The penthouse was unusually quiet that night.
No staff. No meetings. No phone calls demanding Adrian Cole's attention.
Maya noticed it the moment she stepped inside.
"You sent everyone away," she said softly.
Adrian loosened his tie, movements slow, deliberate. "I needed silence."
Something in his voice made her stop asking questions.
They sat in the living room, city lights bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Between them lay a distance neither of them knew how to cross anymore.
The gala still hung in the air.
The almost-kiss.
The way his eyes had darkened before he pulled away.
Maya broke the silence first. "Victor knows."
Adrian nodded. "Yes."
"He thinks our marriage is fake."
"It was fake," Adrian corrected quietly.
Was.
The word echoed.
Maya studied him. "Then why do you look like it matters?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he poured himself a drink. Then another—for her.
"I don't usually talk about this," he said finally.
She accepted the glass but didn't drink. "Then don't… if you don't want to."
"I want to," he said. "I just don't know how."
He leaned against the window, back to the city, face shadowed.
"Before Blackwood became what it is now," Adrian began, "I trusted someone completely."
Maya waited.
"Her name was Eliza."
The name felt heavy.
"She was there when I had nothing but ambition and debt," he continued.
"She believed in the company when no one else did. I believed in her."
His fingers tightened around the glass.
"We planned everything together. The company. The future."
"And then?" Maya asked gently.
"And then she sold me," he said flatly.
Maya's breath caught.
"She leaked proprietary data to Victor Hale. My biggest competitor. The man who nearly destroyed Blackwood before it began."
"Why?" Maya whispered.
"Money," Adrian replied. "And power. Victor promised her both. She promised him me."
Silence swallowed the room.
"She didn't just betray the company," Adrian continued. "She testified against me. Told the board I was unstable. Reckless. Unfit."
Maya's chest tightened.
"I lost half my shares. My reputation. Everything I built in three months."
"And her?" Maya asked.
Adrian's jaw hardened. "She married Victor six months later."
Maya's hand tightened around her glass.
"That's why you hate him," she said.
"That's why I don't believe in love," Adrian corrected. "Love is leverage. Weakness. Something people use when they want something from you."
Maya stood slowly. "That's not true."
"Isn't it?" he asked bitterly. "You married me for security. I married you for control."
"That was the contract," she said.
"And yet," he said quietly, "here we are."
Their eyes met.
Raw. Unfiltered.
"You're afraid," Maya said softly.
He laughed once. "Of what?"
"Of feeling something real again," she replied. "Because last time, it almost destroyed you."
His silence was answer enough.
"I don't expect you to trust love," she continued. "But don't punish yourself for someone else's betrayal."
He looked at her then—not as a CEO, not as a man armored in control—but as someone who had been wounded and never healed.
"I can't afford to be wrong again," he said.
Maya stepped closer. "Then don't be alone."
The words slipped out before she could stop them.
His breath stilled.
"That's dangerous," he warned.
"So is living like nothing can touch you," she said.
For a moment, it felt like the truth hovered between them—fragile and terrifying.
Adrian looked away first.
"This changes nothing," he said, voice cold again. "The contract stands."
Maya nodded. "I know."
But her heart didn't listen.
Later that night, she lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.
She understood him now.
The walls. The rules. The distance.
They weren't arrogant.
They were scars.
And for the first time, Maya realized something that scared her more than the contract ever had—
She didn't want to break his rules anymore.
She wanted to heal him.
Next: Chapter 14 - Her Silent Strength
His past taught him to distrust love… but her quiet strength begins to unsettle everything he believed.
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