The Wrath Of Adrian Morgan

The candles had burned down to stubs of wax by the time Adrian finally blew them out.

Eight dishes sat cooling on the table — Brenna's favorites, made from scratch, the way his mother

had taught him before she passed. Pan-seared salmon, the lemon risotto she used to ask for on every anniversary since they were newlyweds, and now the butter had congealed into a thin white skin on top of it. He'd set out the good plates. He'd even bought the wine she

liked, the one that cost more than he was comfortable spending. 

None of it mattered now. It was almost midnight.

The door finally opened at 11:47. Brenna stumbled in, one heel already in her hand, her hair loose from its pins , her makeup smeared at the corners of her eyes. She reeked of champagne and cigarette smoke that wasn't hers. And the collar of her blouse smudged with someone else's cologne. She dropped her bag on the entryway table hard enough to rattle the vase beside it.

"Oh...you're still up," she said flatly, not a question. "Brenna." Adrian rose from the chair he'd been sitting in for three hours.

"I called you six times." Adrian's voice was calm. Too calm, the kind of calm that came from

swallowing anger for years until it stopped tasting like anything at all. "Riley waited for you. She

fell asleep on the couch an hour ago."

Brenna threw her heel onto the floor and rounded on him, swaying slightly. "Do you have any idea

what kind of day I had? The Whitmore Group almost pulled out of the IPO roadshow because

some analyst asked why our numbers looked soft. I was handling a crisis, Adrian. A real one.

And you're calling me over and over like Riley scraped her knee."

"It's our anniversary."

Something flickered across Brenna's face, eyes glassy with wine and something colder underneath it— not guilt, Adrian noted. Irritation that he'd said it out

loud.

"Don't fucking touch me," she snapped, stepping back even though he hadn't moved toward her. "With

your filthy hands. God, do you know how exhausting it is to sit at a table with actual power players

while my husband texts me about plates? You've always cared about trivial garbage. Do you have

any idea what I fucking went through at that banquet tonight?"

Adrian looked at the table, at the candles, at eight years of quietly making himself smaller so she

could feel bigger. He set his napkin down.

"Wasn't the Ramirez family handling the introductions tonight?" he asked. "I heard they were the

ones who got Whitmore back to the table."

Brenna went still. The swaying stopped. "How do you know about the Ramirez family?" He said nothing. He'd learned, over the years, that silence unsettled her more than any answer

could.

Her eyes narrowed, searching his face for something, then she scoffed and looked away, as if she'd

imagined the question mattering at all. "Doesn't matter how you heard it. It wasn't the Ramirez

family who did anything for me — it was Cole. Cole Voss. Heir to the Voss shipping fortune. He's

the one who got me in the room." Her mouth curled. "What would you know about rooms like

that? You've never been in one in your life."

"Brenna—"

"You've said enough"

"No, let me finish." She was warming to it now, the words spilling out faster, sharper. "Do you

know what it's like, standing there with men worth nine figures, and someone asks — casually, like

it's nothing — 'where's your husband tonight?' And I have to smile with all teeths and say he's home with the

baby. Like I married a nanny. Everyone at that table was laughing at me behind their glasses,

Adrian. Laughing. If I hadn't gotten pregnant with Riley, I would never — never — have married a

man who peaked at making dinner reservations."

The room went quiet. Even the candles seemed to hold still.

Adrian looked at her — really looked, the way you look at a stranger who has borrowed the face of

someone you used to love — and felt the last warm thing in his chest go cold and settle somewhere

at the bottom of him. His jaw tightened but his voice stayed level. "I didn't realize staying home to raise our daughter was something to be ashamed of." 

"That's because you have no ambition!" Brenna's finger came up, sharp, pointed at his chest, nail nearly grazing his shirt.

"Riley isn't a mistake," he said quietly. "And she isn't a burden. Neither am I."

"Everything is a burden when it's holding you back," Brenna shot back, not even hearing him.

"You. Her. This apartment. This life. I could be twice the woman I am now if I didn't have to drag

the two of you behind me like an anchor."

Adrian nodded slowly, as if she'd finally answered a question he'd been asking for a long time.

"Then we should get a divorce."

For a second, Brenna blinked, the words seemed to surprise even her as she thrown off by how easily the words left him — no shout, no tremble,

nothing to fight against. Then fury filled the gap where surprise had been.

"Divorce? Divorce? You ungrateful, irresponsible son of a bitch—" She was shouting now, the kind of shouting

meant to be heard by neighbors, meant to make him flinch. "After everything I've done for this

family, for you, you want to just walk away—" Adrian was already walking away — down the hall, toward Riley's room, leaving Brenna

mid-sentence in the wreckage of a dinner no one else would ever eat. Brenna stood there shaking,and then, with a sound somewhere between a scream and a sob, she swept her hand across the table.

Behind him, glass shattered against the marble floor. Then another plate. Then another, each one thrown harder than the

last, until every dish he'd made with his own hands including the lemon risotto splattering across the white tile like something being buried, broken across the floor they used to call

home.

He didn't turn around.