Chapter 4 - The Confession of a Coward
Adrian Cole realized he was entirely alone.
His father was hyperventilating by the champagne tower, clutching his chest. His mother, Margaret, had buried her face in her hands, sobbing dry, terrified noises. Vanessa was melting into a puddle of silk and mascara on the floor.
And Adrian was standing twenty feet away from Dominic Moretti, with Matteo blocking the exits and Luca standing by the door tapping a silver fountain pen against his palm with rhythmic, hypnotic precision.
“You—you can't do this,” Adrian stammered, his voice cracking into a high-pitched whine that utterly stripped away the arrogant veneer he had worn all evening. He took a staggering step backward, his back hitting one of the mahogany pillars. “It was a party game! It was a joke! She spilled wine on Vanessa’s dress! It was property damage!”
Luca Moretti stopped tapping his pen.
He walked forward with the slow, measured grace of a apex predator closing in on a wounded deer. Luca was the youngest brother, thirty-one, with razor-sharp cheekbones and eyes like chips of dark obsidian. As a criminal defense attorney, he didn't just win cases—he dismantled prosecutors so thoroughly they usually changed careers afterward.
“Property damage, Adrian?” Luca asked softly, tilting his head. “Is that what you call tying a woman to a structural beam and striking her thirty times with a heavy leather riding crop?”
“She’s my wife!” Adrian shrieked, panic finally overriding his self-preservation instinct. “In this state, a husband has legal latitude to—to maintain household discipline! It’s an archaic statute, but—but—”
“An archaic statute?” Luca smiled, a terrifying, humorless stretch of his lips. “Let me educate you on some modern statutes, Adrian. Section 265 of the penal code: aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint, and felony assault with a deadly weapon. Coupled with the hate-group intimidation enhancements because you did it in front of fifty witnesses while livestreaming your own sociopathy on your private security cameras.”
Luca reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, heavy-duty flash drive, tossing it carelessly onto the polished floor at Adrian’s feet.
“Gabriel downloaded your entire home security server while we were driving up the driveway,” Luca continued. “Every camera angle. Every laugh. Every strike. The unedited, four-K high-definition footage of you torturing my sister. Do you know what a jury in federal court does when they watch a billionaire’s son whip a woman for spilling Pinot Noir?”
Adrian stared down at the flash drive as though it were a live grenade.
“You’re going to prison, Adrian,” Dominic said quietly, stepping around me. He walked right up to my trembling, pathetic husband, towering over him by half a foot. “Not a white-collar minimum-security resort where you play tennis on the weekends. Maximum security. General population. Where men who spend their lives abusing women get introduced to the bottom tier of human society.”
Adrian’s knees finally gave out.
He slumped against the mahogany pillar, sliding down until he sat in a pathetic heap on the floor, clutching his head in his hands and sobbing openly.
“Please,” Adrian choked out, looking up at me with tear-streaked, bloated eyes. “Ellie... please. Tell them to stop. We’ve been married for four years. Remember the house? Remember the trips? Tell your brothers it was a mistake—please!”
I looked down at the man I had married.
For four years, I had shrunk myself to fit into his world. I had swallowed his insults, excused his absences, endured his mother’s sneers, and convinced myself that love was something you earned by bleeding in silence.
Now, looking at him huddled on the floor like a broken doll, I felt nothing.
Not anger. Not even satisfaction.
May you like
Just profound, empty pity.
“I remember the house, Adrian,” I said quietly, the heavy wool of Dominic’s overcoat draped securely around my shoulders. “And I’m leaving it in your name. You’re going to need a place to live when you get out of federal prison in twenty years—assuming you survive that long.”
