After the Divorce, He Begged Me Back

Chapter 10

Adrian

Whatever happened back at the farm was enough to make him stop halfway home.

His hand slammed hard into the steering wheel, over and over, like he had every intention of breaking the thing, the horn blaring on and off into the empty road while his mind refused to settle.

The bruises on his face burned. His knuckles throbbed. But none of that came close to the weight sitting directly in the centre of his chest.

Elena. In another man's arms. Kissing him. Letting him touch her.

In four years of knowing her and three years of marriage, he had never once considered what it would look like to see her with someone else. She never spoke about past relationships. He never thought to ask because the possibility had never felt real. She was Elena. Quiet, steady, entirely his.

Or so he had believed.

He knew she was from the countryside. He knew people here grew up together, stayed close, kept each other. And this man, whoever he was, must have known her long before Adrian ever did. The ease between them was not new. It was old and comfortable and it made his stomach turn.

The Elena he knew was not like this. She did not mingle. She did not reach for people. She was so contained that he had never thought to worry. But it had been three days. Three days since she walked out of their home and there she was, letting some farmer put his hands on her like he had every right.

His thoughts darkened briefly, spiralling toward something ugly, some cheap dismissal of her, and then his mind pulled back from it. He could not think of her that way. Even now. Even with his face swollen and his pride shredded on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

The horn was still going. He realised he had dropped his forehead onto the wheel entirely, sitting in the middle of the road like a man who had forgotten where he was going.

Three years. Three whole years she had thrown away just like that.

How long had she been planning to leave?

The scene played again behind his eyes. Her arms around his shoulders. The ease of it. The way she had not hesitated. His knuckles tightened until the skin pulled white across his bones.

He had to be her reason for coming back. This farm boy in his worn clothes who had never seen the inside of a boardroom. She had left a life Adrian built for that. She was attracted to this. To dirt and dust and men who smelled like soil.

But it was hormones. Anger. A temporary high she was riding to spite him. When it wore off, when the countryside lost its charm and the reality of what she had walked away from settled properly, she would want to come back. And he would make her work for it. Every apology, every tear, every moment of grovelling — he would remember all of it.

He straightened up. Wiped the single trace of moisture from the corner of his eye before it could become anything more and checked himself in the rearview mirror.

His reflection did not cooperate with the narrative he was trying to hold together.

Both eyes nearly swollen shut. Lip split. A cut above his brow that had dried into a dark line. He looked like he had walked into a wall. Repeatedly.

"Damn it." He muttered.

That farm boy had genuinely done a number on his face. He needed stitches and something strong for the pain.

He put the car in drive and pulled back onto the road.

*****

Time passed. Between hospital appointments and missed calls he was finally summoned to the office after alerting his chairman about the failed visit to the farm. As he rode the elevator up he tried to assemble something worth saying. A man of his calibre could not walk into that office, where people held him to a certain standard, and admit what had actually happened.

That he had been bested by a farm boy.

That his wife was kissing someone else.

That he had put his fist through a car window like a man with no control.

None of that was the version he would be presenting today.

Tucker was already seated when Adrian entered. The chairman was a tall man who had once filled a room with his presence alone, but illness had been quietly taking its percentage. He sat thinner than the last time Adrian had seen him, the sharp lines of his face more pronounced now, the skin at his collar slightly loose. His hands, wrapped around a glass of water, carried a faint tremor he was clearly working to conceal. But his eyes were still sharp. Still calculating. Tucker had always seen more than people offered him.

"Mr Adrian." He acknowledged the moment Adrian walked in.

He glanced at Adrian's face and one brow lifted slightly.

"The farm had quite the reception." He said simply. "Sit down. You should have pressed charges by the way. Damages at minimum."

Adrian took the offered chair and said nothing about the lie he would have had to construct to support that suggestion.

"You said the manager was unavailable," Tucker continued, setting down his water and folding his hands. "Which is unfortunate. I may have aimed too high sending you there, given it is the smallest property the family operates. But I sent you because it is the entry point." He paused, steadying his hands deliberately against the table. "The family that owns that land is extraordinarily private. No public profiles. No media presence. Every affiliated company references the farm but never the family name. You have to wonder what kind of wealth requires that level of silence."

Adrian had wondered exactly that.

His pursuit of this partnership was not simply professional ambition, though it was certainly that too. The promotion tied to this deal was the kind that did not come twice. The kind of money that would set not just him but his children and their children on a trajectory he had only dreamed about growing up. Generational. Untouchable.

And it was all sitting behind the name of a family nobody could seem to find.

Whoever owned that land was likely the wealthiest person he would ever stand in a room with. Being in their presence, earning their trust, securing their signature — it would change the entire direction of his life.

He needed this.

Not wanted. Needed.

Because without it he was not only losing the promotion. He was losing his position entirely. Tucker was retiring. The new leadership coming in had no loyalty to Adrian and he knew it. This deal was the only thing that would make him indispensable before the transition.

But even as he sat there calculating, his mind drifted back to the farm. To Elena. To the kiss.

He pushed it down.

"I will get you another opportunity to meet with their management," Tucker said, pulling Adrian back into the room. "But this time you go in prepared. You go in grounded. This family does not play about their business and neither should you." He levelled his gaze across the table. "Are we clear?"

Adrian met his eyes steadily.

"Crystal," he said.