Chapter Twenty-Six
The penthouse was silent, yet alive with echoes of the past. Adrian sat alone in his office, the city lights stretching endlessly beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, reflecting both the life he had built and the walls he had built around himself. The journal Elena had discovered lay open on his desk, untouched for hours. Her absence was sharp and undeniable—a reminder that neither power nor wealth could shield him from the consequences of human emotion.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, letting memory take him—because memory was all he had left of a time before walls, before detachment, before he had learned that love and trust were luxuries he could not afford.
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He was twelve when his father's betrayal became more than a whispered rumor. It was a full, shattering revelation that cut through his childhood with the precision of a guillotine.
