Long after Dr. Marwick's footsteps vanished down the corridor, Adrian remained seated behind his desk, fingers pressed against the edge, shoulders taut beneath the thin dress shirt he had barely finished buttoning after the gym. His breath came in slow, measured currents—too controlled, too deliberate—like a man who feared even oxygen might betray him with its inconsistency.
The office was silent, bathed in winter sunlight that poured through tall windows and cast stark angles across the polished floors. Everything was immaculate—his papers arranged with military precision, the air smelling faintly of cedar from the carved bookshelves, the crystal decanter untouched since the day he inherited the chairman's mantle.
And yet the silence was deceptive.Behind it lay a storm he had spent years refusing to acknowledge.
He leaned back in his chair.
Closed his eyes.
And allowed, for the briefest moment, the pain to seep into him like a cold tide.
He knew—before she said a single word—that Dr. Marwick would fail.
Not because she was incompetent.Not because she lacked insight or training or the expensive degrees neatly framed on her clinic wall.
No.
She would fail because the problem was him.
Because Seraphina's unraveling orbit, her emotional dependence, her spiraling desperation… all of it centered around the gravitational force of one thing:
Adrian Vale Harrington—the wound that walked, the ruin that breathed, the abyss people fell into thinking they could climb back out.
He opened his eyes, and they were darker than before.
If he were someone else—someone normal, someone salvageable—maybe Seraphina wouldn't be tearing herself apart inside the cage of his estate.
If he were less broken—less haunted—less hollow—she wouldn't be losing her grip on stability simply because he refused to look at her.
But he wasn't someone else.
He was exactly what every specialist had labeled him:
Permanent trauma.Non-recoverable cognitive scarring.Unalterable emotional shutdown.PTSD ingrained to the point of personality deformation.No prognosis for improvement.
Irreparable damage given a human name.
Adrian rubbed the bridge of his nose, his hand shaking for the first time in months.
Marwick had spoken with caution, but he heard the truth behind her professional veneer. The tremor in her voice. The stiffness in her posture. The widening of her eyes when he gave the order.
She was afraid.Rightly so.
Because she would fail.
Because she was trying to untangle a dependency while the center of that dependency—the wounded gravity well that was him—was fixed, immovable, locked in its own trauma.
You cannot save someone who clings to a sinking ship.You cannot untie a rope while the other end is nailed to a collapsing building.You cannot detach a trembling heart from a man who has never healed.
He rose.
Not gracefully—far from it—but with a heaviness that weighed down his limbs and twisted his posture. He crossed the room with the gait of a man dragging invisible chains and placed both palms on the windowpane.
The cold radiated into his skin.
Below, the gardens stretched endlessly: ornamental hedges, marble fountains, geometric walkways—beauty designed by his mother, perfected by his father. All of it looked cold, lifeless, almost funereal today.
Somewhere in that vast estate, Seraphina was spiraling.Crying.Panicking.Begging the doctor not to report her.Feeling the cage closing in again.
He closed his eyes.
A pulse of pain shot through his chest—sharp, intrusive, unwelcome.
He hated that feeling.
He hated feelings in general.
But this one was unforgiving.
Guilt.
Not soft guilt.Not mild guilt.Not the kind that remorse cleanses.
This was deep guilt.Black guilt.The kind that gnawed, chewed, and hollowed out ribs.
Because she was in this mess because of him.
Because she married him to survive.Because she clung to him like the last thread tying her to the world.Because he had saved her life only to give her another cage.
He had promised himself he would never be the reason another person died.Not again.Not after the last one.
And yet—
He swallowed hard.
Seraphina was nearing that edge, because she was drowning in feelings he couldn't reciprocate, because she saw him as a lifeline when he was engineered—by circumstance, by trauma—to be the opposite.
A void.
A dead star with a gravitational pull strong enough to crush.
He rested his forehead against the cold glass.
His breath fogged the window.
He didn't cry. He didn't tremble. He didn't let emotion disfigure his calm.
But his thoughts spiraled with brutal clarity.
Marwick will not succeed.She cannot.She will never detach Seraphina from him.
And the reason was mercilessly simple:
Seraphina was wounded.But he was broken.
Seraphina could heal.But he never would.
Seraphina could be saved.But he would always be beyond it.
He pressed a palm to his sternum.
A phantom pain flickered. The echo of memories he never allowed to surface—memories of a cold basement, restraints digging into skin, voices that didn't belong, threats that never ended, a darkness that rewired his brain into something monstrous.
He inhaled sharply.
And whispered—so softly it was nearly inaudible—
"…She's going to get worse."
The truth struck him with a violence no one else would ever see.
Seraphina's attachment would grow, not shrink.Her obsession would intensify.Her fear of losing him would become feral, unmanageable.Her dependency would mutate into something catastrophic.
And he—
He would remain silent.Cold.Distant.Unable to reciprocate.Unable to comfort.Unable to be what she needed.
He stood there for a long time, unmoving, staring at nothing with eyes that looked like a man watching the slow erosion of something he never asked to hold.
Then he straightened.
Walked back to his desk.
Sat down.
And folded his hands with the frozen composure of someone resigning himself to a coming disaster.
He whispered, not to anyone, but to himself—
"…Marwick will fail. And then what?"
His jaw clenched.
His gaze hardened.
Because he knew the answer.
He would pick up the pieces.He always did.He always would.
Even if each piece cut him deeper.Even if each breakdown she suffered carved new wounds into him.Even if the act of saving her cost him what little remained of his humanity.
He exhaled.
A sound barely audible.
A sound that carried centuries of exhaustion.
Then he whispered—
"…What else do you intend to destroy in me, Seraphina?"
Not a question of blame.Not a question of anger.Just the quiet surrender of a man who knew that pain—hers and his—was now intertwined.
And that he would endure it alone.
Because that was the only thing he knew how to do.