CHAPTER 7: Letters That Never Arrived
Celeste tried to cry.
She pressed her fingers beneath her eyes, tilted her face toward the chandelier, and let her mouth tremble in the exact way that had softened judges, donors, board members, and Adrian’s mother for years.
But Adrian did not soften.
Not this time.
“You lied about the bracelet,” he said. “You tried to force a pregnant woman to sign away her child. Now tell me what else you did.”
Celeste looked toward the door as if calculating distance.
Adrian saw it.
“Don’t,” he warned.
Naomi sat wrapped in Adrian’s jacket, her whole body trembling. She wanted to hate him. She had survived on hatred when grief was too heavy to carry. But the shock in his face did not look staged. The horror in his eyes looked real.
“I wrote to you,” she said.
Adrian turned back to her. “I never received anything.”
“I called your office.”
“My assistant said you refused to speak to me.”
“I came here.”
Celeste’s lips tightened.
Adrian looked at her.
Naomi’s voice grew steadier. “Celeste told me you had remarried and wanted me gone. She showed me divorce papers with my signature on them.”
Adrian stepped closer to Celeste.
“We were never divorced.”
Celeste finally dropped the tears.
Her face became flat, almost bored.
“Do you know what people would have done if they found out you married her in secret?” she asked. “The board would have panicked. Your mother would have blamed her. Your investors would have called it reckless.”
Adrian stared at her. “So you forged a divorce.”
“I saved you.”
“You destroyed her.”
Celeste’s eyes flashed. “She was going to destroy us.”
Naomi touched her belly.
“There was never an us,” she whispered.
May you like
Celeste looked at the pregnant woman on the sofa, then at Adrian.
And something in her face made Adrian realize the letters were only the beginning.
