Chapter 8
Then he did something Naomi had never once seen Adrian Vale do in business, family meetings, or private arguments.
He bowed his head.
“I’m sorry.”
She stopped breathing.
Adrian looked back at her.
“I loved you badly.”
The room became very still.
Naomi’s fingers tightened around the ultrasound photograph.
“What?”
“I loved you badly,” he repeated. “Silently. Cowardly. Like loving you was a security weakness I could hide by pretending it didn’t exist.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. Not today.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because for once I’m telling you something without deciding first whether the truth is convenient.”
Her heartbeat thudded.
“What about that night?”
His face tightened immediately.
“The gala?”
“The note.”
He looked physically ashamed.
“Naomi—”
“You thanked me.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“I had to leave before dawn. A container had disappeared. One of our men was missing. I stood beside the bed for ten minutes trying to decide whether to wake you.”
“You should have.”
“Yes.”
“You could have written anything.”
“I wrote three notes.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“They’re still in my desk.”
“What did the others say?”
He looked almost embarrassed.
“That I had wanted you since the first dinner between our families.”
Naomi stopped breathing.
“And?”
“That waking beside you frightened me more than anything I had dealt with at the harbor.”
Her eyes widened.
“And the third?”
“That if you wanted the marriage to become real, I wanted it too.”
Pain surged through her.
“Then why did you leave the stupid thank-you note?”
His mouth twisted.
“Because I am apparently a catastrophic coward.”
A laugh escaped her before she could prevent it.
Adrian stared.
Naomi covered her mouth.
“That isn’t funny.”
“No.”
“You broke my heart.”
“I know.”
“You’re admitting you had three choices and picked the worst one.”
“Yes.”
“That might be the stupidest decision you’ve made in your entire life.”
“I have reviewed the evidence and reached the same conclusion.”
She laughed again.
Then cried.
Adrian did not touch her.
He simply sat there until she reached for his hand.
That was how their second marriage began.
Not with a wedding.
Not even with a decision to stay married.
With Adrian learning not to reach until Naomi chose to close the distance.
They did not return to the courthouse that afternoon.
But Naomi did not withdraw the petition either.
The papers remained with their attorneys.
“I need time,” she told him on the drive home.
“You have it.”
“I may still leave.”
“I understand.”
“I mean it.”
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
“I know.”
At the estate gates, his security chief called.
The man photographing Naomi had been caught in a nearby parking garage. He worked for one of the crews that had been pushing against Vale shipping territory.
“What happens to him?” Naomi asked.
Adrian’s eyes turned cold.
“He learns why photographing my wife was a mistake.”
There it was.
The old Adrian.
She felt herself closing.
He noticed.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Adrian picked up his phone.
“Cole.”
A voice answered.
“Let him go.”
Naomi turned.
Adrian kept his eyes ahead.
“Destroy the phone. Keep the photographs. Nobody touches him.”
He ended the call.
“You’re letting him leave?”
“You asked what would happen.”
“I didn’t ask you to spare him.”
“No. But your face did.”
She studied him.
“Are you going to resent me?”
“Probably.”
Her eyebrows rose.
He glanced at her.
“I said I would start telling the truth. I didn’t say I would become pleasant.”
A smile betrayed her.
Over the following weeks, Adrian discovered that changing a marriage was far more difficult than controlling a shipping empire.
He could order thirty men across the city with one phone call.
He could not order Naomi to trust him.
So he stopped trying.
Every morning he knocked before entering her room.
Every evening he asked whether she wanted company.
He attended medical appointments only when invited.
When his security team proposed installing cameras inside Naomi’s restoration studio, Adrian gave her the plan and a red pen.
“Remove anything you don’t accept.”
She crossed out the studio camera.
The hallway camera.
A guard stationed outside her bedroom.
Access to her private phone location.
Adrian studied the page.
Naomi waited for the argument.
“Done.”
“That’s it?”
“I’ll strengthen the exterior perimeter.”
“That sounds suspiciously like arguing with architecture.”
May you like
“Architecture is easier to negotiate with.”
She almost smiled.
