The mansion felt cavernous at night, its silence thick enough to press against the walls, the ceilings, the floors. Adrian walked its length like a ghost wearing the shape of a man—barefoot, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair still damp from a too-cold shower he had forced himself through in an attempt to shock the trembling out of his hands.
It hadn't worked.
Nothing worked.
He stopped halfway down the corridor that led to his wing, leaning his palm against the wall as though it were the only solid thing left in his unraveling world. His breath came in steady but strained pulls, controlled the way a soldier might breathe under fire. His shoulder blades clenched beneath his shirt. A vein beat sharply at his temple.
And in the hollow of his chest sat the same ache that had been tearing at him since the day he returned from captivity—the same pain that never loosened its teeth.
Tonight, however, it burned differently.
Tonight, it throbbed with anger. Not outward. Never outward.
At himself.
Always, at himself.
He closed his eyes, jaw flexing as he replayed the sound of the front door slamming earlier that night when he had thrown Seraphina out. He hadn't hurt her—he would sooner cut off his own hands—but his grip had been firm, his voice sharp, his patience torn open by shock and exhaustion when she tried to force herself on him while he was half-conscious, half-delirious, collapsed on the bed after a twenty-three-hour work cycle.
He hadn't meant to react like that.
But his body locked up, instincts snarled, mind panicked—and suddenly the air had tasted like the basement he'd been kept in. Like rope around his skin. Like helplessness.
He exhaled hard, pushing the memory away, but it clawed back, unbidden.
Then came the moment after—when he found her with one foot out the window of her guest suite, hands shaking, face pale, eyes blank, as though she had already stepped out of herself and left only a shell behind.
He swallowed once, hard.
If he had found her a minute later—
His stomach twisted painfully, violently.
If she had fallen—
He would have blamed himself.
He knew that with an absolute, devastating certainty.
Another life lost because he failed.
Another person dying on his watch.
Another body on the altar of his incompetence.
He dragged a hand through his hair, pacing to the far end of the corridor, then back again, unable to stay still. His muscles trembled—not with fear, but with the rage he contained like a poisonous gas.
He hated himself.
Hated the weakness that still clung to him in these small, vicious ways.
Hated that he had let her near enough to be hurt.
Hated that he had allowed her suffering to become his responsibility.
Hated that he couldn't even bring himself to abandon her, because the thought of her ending her life because of him—
His throat tightened.
He dug his nails into his palm until half-moon crescents formed, the pain grounding him, pulling him back from the rising tide of memory.
He had sentenced himself to a life of atonement the moment he inherited everything. Every breath, every minute, every negligible action was a ritual of correction. A constant, grinding penance. He had carved himself into this shape—a machine, a ruler, a weaponized mind—and there was no room for indulgence, for weakness, for emotional deviation.
But now—
Now he had a wife.
A wife who loathed him until desperation rewired her entire psyche.
A wife who tried to cling to him not out of affection, but because she was drowning, and he was the nearest thing to grab.
A wife he married because he was afraid she would die.
The thought alone made him recoil internally.
He had sworn never to let death touch his life that closely again.
He would rather suffocate under the weight of twenty more burdens than face another coffin, another funeral, another hollowed-out emptiness where someone once stood.
But that didn't stop the bitterness that now crept through him.
He reached his office—a smaller one near his room, not the formal domain he used for meetings—and walked inside. The lights came on automatically, illuminating shelves lined with technical manuals, policy briefs, and thick financial tomes marked with tabs of color-coded precision. Nothing personal. Nothing sentimental.
He made sure of that.
He went to the desk, bracing both hands on either side of it, head hanging slightly forward.
He was furious.
Not at Seraphina—she was many things, but she was not the architect of the pain that shaped him.
No—he was furious at himself.
For letting her get close enough to be hurt.
For not seeing her desperation sooner.
For giving her any space to think she could seek comfort in him.
For not being strong enough to remain completely untouched by her suffering.
For letting one moment—one moment—slip far enough that she nearly fell off the edge of her own sanity.
He slammed his palm against the desk—not violently, not destructively, but with controlled force, the type that sent a ripple of muscle up his arm.
The documents didn't shift. The pen didn't roll. Nothing fell out of place.
Adrian Harrington was far too disciplined to create chaos with his anger.
His fury was the quiet, cold-burning kind—the kind that sank into bone marrow and stayed there.
He lifted his head, eyes sharp, reflecting the overhead light like polished steel.
"She almost died because of me."
Saying it aloud made the air feel heavier.
He could endure anything—starvation, terror, pain, the crushing isolation of grief—but he could not endure responsibility for another grave.
He would not allow it.
He could not allow it.
He looked toward the doorway, toward the distant hall that led to the east wing where she now slept—or tried to sleep.
He had given her a contract that stripped her of power. Not to hurt her, not to dominate her, but because he needed control. He needed structure. He needed to know she was bound to a system he could oversee. He could not risk her unravelling, not after he had already seen how close she came to shattering.
He had cancelled the annulment paperwork before it could be approved, sealing the marriage with a bureaucratic finality that made his stomach twist with a mix of disgust and necessity.
He hated it.
He hated himself.
But he would rather carry her burden than write another eulogy.
His fingers pressed harder into the desk.
He had added to his responsibilities—voluntarily—because he could not stomach another death tied to his name.
But now he had trapped himself in a union with a woman who wanted him for all the wrong reasons.
A woman who once hoped he'd disappear.
A woman who now depended on him with an obsessive, frantic desperation he didn't know how to respond to.
And he—
He was not built for emotional entanglement anymore.
He was a machine of correction. A creature of duty. A hollowed-out vessel moving on the inertia of trauma and responsibility.
He didn't know how to be a husband.
He didn't know how to be anything other than a penitent heir trying to fix the world his parents entrusted to him.
And yet—
He had to keep her alive.
That was his new reality.
His new chain.
His new punishment.
He dragged in a deep breath, rose to full height, and shut off the lights. The office slipped into darkness again as he walked back into the corridor.
He would take responsibility.
He would protect her.
He would ensure she lived.
Even if it meant binding himself tighter to a life heavier than any he had imagined.
Even if it meant adding another weight to shoulders already bruised from carrying ghosts.
Even if it meant waking up every day knowing—
If she died, he would never recover.
And so he moved through the mansion like a man marching deeper into the prison he himself secured, choosing the chains that hurt less than the alternative, refusing to let death claim anything else from him.
A man angry at himself—
But even more afraid of one more grave.