He abandoned his wife at O’Hare to fly first class with his childhood ex, completely unaware she was boarding a flight to a new country without him.

The basement interrogation annex of the Belgravia police station was sterile, lit by humming fluorescent tubes that cast an unflattering yellow sheen over the steel furniture.

Thanks to Julian Thorne’s immaculate legal maneuvering and diplomatic connections, I was not being held as a suspect. I was classified as an innocent civilian caught in cross-border syndicate crossfire. Julian had already orchestrated an airtight statement that kept my name out of the morning press.

The heavy steel door swung open, and Julian stepped in, holding two cardboard cups of tea.

"Adrian’s high-priced British barristers just arrived," Julian said, placing a cup in front of me. "They posted bail before the ink on the booking sheet was dry. Because he technically acted in defense of a British citizen under active lethal threat, the Crown Prosecution Service cannot hold him without escalating an international diplomatic mess."

"Is he still here?" I asked quietly.

"He refused to leave the building until he spoke with you," Julian said, his expression grave. "The police superintendent wants him off the premises. Adrian threatened to have thirty Moretti associates turn the street outside into an armed camp if he wasn't granted five minutes."

"He would do it, too," I muttered, rubbing my temples.

"You don't have to see him, Claire. I can have an armored tactical transport take you out through the subterranean sally port right now. He will never know which direction you went."

I looked at the tea, watching the faint steam swirl in the cold air. For five years, I had retreated. I had swallowed my pride, walked into empty bedrooms, and let Adrian dictate the geography of our lives. If I ran now, he would spend the rest of his life chasing my shadow across Europe, turning my existence into a permanent warzone.

"No," I said, standing up. "Bring him in. And leave us alone, Julian."

Julian hesitated, then nodded slowly. "I’ll be right outside the two-way glass. If he touches you, he leaves this country in a pine box."

Two minutes later, the door clicked open again.

Adrian stepped inside.

He had washed the blood from his hands and face, but the violence still clung to him like smoke. He wore a fresh navy shirt provided by his aides, unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the dark bruising along his collarbone from the street fight. He looked gaunt, the sharp planes of his cheekbones casting dark hollows across his face.

The steel door locked behind him. He stood there, frozen, looking at me across the small laminate table as if I were a mirage that would vanish if he blinked.

"Sit down, Adrian," I said coldly.

He moved slowly, pulling out the metal chair opposite me and sitting. He reached out across the table, his fingers twitching toward mine, but when I pulled my hands back into my lap, his hand fell flat against the cold surface, curling into a white-knuckled fist.

"I found the surveillance footage," Adrian whispered, his voice hoarse, raw from shouting and smoke. "From O’Hare."

I raised an eyebrow. "Did you?"

"Sophia didn't sprain her ankle," he said, the words falling from his mouth like broken glass. "My security team pulled the high-definition feeds from the terminal concourse. She saw you at the ticket counter. She saw the luggage tags for London. She staged the entire fall. She dropped to the floor on purpose because she knew I was walking toward you."

"Does that make you feel better?" I asked, my voice entirely flat. "Does finding out she played you make you feel less guilty?"

"Claire, listen to me—"

"No, Adrian. You listen to me," I leaned forward, my hazel eyes locking onto his with an icy, unyielding fury that pinned him to his chair. "Sophia didn't abandon me at that terminal. *You* did. Sophia didn't promise to love, honor, and protect me in front of two hundred people. *You* did. She was just a pathetic opportunist who knew exactly which buttons to press because you spent our entire marriage leaving those buttons exposed for her to push!"

Adrian’s breath hitched. A muscle ticked violently in his jaw. "I thought I owed her. Her brother took a bullet for my father when we were teenagers. I thought I was paying a debt of honor—"

"You paid her debt with my life!" I snapped, my voice rising for the first time, cracking the sterile silence of the room. "You paid it with every anniversary dinner you skipped! You paid it with every gala where I stood alone while you handled her 'crises'! You paid it every time she smirked at me across a dinner table, knowing she could summon the king of Chicago with a fake tear while his queen ate cold takeout alone in an empty mansion!"

A single tear cut through the grime on Adrian’s cheek, shocking me to my core. In seven years of knowing him, I had seen him take a blade to the shoulder without blinking. I had seen him bury his own uncle with dry eyes.

I had never seen Adrian Moretti weep.

"I was blind," he choked out, burying his face in his hands, his broad shoulders shaking violently. "God, Claire, I was so fucking blind. When I saw that ring on the desk... when I saw that note... I felt like my lungs had collapsed. I don't care about the casinos. I don't care about the family. None of it means a goddamn thing without you."

"Then you should have thought about that before you left me at Gate B12," I said softly.

He looked up, his red-rimmed amber eyes begging, desperate. "Come home. I’ll step down. I will hand the syndicate to my cousins. We will move anywhere in the world. New Zealand, Switzerland, wherever you want. Just... let me be your husband again."

"Adrian," I said, standing up and looking down at the ruined titan before me. "You aren't my husband anymore. You’re just a ghost from a life I barely survived."

I turned toward the door.

"Claire, wait!" he pleaded, lunging to his feet, but his voice cracked in absolute despair. "What do I have to do? Tell me! What do I have to burn down to make you look at me the way you used to?!"