Back in the city, the vacuum of her absence yawned like an exposed nerve. Adrian's calendar lay heavily on his desk; his employees seemed to move at an angle now, compensating for a missing gravity. He hired lawyers and PR, but legalese could not repair the sudden breaking of his private life into public dissection.
At night he replayed the slap: the sound, the heat, his own hands. He had been angry; he had been afraid. Fear had always been his enemy—the way it made him feel small. He had lashed out and destroyed a delicate architecture of trust.
He could have done damage control in so many ways. He had not imagined that damage could be irreparable in the way it became now—emotional debris scattered across two lives. The board demanded statements, shareholders demanded placations, Hannah demanded attention.
He should have controlled everything. Instead, he was losing the only thing that had surprised him into feeling like living.
On his desk a small folded note appeared while he was at a meeting—Mei's handwriting, small and decisive: I will not be your pawn. Do not follow me.
He read it alone, and for the first time since his father's death, he felt the emptiness inside him ache like a wound that was refusing to scar.