Chapter 7 - The Grovel of a Titan
Hannah rushed out of the back room holding a heavy brass paperweight, her eyes darting between Elena’s pale face and the towering, ragged stranger in the wet jacket.
“Elena? Who is this? Should I dial 911?”
“No,” Elena said, her voice shaking despite her efforts to remain composed. She forced herself to breathe deeply, feeling the baby kick nervously inside her. “Hannah, please go home. Lock the back door behind you.”
“I’m not leaving you with him!”
“He won’t touch me,” Elena said coldly, her dark eyes locking onto Adrien’s face. “He doesn't have the courage to touch what he threw away.”
Adrien flinched as if she had struck him across the face with an iron rod.
Hannah hesitated, but seeing the steel in Elena’s eyes, she grabbed her coat and slipped out through the back exit, leaving the two of them alone in the quiet shop.
The only sound was the rain lashing against the front window and the ticking of an old grandfather clock in the corner.
Adrien didn't move. He stood in the center of the room, looking down at the puddle of rainwater gathering around his boots.
“I looked for you for one hundred and eighty-six days,” he said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “I searched seventy-three cities. I hired four private intelligence firms. I thought… God, Elena, I thought you were dead. I thought you had died in some dirty clinic because of me.”
“And why would you care if I did?” Elena’s tone was razor-sharp, devoid of any warmth. “A dead wife is so much easier to replace than an inconveniently missing one. You could have married Clare Bennett openly. You could have given her the matching earrings to go with her blue diamond.”
Adrien closed his eyes, a grimace of pure agony twisting his features.
Slowly, without a word of defense, the six-foot-two billionaire dropped to his knees.
His knees hit the hard pine floor with a dull thud.
Elena gasped softly, involuntarily taking half a step back.
Adrien Cole did not kneel. He had not knelt before his dying father; he had not knelt before the President of the United States when receiving a national business award; he had barely bowed his head at their wedding altar.
Yet there he was, kneeling in the sawdust of a coastal Maine workshop, his head bowed, his hands resting flat against his thighs in absolute submission.
“Clare is ruined,” Adrien said, staring at the floor. “I took her father’s firm apart piece by piece. I funded her ex-husband’s appeal and stripped her of every cent she stole. She doesn't have the diamond. She doesn't have a name in New York anymore.”
Elena let out a bitter, humorless laugh.
“Do you think that impresses me, Adrien? Do you think destroying Clare makes you a hero? You think this was about her?”
She walked around the drafting table, stopping three feet in front of him. Her belly was between them—a magnificent, undeniable barrier.
“Look at me,” she commanded.
Adrien lifted his head. Tears were streaming freely down his stubbled cheeks, catching in the corners of his ruined mouth.
“Clare didn't promise to love me until death do us part,” Elena said, her voice dropping into a register of terrifying intimacy. “Clare didn't stand in front of God and promise to protect me. *You* did. Clare was just a symptom of your rot, Adrien. You kept her around because you wanted a monument to your past, and you kept me around because I was convenient, quiet, and cheap.”
“You were never cheap to me!” Adrien cried, his voice breaking into a ragged sob. “Elena, I was blind! I was a coward! I grew up in a house where love was a transaction, where affection was used to extort! When you loved me without asking for anything, I didn't know what to do with it! I thought if I kept you at a distance, you couldn't destroy me!”
He reached his trembling hands forward, hovering them an inch above the floor, wanting desperately to reach for her hem, but terrified that touching her would make her vanish.
“I found the box,” he whispered.
Elena froze.
“I found the cake in the compactor,” Adrien continued, his chest heaving with dry sobs. “I dug through two weeks of garbage with my bare hands until I found your card. I found the ultrasound. I read the doctor's note about the progesterone deficiency.”
He looked up at her belly, his eyes wide with a reverence that bordered on worship.
“Every night for six months, I woke up screaming because I thought I had murdered our child. I thought you died in an emergency room while I was signing papers in Manhattan. Elena… please. Punish me. Take Cole Group. Take every dime I own. Put me in prison. But let me make sure you and the baby are safe. That’s all I want. I swear to you on my mother’s soul, I won't ask you to be my wife again. Just let me protect you.”
Elena looked down at the broken titan at her feet.
A year ago, this scene would have brought her to her knees beside him, wrapping her arms around him, forgiving him before the tears were even dry on his face.
But the girl who baked cakes and waited in the dark was dead.
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“You’re too late, Adrien,” Elena said, her voice terribly calm. “I already saved our baby without you. I already built a life without you. You don't get to buy your redemption with guilt. Now get off your knees and leave my town.”
***
