The Marriage Clause

Chapter 2

Adrian’s POV:

The seatbelt sign chimed overhead just as the aircraft pierced through a heavy blanket of clouds. I lifted the window shade and watched the sprawling skyline of London emerge in the distance, bathed in the pale, melancholic glow of an autumn morning.

In a way, it felt as though this journey had begun long before I boarded the flight from Florence.

People often say time heals all wounds. They are wrong. Time merely teaches you how to carry grief without letting it crush your spine.

I rested my head against the headrest and closed my eyes, but sleep refused to come. Every time I closed my eyes, the ghosts of my past resurfaced with violent clarity.

My father’s boom of laughter echoing through our garden whenever Thomas and I tried to beat him at cricket. My mother’s soft voice calling me inside because I’d spent far too long racing my bicycle down the gravel driveway. Sunday lunches where the Matthews and Knight families occupied one impossibly long dining table, arguing over business, politics, and football—while Vivian and I quietly competed over who could solve the newspaper crossword first.

She always won.

I hated losing. I hated losing to her even more.

"You're thinking too hard, Knight," she'd tease me, stealing the pencil right out of my hand before casually filling in the final across-word. She had been sixteen, a year older than me, already carrying herself with the quiet, effortless confidence of someone who knew exactly where she belonged in the world.

I still remembered pretending not to stare at her. I had spent days trying to impress her by arrogantly explaining how I was going to run my father's empire one day.

She had listened patiently, her dark eyes analyzing me, before saying, "Then make sure the people working for you admire you more than they fear you."

It was such a simple sentence. Yet, somehow, it had carved itself into my soul.

The memory faded, dissolving into another one that always left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Rain. Black umbrellas. Two polished coffins.

I was fifteen when my world shattered.

The media called it a tragic accident—a sudden brake failure on a winding, rain-slicked road outside London. No survivors.

I remembered standing between my maternal grandparents during the service, completely numb, unable to shed a single tear because none of it felt real. People kept placing sympathetic hands on my shoulders, whispering empty condolences, telling me to stay strong for the family name. I didn't remember a single one of their faces.

I only remembered Vivian's.

She had stood beside her mother throughout the service, her own eyes swollen and red from crying. At one point, she had walked over, slipped her hand into mine, and whispered, "You're not alone, Adrian."

My grandparents packed our entire life the very next morning.

I argued. I begged them on my knees to let me stay in England. I refused to leave my home, my school, my memories. My grandfather, a man who had never raised his voice in his life, looked me dead in the eye and said something that chilled me to the bone:

"If we stay in London, Adrian, we'll be burying another member of this family."

It took me years to fully grasp the dark gravity of his words. He had never believed my parents died in a tragic road accident. He believed they had been systematically murdered. And he feared I would be the next target to ensure the bloodline ended.

Italy became my sanctuary overnight. Florence replaced London. Italian replaced English. New routines slowly filled the gaping void left by my past, but some things never left me.

Every birthday, my grandmother baked the exact same rich chocolate cake my mother used to make. Every Christmas, my grandfather insisted we watch old home videos until we were laughing through our tears instead of drowning in grief. They gave me a life overflowing with warmth and love, but they could never give me the one thing I craved most: answers.

As I grew older, I stopped asking whether my grandfather was just paranoid. Instead, I started digging into why he had been so terrified. He was a logical, brilliant man who never made accusations without cause.

"There are things you aren't ready for yet," he would tell me whenever I pressed him. "One day, you'll understand why I had to take you away."

That day arrived three months ago.

Thomas Reed—my father’s oldest, most trusted ally, a man who had served Knight Global for thirty years—contacted me out of the blue. His first encrypted message contained only four devastating words:

Your grandfather was right.

What followed was a flood of classified financial reports, internal audit discrepancies, and anonymous transfers sent into offshore shell companies. Signatures forged. Paper trails wiped. Every single breadcrumb pointed straight to one man.

Elijah Knight. My uncle. My father’s younger brother.

The man currently posing as the visionary guardian of Knight Global Industries.

If my uncle was capable of orchestrating a corporate coup and stealing my father's legacy... what else had he been capable of eleven years ago?

The question haunted my sleepless nights in Florence until I finally booked a one-way ticket back to London.

Not to immediately reclaim my surname. Not yet.

First, I needed to become a man worthy of leading the empire my father died building. Walking into Knight Global as Edward Knight's orphaned son might earn me a title, but it wouldn't earn me the respect of the board or the employees. Respect had to be earned in the trenches.

And there was only one executive in Europe who embodied that principle better than anyone else.

Vivian Matthews.

Over the years, I had quietly followed her rise from across the continent. Every major business journal featured London’s brilliant, uncompromising, and formidable young CEO. Investors revered her. Competitors feared her. Her employees were fiercely, unshakeably loyal to her.

Whenever I read those articles, a faint, proud smile would touch my lips. That sounded exactly like the fierce sixteen-year-old girl who used to steal my pencil, correct my homework, and tell me my arguments lacked substance.

She had become extraordinary—not simply because she inherited Aurora Life Sciences, but because she had bled to prove she deserved every inch of it.

Working under someone of Vivian’s caliber would teach me far more than sitting in an inherited corner office ever could.

Besides... there was another, deeper reason I needed to see her again.

Not because I had spent eleven years clinging to some romantic childhood fantasy. Life wasn't a fairy tale. People changed. Distance eroded feelings.

Yet, admiration had a strange, stubborn way of surviving time. The brilliant girl who had challenged me at fifteen had quietly become the gold standard against which I measured every leader, and every woman, I met thereafter.

I wanted to see if she still remembered the boy who hated losing to her.

More importantly, I hoped she would give me the chance to stand by her side—not as Edward Knight’s hidden heir, but simply as Adrian Rossi.