew I was in trouble.”
“And for three years you said nothing.”
“I thought silence made the feeling safer.”
“For whom?”
“No one, apparently.”
She lowered her eyes to the photograph.
“Hidden love still feels like absence to the person who can’t see it.”
“I know.”
Adrian approached.
May you like
Stopped an arm’s length away.
“I loved you badly,” he said again. “I made you live on evidence you were never supposed to discover. A photograph in a drawer. Standing outside your studio. Remembering dates I pretended not to know.”
