Adrian was gone for twenty minutes. To Amelia, seated in the suffocating silence with his shattered mother, it felt like twenty hours. When he finally returned, he was a ghost of the boy who had left. All color had drained from his face, and his eyes were dark, hollow pits. The controlled anger he usually carried in his father's presence was gone, replaced by a chilling, numb stillness.
"Mother," he said, his voice flat. "It's time for your medication. I'll have Sarah take you up."
Eleanor looked at her son, a deep, knowing sorrow in her gaze. She didn't argue. She simply nodded, allowed the housekeeper to help her from her chair, and left the room without a backward glance, a phantom retreating to her wing.
The moment they were alone, Adrian's composure cracked. He walked to the head of the table, his father's seat, and gripped the back of the ornate chair, his knuckles white.
"Amelia. We have to go. Now."
He didn't wait for her, striding from the dining room and through the cavernous halls. She had to hurry to keep up with his furious, driven pace. He didn't speak until they were in the car, the gates of the estate closing behind them like the jaws of a trap.
"What did he say to you?" Amelia asked, her voice trembling in the dark interior.
Adrian let out a sharp, brittle laugh. "What he always says. That I'm a disappointment. That I'm jeopardizing everything he's built with my 'juvenile distractions'." He stared straight ahead, the city lights beginning to streak past the window. "He knew about the study sessions. He knows about the texts. He has someone watching the apartment building."
A cold dread seeped into Amelia's veins. They had never been as safe, as secret, as they'd thought.
"But that wasn't the main event," Adrian continued, his tone dangerously calm. "The main event was the ultimatum."
He finally turned to look at her, and the raw pain in his eyes was a physical blow.
"He's pulling me out of Westbridge. Effective end of semester. I'm to start full-time at the corporation in January. No more 'distractions'. No more literature classes. No more... you."
The words landed like a series of body blows, knocking the air from her lungs. "He can't do that."
"He can. And he will. He controls the money, the trust, everything." Adrian's voice broke. "He said if I don't comply, if I see you again after tonight, he will make sure you regret it."
"Regret what? How?"
"He didn't specify. He doesn't make empty threats, Amelia." Adrian's gaze was desperate. "He could have your scholarship revoked. He could bury your father in legal fees over some fabricated issue. He could make it so you never work in publishing. He has the means, and he has no soul. He'll destroy you to control me."
The car slid to a halt outside her dorm. The familiar, shabby building felt like a haven she was about to be exiled from.
"This is it," Adrian whispered, his face a mask of anguish. "This is where I have to let you go."
Tears streamed down Amelia's face, hot and silent. "No. Adrian, no. We can fight this. We can—"
"How?" he demanded, his voice rising with a helpless fury. "How do we fight him? With what? I have nothing! Nothing that he doesn't own! The only power I have is to walk away from you before he burns your life to the ground."
He reached out, his thumb gently wiping a tear from her cheek, his touch a heartbreaking contrast to his words.
"I brought you into this," he said, his voice thick with grief. "I was selfish. I knew what he was, and I still reached for you. Letting you go is the only way I can protect you now. It's the only thing I can give you that he can't take away."
He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against hers, a final, desperate connection. "I'm so sorry, Amelia. For everything."
Then he pulled away, the space between them instantly freezing over.
"Goodbye," he said, the word final and absolute.
He didn't wait for her to get out. He simply looked away, staring out the window at nothing, his profile a sculpture of despair.
Numb, Amelia stumbled out of the car. She stood on the curb, watching the taillights disappear, just as she had after the gala. But this time, there was no warmth, no promise. There was only the cold, certain knowledge that it was over.
The ultimatum had been delivered. Adrian had made his choice to protect her. And as she climbed the stairs to her empty dorm room, the silence felt different. It wasn't the quiet of a secret happiness. It was the hollow, echoing silence of the end.
END OF ACT I