The garden lights flickered behind him as Elena disappeared through the glass doors, the echo of her footsteps lingering longer than they should have. For a long time, Adrian didn't move, yet his chest felt heavier, as though every breath pressed against something that refused to break.
He'd spent years mastering silence, the kind that kills noise, emotion, and the smallest hint of weakness. But silence had a strange way of turning on him when she was gone. The moment her voice vanished, it left behind a hollow that even the hum of the city below couldn't fill.
Adrian exhaled slowly, pressing his palms against the marble railing. From this height, the world looked small, the cars below, the river of light winding through the city he controlled piece by piece. Everything he had built, bought, or bent to his will sat under that skyline. It should have made him feel invincible.
Instead, all he could think about was how her eyes had looked in the moonlight hurt, confused, tired of being afraid of him.
And he hated himself for caring.
He turned away, jaw tight, and headed inside. His penthouse was all glass and darkness, sleek and cold like the man who owned it. The elevator opened into his private study, a room that smelled faintly of whiskey and cedarwood. The only warmth came from the flicker of a fire that burned out hours ago.
He loosened his tie, tossed it onto the desk, and poured himself a drink. The amber liquid swirled in the glass, catching the city lights like embers. He downed it in one breath, the burn doing nothing to ease the tension sitting just beneath his skin.
Adrian rarely drank. It dulled his edge. But tonight, his control already felt fractured.
He sat on the edge of the desk, staring at the framed photo lying face down beside the papers he'd never signed. For months he'd kept it hidden, but somehow it always found its way back to him, like guilt that refused to die.
He turned it over.
A younger version of himself stared back. His arm was wrapped around a woman whose face was half-shadowed by sunlight. She was laughing, head tilted, eyes bright with a kind of light he hadn't seen in years. His hand trembled as he brushed his thumb over the glass.
He could almost hear her voice.
"You'll never learn to live if you keep fighting ghosts."
He'd told her ghosts were the only things that stayed. She had laughed then, and left him not long after.
No one left Adrian Blackwell.
No one, except her.
And when she did, it wasn't just love she took. It was trust, the last piece of him that could still believe in good intentions.
The betrayal had come like a knife, clean, quiet, and from someone he would have killed for. He remembered the gunfire, the rain, the sound of her name breaking from his throat when it was already too late. Every night since, he'd told himself it didn't matter. He'd rebuilt from the ashes, turned grief into a weapon, and carved his empire from the bones of the people who had taken her from him.
But grief doesn't stay buried. It shifts. It waits. And tonight, it wore the face of a woman who looked at him like she could see past the monster.
Elena.
He set the glass down too hard. The sound shattered through the room, sharp enough to echo.
Adrian leaned back against the desk, closing his eyes. Her voice was still in his head, trembling, angry, alive. She had stood up to him tonight. No one ever did that. She didn't know that the world he lived in devoured people who looked like her, soft-spoken, hopeful, too brave for their own good. He wanted to hate her for it, but the truth was crueler: she reminded him of everything he'd sworn to forget.
He loosened his shirt collar and walked toward the window. Rain had started to fall, faint and rhythmic against the glass. Down below, the world blurred into streaks of color.
For a moment, he saw her reflection beside his, the ghost of the woman who'd once promised to stay. But when he turned, there was only his shadow.
He pressed a hand to the window, the cool surface grounding him. "You don't belong here," he whispered, though he wasn't sure if he meant Elena or the ghost in his memory. Both had the same eyes when they looked at him, full of something he no longer knew how to return.
His phone buzzed on the desk. He ignored it. Marcus, probably, or one of the guards updating him on a shipment. None of it mattered tonight.
He needed quiet. Control. Order.
But when he closed his eyes, all he saw was Elena flinching when his voice rose. Her lips trembling as she asked him why he cared what people thought, why he needed to keep her chained in a world that never wanted her.
Because it's the only way I know how to keep you safe, he wanted to say.
But safety in his world came at a cost, and he'd already paid that price once. He wouldn't do it again.
Adrian sat down on the couch, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The glass wall behind him reflected a man he barely recognized, a man with everything, and nothing that mattered.
He didn't notice when the rain grew heavier, only when thunder rolled across the sky, the same sound that had haunted that night years ago. His breath hitched, and for the first time in a long while, he couldn't hold it together.
He reached for the photo again, fingers tightening around it until the frame cracked.
A drop of blood ran down his knuckle. It looked almost poetic against the glass.
He set it down carefully this time, face-down once more, and leaned back. The storm outside raged, but inside, it was the silence that hurt most.
Minutes turned into hours. He didn't move. His mind kept circling back, the laughter, the betrayal, the gunshot, the way her body had fallen. The same rain had fallen then, too. The same helplessness had crawled up his throat.
And now, a different woman had walked away under the same storm.
Maybe fate had a cruel sense of humor.
When he finally stood, the sky was starting to lighten. The first hint of dawn spilled through the glass, pale and cold. He went to his bedroom, passing the hallway where Elena's door stayed closed. He hesitated there, long enough to feel the weight of every choice he'd made since the day she signed that contract.
He could walk in. Apologize. Tell her the truth, that the walls he built weren't to keep her out, but to keep himself from falling apart.
But words had never saved him before.
So he did what he always did. He turned away.
Still, just as he reached his door, he heard something faint. Movement. Her door opened slightly, and a small light flickered from inside. She couldn't sleep either.
He should have kept walking.
Instead, he paused, not close enough for her to see him, but close enough to hear her whisper softly into the dark, "I don't hate you, Adrian… I just don't understand you."
The sound hit him harder than any bullet.
He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall. For the first time since the night he lost everything, he felt his throat tighten, a quiet ache he couldn't silence.
He stayed there until the light in her room went out, the storm faded, and only the sound of his heartbeat filled the empty hall.
When he finally whispered her name, it wasn't to wake her, it was to remind himself she was real. That maybe, somehow, he still was too.