Morning in the Harrington estate never arrived gently. It descended—immense, pale, and unfeeling—through towering windows and silent hallways orchestrated to mute the chaos of real life. In the chairman's personal suite, dawn filtered through the sheer curtains like diluted gold, landing across the bed where Seraphina slept curled against Adrian's side, her breathing soft, untroubled. For the first time in weeks her sleep was unbroken, devoid of trembling, devoid of nightmares, devoid of that hollow-eyed desperation that made her seem like a ghost in her own body.
Adrian had not slept at all.
He remained as he had been hours earlier—eyes open, unmoving, spine rigid against the headboard. His body was physically there, sharing the same space, the same sheets, the same post-midnight intimacy she needed so desperately to anchor herself… yet psychologically he had already receded to some unreachable distance. His gaze was cold and distant, the gaze of someone who had made an irreversible decision and now sat quietly inside the consequences.
Her hand, draped lightly over his ribcage, rose and fell with his shallow breaths. It felt heavy, like a shackle.
By the time she stirred awake—smiling faintly, blinking up at him with that fragile, newly-restored softness—the chairman had already disentangled himself from her arms, stood, and wordlessly begun dressing. She watched him button his shirt with movements so controlled, so deliberately unemotional, that it felt like a blade gliding through her chest.
"You're leaving?" she asked in a sleep-rough whisper.
"I have a meeting," he replied. His voice sounded polished, distant—like he were answering a journalist, not the woman who had clung to him the night before as if he were life itself.
Her heart fluttered with something tender and painful. She whispered, "Thank you… for last night. For staying."
He didn't respond.He didn't acknowledge her gratitude.He didn't even look at her.
And for the first time since dawn, her face fell.
She didn't understand that this silence—this brutal stillness—was not rejection. It was grief. Adrian's own grief, swallowed whole and pressed into some locked internal vault where all his unhealed wounds slowly rotted.
Down the hall, in her private office, Dr. Marwick sat stiff-backed in a velvet chair, her hands clasped tightly enough to pale her knuckles. She had not slept either. She had spent the entire night revisiting every clinical miscalculation, every sign she had missed, every desperate tremor in Seraphina's voice during sessions that she had tried so terribly hard to soothe.
She had failed.Not subtly.Not slightly.Spectacularly.
Every psychologist dreads the moment when the thin line between patient and danger snaps—but last night had been something worse. Last night, her incompetence had cornered the chairman himself—forced him into a role he should never have had to fill, a role that was never his to carry.
She had been hired to safeguard Seraphina's mental state so that he wouldn't have to.
And yet in less than a month, she had engineered the exact outcome she was employed to prevent.
The door opened.
The chairman stepped inside.
Even before she rose to bow, she knew. The dismissal was already there in the air, cold and metallic, like the tang of a blade.
She bowed deeply, not out of respect but out of dread. "Chairman… I—"
He didn't let her speak.
"Dr. Marwick," he said, his voice expressionless, "I entrusted Seraphina's mental stability to you. And last night, you failed in a way that cannot be overlooked."
The words hit like a clinical diagnosis—final, stripped of mercy.
She swallowed. Her lips trembled despite her training, despite her professional composure. "Chairman, I accept that I misjudged the severity of her deteriorating condition. However—"
"You didn't misjudge it," he said, cutting her off. "You failed to control it."
Her breath hitched.
He took a step closer, and the subtle dominance of his presence—tall, poised, carved with exhaustion—made her chest tighten. "I had to intervene," he continued. "Intervention that you were explicitly employed so I would never have to engage in."
She lowered her gaze. "I know, sir. I understand. And I am truly—"
He didn't let her finish.
"Your contract is terminated," he said quietly. "Effective immediately."
It was the calmness in his tone that devastated her—not anger, not raised voice, not stern reprimand. Just quiet inevitability, like a verdict read in an empty courtroom.
Her throat tightened painfully. "May I ask," she whispered, "was last night the reason?"
He looked her directly in the eyes then—an unblinking, hollow stare.
"You forced me," he said, "to become the last resort before she killed herself."
A tremor ran down her spine.
"I did what was necessary," he continued. "Not what I wanted. And certainly not what I should ever have had to do."
The shame was unbearable. "Sir… I am so deeply sorry."
"It doesn't matter," he said. "Your apology will not undo what happened. And it will not change the fact that you were unfit for this role."
She almost sank to her knees with relief that Seraphina had survived—but the weight of her professional ruin crushed any gratitude before it could form.
He stepped back. "Security will escort you to gather your belongings."
That was the end.
Dismissed like any other failed employee in the world's most powerful conglomerate.
She stepped forward once, hesitation trembling through her. "Chairman," she whispered, "before I go… may I say one last thing?"
He didn't grant permission—he simply stared, which she took as silent allowance.
"You did not fail last night," she said. "I did. You shouldn't blame yourself for what you were forced to do."
A flicker—so faint it barely existed—passed through his expression.
But he didn't respond.
He turned his back and left with the silence of a knife sliding out of a wound.
Meanwhile, in his suite, Seraphina sat on the bed hugging her knees, replaying every moment of the night before as if it were a dream she feared would dissolve if she thought too hard about it. To her, it had not been an obligation. It had not been a forced intervention. It had been warmth. Contact. Salvation. A return to the illusion that somewhere inside Adrian existed the same man who once held her with devotion, not duty.
She smiled faintly into the pillow.
She didn't know about the firing.She didn't know about the blame.She didn't know about the quiet devastation swirling in Adrian's chest like black water.
All she knew was that she had touched him again.
And in her world—small, fragile, desperately hungry for connection—that was enough.
She didn't realize that for Adrian, the night had not been healing.
It had been the final proof that he was the only thing standing between her life and her death...and also the final proof that he should never, ever be allowed to love her again.
Because love for him had become a weapon—one that cut only the one holding it.