Chapter 11
Chapter 11
He drove back to the estate faster than he should have and stood in the study without turning on the lights.
Seven years. Points of light in the dark, one by one.
She had fixed his stomach — methodically, without ever drawing attention to it, so that by the time he noticed his stomach problems had disappeared she had already moved on to something else. The food diary. All those careful, hand-annotated recipes.
She had been silent about the first pregnancy because she hadn't wanted to break him. She had protected him — while injured, in pain, already carrying the grief alone — to spare him the guilt.
He opened the study drawer and took out the bag with the fragments.
He sat down on the edge of the desk and began to read — really read — everything he'd been dismissing as calculation.
By the end, he was crying. He hadn't done that in a very long time.
He set the photographs down and looked up at the ceiling.
The baby.
He had been so certain. He had been so completely, terribly certain.
He stood, reaching for his keys.
The sound of the front door stopped him.
Serena. She was on the phone. She hadn't seen him in the study yet.
"I told you to stop calling me about this — I'll manage him, I always do. Once he marries me it's done." A pause. A short laugh. "You think all those loyal gestures were real? I was acting, obviously. But I was good at it, wasn't I? He never had a clue."
Adrian went very still.
"No, the baby's yours — we ran the test, you've seen the result. He doesn't even know I'm pregnant. I'll time it right, make it look like a happy surprise. He'll believe it. He believes everything." A beat. "Oh, and do you know what's funny? His only actual child is already gone. He had it removed himself. I just told him it was Maxwell's and he didn't even —"
The study door came off its hinges.
Serena spun round. The phone dropped from her hand.
"Wh — why are you here? You were in hospital —"
"Whose baby is it, Serena."
He already knew. He needed to hear her say it.
"I don't know what you —"
"I heard every word."
She opened her mouth. He crossed the room in two steps, seized her by the throat, and pressed her back against the wall.
She scrabbled at his hands, her face turning red.
"Oliver —" she managed, reaching past him toward the hallway. "Help me —"
Oliver appeared in the doorway and stood absolutely still for a moment, taking in the scene.
His expression, when it settled, was not what Serena expected.
"Miss Holloway." His voice was very quiet. "I heard what you said. So did Mr. Wyndham."
"I had no idea." His voice cracked, just slightly. "I genuinely believed you loved him. I defended you. I treated his wife badly because of you. I'm an idiot."
He looked at Adrian.
"Sir. What do you need?"
Adrian released his grip. Serena slid down the wall.
He looked at her — crumpled on the floor, breathing in shallow gasps — and felt nothing that resembled the emotion he'd once called love.
"Find out everything she's done to Eliana," he said. "Every single thing. The incident with the car. The stolen papers. All of it. If I find out she staged any of it —"
Serena had gone pale enough to be translucent.
"And after that," Adrian said, very calmly, "every person she's harmed — her, her family, the man whose child she's carrying — they're all going to answer for it."