Evening fell over the Harrington estate like a velvet shroud, swallowing the marble halls in a quiet so heavy it felt deliberate—an engineered silence, a silence born of discipline and absence. Adrian Harrington was not home yet. He rarely was. The mansion breathed without him the way a mausoleum breathes without its dead—still, cold, unchanging.
But Seraphina Moretti was not still.She was not cold.She was breaking.
Her steps echoed through the empty corridors in frantic, unsteady rhythms. She had spent hours pacing, hours crying, hours clawing at her sanity until her nails bit into her palms. Her mind—usually sharp, calculating, spoiled in its selfish logic—now spiraled like a trapped animal.
She called her parents again.
Not out of love.Not out of fear for them.But because she wanted escape.
She wanted out of this house, out of this engagement, out of this humiliation. She wanted her old life back—the clubs, the friends, the luxury trips, the comforting feeling that no matter how badly she behaved, the world would bend around her with indulgent patience.
Instead, she was confronted with the reality that she had tied herself not to a boy she could manipulate but to a man who would not even turn his head for her.
Her phone rang twice.
Her mother answered.
"Sera? Why are you calling again? Isn't it time for dinner—?"
"Mama," Seraphina whispered, voice cracking. "I want to come home."
Silence.
Real silence. Like the breath of someone preparing to strike.
"…Excuse me?" her mother said slowly.
Seraphina pressed a shaking hand to her forehead, pacing in circles as tears clung to her lashes. "I—I can't stay here. He's cruel—he doesn't even look at me—he wants to annul it—"
"So?" her mother snapped.
"So? SO? Mama, he wants to end it! He filed for an annulment! I don't want to be here anymore! I can't—He hates me!"
The words tore out raw, desperate.
Her mother inhaled sharply.
Then her father's voice replaced hers—hard, impatient, cold in a way Seraphina was never willing to interpret before.
"Is this what we raised?" he said quietly. "A child who thinks she can afford shame?"
Seraphina froze.
"Father—"
"You listen to me," he said, voice tightening into a vice. "If you let that annulment go through, if you let him slip from your fingers after becoming the most powerful man on the planet, then you are not our daughter."
Her throat went dry.
"We will disown you," he said. "We will strip you of the Moretti inheritance. You will leave with nothing."
Her knees wobbled. She caught herself against the wall.
"Father—please—"
"If we lose this alliance because of your pettiness," he continued, "because you wanted to run away after behaving like a spoiled brat your entire life, then you will be on your own."
"Mama…?" Seraphina whispered weakly.
Her mother's voice returned. Softer, but crueler for it.
"You think you've suffered? You think you're humiliated? Do you understand what humiliation is, little girl? Humiliation is living without power. Without money. Without security. Without a future."
"I just—I can't—he hates me—"
"Fix it," her mother said. "Make him change his mind. Do whatever it takes."
Seraphina let her phone fall to the bed as if it had burned her.
Her parents had never threatened her before.Never cornered her.Never removed the safety net she assumed was woven beneath her feet.
She pressed shaking hands to her face as a sob tore out of her.
"Do whatever it takes…?"
Her mind swam.
The mansion felt too large, the lights too bright, the emptiness too loud. Adrian's absence echoed louder than his presence ever did. Her heart raced, breath quickening to a rapid, choking stutter.
She stumbled across the room, clawing at her hair.
"Why… why is everything collapsing around me…?"
She felt trapped.Caged.Like she was being strangled by an invisible rope tightening around her throat.
She paced faster.Her legs trembled.Her breath shook.Her vision blurred.
"I can't do this… I can't… I can't…"
She slammed her hand against the dresser hard enough to make a picture frame fall and crack across the corner of the mirror.
This wasn't supposed to be her life.
He was the pathetic one.He was the one who needed her.He was the one who clung like a lovesick fool.
So why was she the one drowning?
Her reflection stared back at her from the mirror—eyes red, face pale, hair tangled, breath trembling.
She had never looked powerless before.It terrified her.
She collapsed onto the floor, hugging her knees, rocking slightly like a child reduced to hysteria. Her nails dug into her skin. Her breath hitched in broken gasps.
What scared her most wasn't losing the wealth.It wasn't the threat of disownment.It wasn't even Adrian's coldness.
It was the realization crackling through her chest like lightning:
She needed him now more than he ever needed her.
Meanwhile, across the city, Adrian Harrington stood alone in his private top-floor office.
The city glowed below like a sprawling universe—lights flickering like dying stars, skyscrapers rising like jagged teeth, cars tracing thin lines of movement far beneath him.
He wasn't looking at the view.
He stood at his desk, palms pressed to the cold surface, head bowed slightly—not in weakness, but in exhaustion. The kind that no amount of sleep could touch. The kind born from grief left to rot inside a human soul.
His breathing was steady.His posture perfect.But his eyes—bloodshot, haunted—betrayed the truth.
He had spent the last fourteen hours working.
Not because the company demanded it.
Because he demanded it.
Because the work hurt less than remembering his parents' laughing faces.Less than remembering the kidnapping.Less than remembering his own uselessness as a son.
His phone buzzed with another message from legal.
The annulment has moved to expedited review.Expect government confirmation in three days.
He stared at the message with empty eyes.
Good.
It needed to end.
He could not let her remain in his life—not in this house, not near his grief, not near the parts of him that were cracking, splintering, bleeding.
He could barely survive himself.He had nothing left to give her.Nothing except the cold certainty of distance.
He texted the head housekeeper:
Ensure Miss Moretti remains separate from my study and room.She is not to interfere with my schedule.
A brief pause.
Then:
And send another request to the Moretti family regarding the annulment.It must proceed without delay.
He set the phone down and closed his eyes, jaw tightening.
His heart did not hurt for her.He had closed that wound when he returned from the kidnapping.
But a quiet, ugly truth pulsed beneath his ribs:
He feared she would make things harder.He feared she would force her way into his grief.He feared she would break something inside him that he could never repair.
He swallowed, throat tight.
He leaned back in his chair and whispered—to no one, to nothing, to the ghosts that pressed against his mind every night:
"I don't have room for this.I don't have room for anything."
He rubbed a hand over his face, exhausted beyond measure.
His life was torture enough.
He didn't need hers tangled in it.
And yet, even as he tried to brace himself for another endless night of work, a message from the estate flashed across his screen:
Miss Moretti appears… distressed.Should we intervene?
Adrian stared at it for a long, unmoving moment.
Then, without a flicker of hesitation, he typed:
No.She will settle.She has to.
He set the phone down.
And in the quiet darkness of his office, with the city shimmering like a cold ocean below, Adrian Harrington continued drowning himself in work—
—while Seraphina Moretti unraveled piece by piece in the empty mansion he no longer allowed himself to call home.