Chapter 8 - A Phone Call From Adriana
The headlights cut a sharp, sweeping arc across the white sheer curtains of the living room, painting the dark walls of the study in a pale, moving amber. I pressed my back hard against the cherry wood bookshelf, my fingers curling around the leather-bound spines of encyclopedias I hadn't opened in years. My breath came in shallow, silent gasps. The engine in the driveway cut out with a metallic ping as the radiator cooled, followed by the heavy, deliberate thud of a car door closing.
I didn't dare move toward the window to look. Julian drove a heavy sedan, but so did half the men in our subdivision. Yet the immediate, prickling sensation at the back of my neck told me it wasn't a neighbor coming home late from a shift at the hospital or the local municipal office. It was him. He had left the charity gala early, abandoning the high-society crowd under the warm chandeliers the moment the reality of what I had done set in.
In the suffocating quiet of the study, the vibration of my phone inside my coat pocket felt like an electric shock.
I whipped my hand out, my fingers fumbling against the fabric before I managed to slide the device free. The screen flared with a harsh blue light, illuminating my face. The caller ID showed no name—only a string of digits routing through an encrypted local relay, but I knew instantly who it was. My thumb swept across the glass, accepting the call, and I pressed the speaker against my ear, holding my breath so the microphone wouldn't catch the sound of my lungs heaving.
"Don't speak," Adriana's voice whispered through the tiny speaker. It was barely a breath, pitched low and tight, competing with the faint sound of footsteps crunching on the gravel path outside the front porch. "Listen to me."
"Adriana," I breathed out, the name slipping past my lips before I could stop it.
"He's tearing the suite apart," she murmured, her voice trembling slightly despite her desperate effort to sound steady. I could hear the faint, hollow echo of a tiled hallway in the background—she must have locked herself in a restroom or a private back corridor of the ballroom venue. "The moment you walked out those heavy double doors, he turned. His face went entirely blank—you know that look, the one where his eyes just narrow down until there's nothing left behind them. He demanded to know where the ring went. He grabbed my wrist so hard I thought the bone was going to snap under his signet ring."
Outside, a heavy fist struck the front door of the house. The wood rattled in its frame, a deep, resonant boom that vibrated through the floorboards right into the soles of my shoes.
"Open up," Julian's voice called out from the porch. It wasn't a shout. It was quiet, controlled, and carry-far—the tone he used when he was lecturing partners at the firm or dressing down a vendor who had missed a deadline. "I know you're in there. Don't play these foolish games."
I squeezed my eyes shut, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"Did he see you?" I whispered into the phone, my mouth dry as dust. "Adriana, did he see you take it?"
"No," she whispered back, a ragged hitch in her breath revealing the terror she was desperately trying to swallow down. "I slipped it into the clutch under my wrap the second he looked away to check his phone. He thinks I'm shielding you. He thinks we planned this together—that it's some kind of pathetic girls' rebellion. He's furious, but he's focusing his rage on me right now because he can't stand the thought that you simply walked away from him on your own terms."
"Give it back to him," I said, my voice rising in panic as a second, heavier blow rattled the front doorknob, the metal latch straining against the strike plate. "Adriana, don't keep it. If he finds that ring on you—"
"I'm not giving it back," she interrupted, her tone hardening into a sudden, stubborn steel that surprised me. "If I hand it over now, he'll realize you're completely unanchored, and he'll mobilize every single private investigator and corporate asset he has to hunt you down before you even hit the county line. I'm keeping the ring, and I'm letting him believe whatever he needs to believe to keep his eyes on me."
"You can't do that," I whispered, tears finally hot and stinging in the corners of my eyes. "He'll destroy you."
"He already has, in ways you don't even know yet," Adriana said softly. "You gave me the opening. Now use it. Run."
The sound of wood splintering echoed faintly from the front hallway as Julian threw his weight against the door, the latch finally giving way with a sharp crack.
"I have to go," Adriana breathed. "Don't look back."
The line went dead with a soft click.
May you like
I pulled the phone away from my ear, staring at the black screen just as heavy, measured footsteps began to pace across the hardwood floor of the entryway, moving purposefully toward the dark hallway that led straight to the study.
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