“You don’t understand.” Panic rose so quickly it stole what little air I had. “He pushed me. He stood there and watched. If he finds out I survived—”
“He won’t,” Adrian repeated, firmer this time.
His certainty should have comforted me. Instead, it frightened me, because certainty was expensive. It belonged to men who owned skyscrapers, signatures, private aircraft, lawyers who could make doors open and records vanish.
I had married one kind of powerful man.
Now I was staring at another.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
Adrian leaned back in the chair beside my bed. For the first time, I noticed how tired he looked. The world knew him as a financial titan, a man whose company insured shipping lines, art collections, celebrities, politicians, private fortunes. But here, beneath the fluorescent hospital light, he looked like a man who had lost too much time and had arrived almost too late.
“I’m going to make sure you’re safe,” he said. “That is all you need to worry about tonight.”
“No,” I said.
The word came out faint, but it was mine.
His eyes returned to me.
“I spent five years letting Victor decide what I needed to worry about,” I said. “What I should know. Who I should see. How I should dress. What I should sign. I am done being protected by silence.”
Something flickered in Adrian’s face.
Respect, maybe.
Or regret.
He nodded once. “Fair enough.”
