Adrian’s POV
The Cole Foundation brunch was an annual ritual I’d grown accustomed to tolerating. It wasn’t tied to my hospitals, those were entirely my own, carved out of decades of sweat and precision, but it was still part of the family apparatus, the machine that my father, uncles, and assorted cousins liked to polish in front of old money and prospective allies.
Elena stood beside me on the terrace, a light breeze stirring her dress against her legs, hand curled loosely around mine. Her fingers traced small movements on my knuckles, not nervous exactly, more like anchoring herself.
“You’re quiet,” I said, dipping closer so only she could hear.
“I’m just watching,” she murmured. Her lips brushed a faint smile. “There’s an art to it, all these people pretending to care about the sam
