Night in the Harrington estate always fell with the silence of a tomb.A silence that pressed in on Adrian Vale Harrington like a punishment.
By the time the rest of the world went to sleep, he was shifting from immaculate suits to the severe discipline of his private gym—a place lit only by white overhead lights, clean like a laboratory, empty except for machines engineered for obsessive exertion. This gym was not a hobby space. Nor a luxurious amenity. Nor a place for wellness.
It was a crucible.
It was where he unmade himself.
It was where he paid penance.
He stripped to a sleeveless compression shirt, the black fabric clinging to his increasingly sculpted frame—shoulders refined into sharp lines, torso carved by months of starvation-level discipline, muscle defined not by vanity but by necessity. His body had changed faster than physicians said was advisable, faster than logic permitted, as if trauma itself had accelerated his metabolism into something monstrous.
But tonight—tonight he pushed himself more violently than usual.
Because Seraphina had spoken to him.Because she had looked at him like he was the last thread she could cling to.Because he had nearly lost her the same night she tried to lose herself.Because she had asked to see him again.Because she kept pulling at the last fibers of his already frayed stability.
She was a weight—not maliciously, not intentionally—but reality didn't care for intention.
The moment her presence entered his schedule, his balance destabilized.
And so he punished himself harder.
He began with the treadmill—set at an incline steep enough to mimic a mountain face. He ran the way a hunted man runs, breath sharp and clipped, sweat forming instantly along his temples. The machine's display glowed in front of him, numbers climbing relentlessly, but he paid no attention to them.
He ran to drown memory.
He ran to whisper to his parents' ghosts that he had not forgotten what he had done.
He ran until his thoughts dissolved into raw instinct, into the beat of his heart hammering against his ribs like a fist trying to escape.
But it wasn't enough.
He increased the speed.
The treadmill roared louder.
His breathing frayed.
Muscles burned.
Still not enough.
The image of Seraphina in his study—small, trembling, hopeful—stabbed into him again.
Her voice, frail in its attempt to sound polite:"This is better than nothing."
He increased the incline.
Pain flared down his calves.
Better than nothing…? Better than nothing…?Why did that pierce so deeply?
Why did those four words feel like a hand reaching into his chest and squeezing his lungs?
He stumbled.
Caught himself.
Kept running.
Every breath hurt now.
Perfect.
He wanted it to hurt.
He needed it to hurt.
Because her distress had become his responsibility.Because her instability had become his weight.Because any additional burden on him was always met the same way—he bore it, he accepted it, he shouldered it without complaint.
But burdens made him frantic.
He could not drop a single one.
He could not fail at anything else.
He could not let another life slip between his fingers the way his parents' had.
By the time he slammed the treadmill off, he doubled over—not from weakness, but from fury at himself for letting emotion breach his control.
He didn't rest.
He went to the free weights.
He deadlifted numbers that most professional athletes trained years for, his jaw clenched, veins rising along his forearms. He lifted with precision, not bravado—every movement deliberate, ruthless, a mathematical dismantling of his own endurance.
Perspiration covered him until the shirt clung too tightly, and he tore it off, throwing it aside, revealing a body carved by grief and obsession.
His abdominal muscles contracted with each breath, the ridges stark under the unforgiving light. His shoulders were sculpted marble in motion. His waist had shrunk even more; the lines of his hips cut harshly like those of statues that never truly lived.
He lifted again.
And again.
And again.
Until the world narrowed to sounds:metal clanking,breathing ragged,heartbeat thundering,mat beneath his feet vibrating with each forceful rep.
His reflection in the wall-length mirror was not what he saw.
He saw a weight.
A responsibility.
A failure trying to disguise itself as discipline.
He saw the ghost of the boy he once was—the foolish, overfed, oblivious heir—overlaid with the man he was now.
His grip faltered.
The weight crashed to the floor.
Adrian exhaled sharply.
He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his arm and turned away from the mirror, refusing to look at the monster or martyr or whatever hybrid he had become.
But he didn't stop working.
He moved to the pull-up bar, jumped, and began lifting himself repeatedly, the muscles in his back tightening like cables under strain. His body was a machine now—a machine that punished itself because the mind couldn't bleed.
And yet…
Even as he inflicted more pain, he felt the agitation building.
It was her fault.
No—
Not her fault.
She was another circumstance.
Another casualty he failed to avoid.
Another life he might destroy if he miscalculated even once.
The thought of finding her lifeless in that guest room—her wrists pale, her breath gone—made a cold, metallic terror slice through him.
He gritted his teeth as he lifted himself again.
She had nearly died.
In his home.
Because of him.
Because everything he touched ended up damaged, ruined, fractured.
His parents.
Himself.
Now her.
He dropped from the bar, landing heavily.
His chest rose and fell with the labored rhythm of a man wrestling with an internal storm he refused to name.
He walked to the punching bag next.
And there—
Finally—
He let go.
Adrian struck with a kind of precision that was almost terrifying.Fists slicing through air, connecting with the heavy bag in sharp, lethal bursts.
THUD.THUD.THUD.
His knuckles reddened.
Shoulders burned.
Breath tore from him.
He hit harder.
Images flashed in his head—unbidden, violent.
The dark room he was held in.The ropes digging into his wrists.The bruises spreading like ink across his skin.The men laughing.The whispers—"They couldn't pay…""They crashed—dead on impact…""No ransom. No rescue. No hope."
And then—Seraphina in his study, whispering:"This is better than nothing."
A life that clings, even reluctantly, is still a life he must protect.
He hit the bag again, harder than before.
If she died, it would break something inside him that could never be rebuilt.
He could not bear another death tied to him.
He would crumble.
Or implode.
Or simply disappear.
He was not as unbreakable as the world thought.
He knew that better than anyone.
THUD.
Sweat fell from his jawline onto the floor.
THUD.
His breathing grew ragged, uneven.
THUD.
He didn't stop until his vision blurred.
He didn't stop until his muscles shook violently.
He didn't stop until the world went white at the edges.
Only then—only when there was nothing left to burn—did he let his hands fall.
He leaned against the wall, exhausted down to his marrow.
His heartbeat was frantic, punishing, alive in the worst way.
He closed his eyes.
And for a moment—just a moment—he felt utterly, devastatingly human.
Not chairman.Not heir.Not savior.Not monster.Not sculpted perfection.Not the world's richest, most untouchable man.
Just Adrian.
A man drowning under the weight of his own survival.
A man who could not afford to break.A man terrified of what her presence might do to him.A man equally terrified of what her absence would do.
He slid down onto the cold floor, elbows on his knees, head bowed.
He didn't cry.
He never did.
But his body trembled with the remnants of emotions he refused to give language to.
When he finally stood again, hours had passed.
His limbs shook.His throat burned.His mind was steel again—pain-tempered steel.
He wiped his face again, caught his breath, and walked out of the gym with that same unreadable calm he always wore in public.
Yet beneath it, exhaustion clung to him like a second skin.
Seraphina's existence—her pain, her fragility, her desperate attempts to hold onto him—had added another weight to his already overburdened life.
But he would carry it.
Because someone had to.
And because he had sworn, deep in the pit of his self-hatred, that no more deaths would touch his hands.
Even if it meant tearing his body apart every night to survive the day.
Even if it meant collapsing under the weight of her.
Even if it meant becoming a ghost of a man so the world—and she—could keep breathing.