The psychological department of the Harrington estate occupied a discreet section of the west wing, buried behind frosted glass doors and thick carpeting designed to swallow sound. It had the atmosphere of a private hospital built for royalty—quiet, sterile, humming with the soft mechanical breath of machines calibrating emotional data points. It was the wing of the house Seraphina was never permitted to enter, the wing built for him, and him alone.
At 5:10 a.m.—before the staff changed shifts, before the sun crawled its pale fingers across the windows—Adrian arrived.
He walked down the glass-lined corridor with a posture carved from exhaustion and iron control, the faint tremor in his fingers the only evidence that he had not slept more than an hour. His hair was damp from a pre-dawn shower taken not for refreshment, but for discipline. His jaw carried the shadow of a beard he hadn't bothered shaving. His body, though sculpted and unparalleled, moved like a machine pushed past its tolerances.
And he had come here with purpose.
The chief psychologist, Dr. Liane Marwick, rose from her desk the moment he entered her office. She was one of the few in the world who could meet his eyes without flinching. Her training was legendary; she had treated heads of state, billionaires with nightmares shaped like empires, soldiers who had forgotten what silence sounded like.
But even she looked uneasy today.
"Chairman Harrington," she murmured. "You came earlier than expected."
"Your report arrived earlier than expected," he answered, lowering himself into the chair across from her. The movement was controlled, but she sensed the underlying tension coiling in his shoulders.
He didn't greet her. He didn't offer pleasantries. He never did.
Adrian Harrington had long forgotten how.
He placed the printed report on the table between them, the pages slightly creased from how hard he had held it.
Dr. Marwick folded her hands quietly. "I assume this is about your wife's session last night."
His jaw clenched.
He didn't confirm.He didn't need to.
The silence between them was sterile, cold, clinical—thick with unspoken truths.
"She's becoming attached," he finally said, voice flat, toneless. "Too attached."
Dr. Marwick hesitated. It was rare. She was not a woman easily unsettled. But the way he said it—emotionless, yet exhausted—made a chill slip over her skin.
"Attachments are normal, Adrian," she said carefully. "They are natural responses to dependency, trauma, isolation—"
"I didn't ask for a diagnosis."
Her words froze in her throat. He lifted his eyes to hers finally—black, focused, inhumanly calm—and she felt again why people feared him even when he spoke softly.
It was the calm of a man who had already accepted his own ruin.
"I'm telling you what I want done," he continued. "Increase the distance between us."
Dr. Marwick blinked. "Distance?"
"Yes."
"That is counterproductive to her recovery."
"She doesn't need me for her recovery," he replied, voice steady. "She needs stability. She needs professional support. She needs distance from someone like me."
Dr. Marwick inhaled. "Adrian, she sees you as an anchor—"
"That is precisely the problem."
He leaned back in his chair, fingers interlacing with mechanical precision. The overhead light showed the faint shadows under his eyes, the brittle sheen of a man living on discipline alone.
"When she heals," he said quietly, "it will be… difficult. For her."
Dr. Marwick frowned. "Difficult?"
"To adjust to a life without me."
"Without—Adrian, are you saying—"
"Divorce," he finished, without hesitation. "That was always the plan."
The word sat in the air like a cold steel blade.
"But she does not know that," Dr. Marwick said slowly.
"No," he answered. "And she doesn't need to."
The psychologist exhaled, troubled. "You are concerned she will depend on you emotionally. That this dependence will make separation traumatic."
"Concerned," he repeated under his breath, as if testing the word. Then he shook his head. "No. I'm not concerned. I'm preventing damage."
He lifted her report again, tapping the page where Seraphina's words had been transcribed.
"He is a wounded creature.""He's never healed.""He's suffering alone."
He stared at the paper with a face stripped clean of expression.
"She has begun to understand me," he said quietly. "That cannot be allowed."
Dr. Marwick leaned forward, lowering her voice as though speaking to a patient at the edge of a precipice.
"She wasn't trying to corner you. She wasn't diagnosing you. She was expressing empathy—something she rarely feels safe enough to give anyone. You should see this as progress, not a threat."
"No," he said, voice slicing through the room. "Empathy is a liability. To her."
He forced himself to breathe slow, even breaths, but she noticed the faint quiver in his exhale. A crack, barely visible, but there.
"Doctor," he said, "you and I both know I'm not someone who will heal. Ever."
His tone was not bitter. Not emotional. Not dramatic.
Just true.
Dr. Marwick's eyes softened. "That's what the initial diagnosis said. But unsalvageable is not—"
"That word was chosen deliberately," he interrupted. His gaze drifted to the window, to the faint early-morning light. "Unsavageably damaged. I saw the term myself in the original analysis. And we both know it was accurate."
The words hit the room like frost.
"You said it yourself," he continued. "The kind of trauma I took in those years… rots. It doesn't mend. It shapes. It consumes. It does not return what it stole."
He looked back at her slowly.
"So do something about her before she attaches further."
Dr. Marwick swallowed. "She needs someone to hold on to. She feels abandoned. She feels lost. She feels you slipping away and doesn't understand why."
"She does not need to understand why," he said. "She needs to stand on her own."
He leaned forward.
"And she needs to do it far away from me."
A silence settled between them—long, heavy, suffocating.
Finally Dr. Marwick spoke, almost whispering. "You are asking me to make her detach."
"I am ordering you to," he corrected.
Her voice trembled despite her professionalism. "Adrian… she loves you."
He didn't flinch.He didn't blink.He didn't soften.
"That is precisely why this must end."
She stared at him. "If you increase the distance now, she will think she's losing you. She may deteriorate. Emotionally. Mentally. She might—"
"That," he said, cutting her off, "is your responsibility. Not mine."
His eyes were dead calm.
"I hired you because you are known to fix these problems. So fix it."
She sat speechless.
"Teach her to attach to something else," he said. "Anyone else. Anything else. I don't care what. Just remove me from her emotional framework."
He stood slowly, adjusting his suit jacket.
"And do it quickly."
Dr. Marwick rose to her feet, voice dropping to a near-beg. "Adrian… you're her husband."
"And I won't ruin her life by letting her build it around mine."
He turned toward the door.
"This is mercy," he said, almost too softly to hear. "Cold mercy. But mercy nonetheless."
And without waiting for a reply, he walked out of the office, leaving the psychologist frozen in place, staring at the chair he had vacated—the chair still trembling from the weight of everything he refused to say.