True Heiress Divorcing with Twins

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

(Nia's POV)

"Nia."

My name landed like a verdict.

Adrian crossed the driveway in three long strides and put himself between us. The way he looked at me told me everything.

He had already decided.

He had stepped outside, seen the red mark blooming on Sienna's cheek and the tears spilling down it, and written the whole story in his head before a single word could reach him.

He reached for her. Of course he did.

"She hit me," Sienna whispered, her voice trembling exactly the right amount. She pressed a shaking hand to her face. "I only came to see her off. I don't even know what I did wrong."

"I know." He drew her against him, his palm at her back. Gentle. Always gentle, for her. "It's all right. I've got you."

Then he turned to me, and the gentleness was gone.

"Apologize," he said.

I looked at the two of them. At his hand on her back. At the wet, wounded eyes watching me over his shoulder, dry as bone underneath.

"For what?" I said quietly.

"You struck her. I had thought you finally understood. You were acting mature, like a Blackwood. But you can’t seem to leave your past behind. Your jealously over Sienna is getting ridiculous." His jaw was tight.

“You are the judge and jury.” I whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t want to know what she said to me? What forced me to slap her?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

"Whatever she said to you, it doesn't matter. Apologize. Now." Adrian demanded.

Whatever she said. As if my words were the cheap, disposable thing here. As if I were a child to be corrected.

A week ago, I might have done it. I had swallowed so much in this house, made myself so small and quiet and easy, all in the hope that one day he might look at me and see a wife instead of an obligation. I had no dignity.

But that woman had died in the dark two nights ago, with an ultrasound pressed to her chest.

"No," I said.

Adrian went very still.

"What did you say?"

"I said no." My voice didn't shake. I was almost proud of it. "Ask me what happened! Just once! Ask me what she said before I raised my hand, and I will tell you the truth!"

For half a breath, something moved behind his eyes. Then Sienna made a small, broken sound against his chest, and his face shut like a gate.

"Go to work," he said coldly. "We'll talk when you've calmed down."

So, I went. Because staying meant screaming. And screaming meant explaining why I had so little left to give. And that was a secret I would not spend on him.

I walked to my car with my chin up. I didn’t look back.

The Caldwell tower was the one place in my life that had never once asked me to be anyone but myself.

By the time I reached my floor, I had folded the morning away. I had a company to run and a meeting waiting. And I had Callum.

We worked through the quarterly figures for the better part of an hour, the way we had worked through everything since we were children plotting escapes from a building that smelled of bleach.

When the others filed out, he lingered.

"You had that appointment the other day," he said.

He set a paper cup in front of me. Ginger tea. He had noticed I'd stopped drinking coffee, and he hadn't said a word about why. "You've seemed tired since. I won't ask what for. I only want to know you're all right."

Something in my chest pulled tight.

He had simply noticed me, the way no one in that grand, cold house ever bothered to and asked if I was okay.

"I'm all right," I said. To my horror, my eyes stung. "Thank you, Callum. For asking."

"Always." He smiled, easy and warm. "You don't have to carry everything alone, Nia. You know I will always be here for you, pumpkin."

This was what it felt like to be cared for. This small, ordinary kindness. A cup of tea remembered. A question asked because the answer actually mattered.

I thought of Adrian.

One year of pouring my whole heart into a man who shattered it without looking, while a friend I had never asked anything of read my silences and brought me comfort my own parents couldn’t.

Adrian had never cared for me. Not for one single day. I had finally let myself know it, and the knowing settled in me, heavy and gray as stone.

"Am I interrupting something?"

I looked up.

Adrian stood in the doorway of my office. In my building. On my floor, where I had not invited him and could not imagine why he had come.

His gaze moved to Callum. Then to the small space between us. And his whole face darkened.

"Mr. Reed." His voice was smooth and cold as glass. "You seem very comfortable in my wife's office."

Callum rose, unhurried, and did not step back. "We were finishing a meeting."

"A meeting." Adrian's eyes swept the room. The closed distance between us. The ease of it. "The two of you. Alone. Is this how you spend your mornings while I deal with the wreckage at home?" His gaze fixed on me. "Tell me, Nia. What exactly is going on between you and him?"

And something in me, stretched too thin for too long, finally snapped.

I stood.

"What's going on is a meeting," I said. "He is my CFO. We were discussing the quarterly figures, with the door open, until you walked through it." I came around the desk, and I watched the surprise flicker across his face that I had not shrunk back. "But that isn't really your question, is it? But why should I answer any of your questions, you never answer any of mine."

"Watch your tone."

"You brought another woman into our home," I said. "You sat at her side all night. You ran to her at midnight, and this morning you defended her without asking me a single question. And now you stand in my company and accuse me of something shameful, because a colleague brought me a cup of tea."

His jaw worked. He had no answer, because there wasn't one, and we both knew it.

So, I asked him the question I had swallowed for a year.

"You can be as close to Sienna as you like. But I'm not allowed one close male friend?" I held his gaze and refused to look away. "Tell me, Adrian. Are you jealous?"