REJECTED BY THE HEIR AFTER DIVORCE

Chapter One – The Man Beneath Her Heel (B)

The ride home was silent. Elena sat beside Adrian in the back seat of their car, scrolling through her phone with practiced detachment, as if the man driving her had ceased to exist entirely.

Adrian kept his eyes on the road ahead, though his hands were clenched in his lap. Words balanced on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them. Tonight wasn’t the night to fight again. He had already lost enough pieces of himself at her family’s table.

When they arrived at the sleek penthouse Elena insisted on, she slipped out without waiting for him, heels clicking across the polished floor as though she were arriving at a hotel, not her own home.

Adrian trailed behind, loosening his tie, exhaustion pulling at his limbs. “Elena,” he tried softly. “Can we”

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen, lips twitching in a faint smile, the first genuine one he’d seen from her all evening. Without a word, she turned and disappeared into the bedroom, door clicking shut behind her.

Adrian stood frozen in the dim light of the living room. That smile… he hadn’t been the cause of it in years.

A hollow ache spread through his chest. He dropped onto the couch, head in his hands, fighting the gnawing suspicion that had been eating at him for months.

Late nights. Unexplained absences. That wall of cold indifference. He told himself he was imagining it. That his love was enough to blind him.

But when he finally rose, hours later, intending to go to bed, the sound reached him: muffled laughter, low voices, the thud of something against the wall. From their bedroom. His veins iced over.

Step by step, he moved closer, his pulse hammering in his ears. He reached for the doorknob, his hand trembling, then pushed it open. The world stopped.

There she was. His wife. Elena. In another man’s arms. Their lips locked, their bodies pressed close, her silk robe sliding carelessly from her shoulders. Adrian’s heart split down the middle.

Elena froze, eyes widening in horror as she shoved the man back. “Adrian, this isn’t”

But Adrian couldn’t hear her. The ringing in his ears drowned everything. The sight alone was enough to carve the truth into his soul: he had given her everything, and she had repaid him with betrayal.

The man smirked, adjusting his shirt with infuriating calm. “Guess you weren’t as blind as she thought.”

Adrian’s fists curled. His voice, when it finally came, was hoarse, raw. “I gave you my life, Elena.” His eyes burned, but he refused to let tears fall. “And this… this is what I was to you?”

Elena reached out, panic flickering for the first time. “Adrian, listen”

He stepped back. Away from her touch. Away from the woman he no longer recognized. And for the first time in years, his voice was steady. Cold. Final. “We’re done.”

Elena’s face paled, the icy mask she always wore cracking into something Adrian had never seen before, fear.

“Adrian, wait!” she called, stepping toward him, her robe clutched tight around her body. “You’re overreacting. This… this doesn’t mean anything”

He turned, his eyes hollow yet burning with a fire that startled even her. “No,” he said quietly. “It means everything.”

Her lips parted, but no words came. For years, she had mocked him, belittled him, crushed every ounce of dignity he had left, certain that he would endure it all for the sake of his love. And until this moment, she had been right.

But the man standing before her now was different. He pulled his wedding band from his finger. The metal was warm against his palm, the weight of years of sacrifice condensed into a small, cruel circle.

With one last look at the woman he had once believed he could save, Adrian placed it on the nightstand beside her. “Elena,” he said, his voice low but steady, “you’ll never have the chance to break me again.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Elena’s breath hitched. Her lover smirked in the corner, thinking he had won. But even he did not understand the storm that was beginning to stir. Adrian walked out.

Every step away from that room felt like chains falling from his body. For the first time in years, he wasn’t carrying her indifference, her cruelty, her family’s scorn. Only the raw, unfiltered ache of heartbreak remained, and beneath it, something else. Resolve.

As the elevator doors closed in front of him, his phone buzzed. A number he hadn’t seen in years lit up the screen. Adrian hesitated, thumb hovering. Then he answered.

“Adrian Cole?” A deep, commanding voice filled the line. “It’s time you came home.”

The elevator descended, carrying him into the unknown, And with it, the Forsaken Heir began to rise.