The Wrath Of Adrian Morgan

Chapter 4: The Arrival Of Power

Lupita had gone very, very still.

"I don't—" she started, and then stopped, because nothing about the sentence she wanted to say made sense against what she was looking at. Six drivers, standing at attention beside six cars. A butler bowing to a man she'd just called broke to his face. An old man on the arm of a beautiful woman, calling him sir like it cost him something not to fall to his knees doing it.

Adrian looked at her over Riley's head, and for the first time all morning, his voice carried something like warning. "If I ever hear you speak to my daughter that way again, I'll make sure you regret it in ways your law degree can't fix." He didn't wait for a response. He walked past her, down the steps, and the old man — Marcus, Lupita would later learn, though right now he was just an impossible stranger in an impossibly expensive coat — reached out both hands like he was afraid Adrian might vanish if he didn't touch him first.

The convoy pulled away. Lupita stood alone on the steps a long time after the sound of the engines had faded, and then she did the only thing that made sense to her: she called Brenna.

"He hit me," she said, before Brenna had even finished saying hello. "Your useless husband hit me."

There was a beat of silence, then Brenna's voice, sharp and immediate. "He what? Why would Adrian hit you?"

Lupita's mind moved fast, faster than the truth could keep up with. "He wouldn't sign," she said. "I pushed him, told him he had to, and he just — snapped. Started yelling that you'd turned me into your attack dog. I've never seen him like that." The lie came out smooth, almost convincing to her own ears. It was easier than admitting what she'd actually said to a seven-year-old.

"That doesn't sound like Adrian at all," Brenna said, but there was something underneath it — not disbelief exactly, more like she wanted to be told a story that let her be the reasonable one. "God, I always knew this divorce thing was some kind of leverage play. He's been quietly resentful for years, this is just him finally showing his hand."

"You should get checked out," Lupita pushed. "In case he tries to say you provoked it."

"I'm at the hotel," Brenna said, distracted now, glancing toward the lobby doors where a small crowd of assistants had started to gather. "The Ramirez people are supposed to be here any minute for the signing. I'll deal with Adrian after. Tell him I expect an apology, or I swear I will make his life very difficult."

Three hundred miles from where Lupita stood nursing her cheek, Marcus Ramirez was crying without any attempt to hide it, both hands wrapped around Adrian's, repeating some version of you came back, you actually came back like a man rehearsing a miracle he still didn't quite trust. Beside him, a young woman in a soft cream dress hovered with practiced shyness, eyes lowered just enough to look demure, watching Adrian from beneath her lashes with far more calculation than her expression let on. "Oh...I almost forgot. Meet my beautiful granddaughter, Aurelia," Marcus said with a sweet voice "She's been quite away for some time. Studying abroad" he added with a smile. Aurelia blushed as she tucked her hair behind her ear. "Welcome home" Adrian said politely, taking her hand gently as he planted it with a soft kiss.

"Riley, perched on Adrian's hip, was already eyeing the buffet table being wheeled in through the penthouse doors, utterly unbothered by anything that had happened that morning.

"Young Master, I've prepared the banquet to welcome you just as instructed"

Marcus' voice came through.

It was in the middle of all that warmth — real on one side, performed on the other — that Adrian's phone rang.

Brenna's name lit up the screen.

He answered on the first ring, and her voice came through immediately, clipped and furious. "Adrian. Lupita told me everything. Hitting her? Over paperwork? I don't care how angry you are at me, you do not get to take it out on people I hire."

"I hit her," Adrian said, without heat, without hurry, "because of something she said to Riley. If you want to call the police, go ahead. I'll wait."

"Don't you dare hang up on—"

He hung up.

Across the room, Marcus was still watching him with the wet-eyed devotion of a man who'd waited eight years for this exact moment, and for the first time since the plates had shattered on his kitchen floor, Adrian let himself feel something close to still.