His shoulders stiffened.
“Then find out whether she knows.”
My breath caught.
Adrian turned.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he ended the call.
I should have pretended I was looking for the restroom. I should have retreated. Instead, seven years of silence rose up and made me brave.
“Whether who knows?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed slightly. Not anger. Calculation.
“You shouldn’t listen to private conversations.”
“You shouldn’t leave people with life-changing sums of money and cryptic notes.”
The words came out before I could soften them.
The hallway seemed to grow quieter.
Adrian slipped his phone into his jacket pocket. “You’re right.”
That stunned me more than denial would have.
“I’m right?”
“Yes.”
I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. “That’s it? Seven years, and that’s your explanation?”
“No,” he said. “That’s my admission.”
I stared at him. Up close, he looked more tired than he had in the boardroom. The lines near his eyes were deeper, his skin paler under the warm hallway light. Power had not protected him from age or sorrow. Somehow, that made him more difficult to hate.
“I looked for you,” I said.
“I know.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
“You know?”
“I knew within six months.”
My hands curled at my sides. “You knew I was searching and said nothing?”
“I made sure you never found anything useful.”
The honesty of it landed like a slap.
“Why?”
“Because I thought distance was safer.”
“For whom?”
His silence answered before he did.
“For you,” he said.
I shook my head slowly. “No. You don’t get to say that like it explains anything. You don’t get to decide what’s safe for me after leaving me with a fortune and disappearing.”
His jaw tightened.
The door to the dining room opened behind us, spilling laughter into the corridor. Adrian glanced past me, then back.
“Not here.”
“Then where?”
He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and withdrew a small cream-colored card. No logo. No title. Only an address printed in black ink and a time written beneath it.
Tomorrow. 8:00 p.m.
“My private office,” he said. “Come alone.”
I looked at the card but did not take it. “That sounds exactly like something a woman should refuse.”
A flicker of something almost like regret crossed his face.
“Fair.”
He took a pen from his pocket, turned the card over, and wrote a second line.
Bring anyone you trust.
Only then did I accept it.
“Why tomorrow?” I asked.
“Because after tonight, the story may no longer be mine to tell.”
Before I could ask what that meant, he walked past me and returned to dinner.