Adrian
The tension had been tightening around the house for days—thick, choking, impossible to ignore—yet neither of us touched it, neither of us named it, neither of us dared acknowledge the monster our marriage had become.
I found Serafina in the sitting room at dusk, the soft amber light behind her giving her an almost otherworldly glow. She stood at the window, her posture stiff, her gaze fixed on the gardens below. She looked like a woman holding her breath, a woman waiting for impact. For a moment, I simply watched her, feeling something between longing and resentment twist sharply beneath my ribs.
“Serafina,” I said quietly.
She turned slowly, her face composed but her eyes wary. “Adrian.”
The distance in her voice cut through me deeper than I cared to admit. It wasn’t cold—it was controlled. Too controlled. As though she were bracing for whatever version of me she feared might appear.
I ran a hand through my hair, pacing once before stopping in front of her. “We need to talk.”
She nodded, folding her hands together as if preparing for battle. “I know.”
The stillness stretched between us until it became unbearable. “You’ve been distant,” I said, the accusation slipping out sharper than intended.
Her brows lifted—not in surprise, but in resignation. “So have you.”
I clenched my jaw. “I’m trying. I’m here. I’m asking you what’s wrong.”
“And I’m telling you nothing is,” she replied softly, though her voice trembled at the edges. “Not in a way I can explain.”
Something inside me snapped. “Then try,” I demanded. “Try to explain why you barely look at me anymore. Why your hands shake when I touch you. Why you disappear into the study for hours. Why you’re… not here, even when you’re standing in front of me.”
Her breath hitched, barely audible. “Adrian—”
“Don’t give me another rehearsed line,” I cut in, stepping closer. “Don’t tell me you’re tired or busy or overwhelmed. I know you. I know when something is wrong.”
Her eyes softened painfully. “I know you know me. But there are things—”
“Things you can’t tell me?” My chest tightened. “Things you don’t want to tell me?”
She didn’t answer.
I laughed bitterly. “Do you trust me that little?”
Her face twisted with hurt. “That’s not fair.”
“Then what is fair?” I snapped. “Standing in our home feeling like I’m losing you without knowing why? Watching you drift so far away I can’t even reach you anymore? Being shut out of a marriage I thought was built on honesty?”
She stepped forward, her voice low, pleading. “I’m not shutting you out.”
“Then what do you call this?” I demanded, gesturing between us. “Because it doesn’t feel like a marriage anymore. It feels like two strangers trying to pretend nothing is wrong.”
Her eyes glistened, and for a moment I thought she might break open, might confess something—anything—that could explain the hollowness expanding inside me. But she held herself together with a strength that felt like a slap.
“Adrian,” she whispered, “I’m doing the best I can.”
“No,” I said, voice cracking. “You’re doing the best you can without me.”
Silence crashed between us, heavy and devastating.
She reached for me then, hand trembling as she touched my arm. “I’m trying to protect you.”
The words chilled me. “Protect me from what?”
Her fingers tightened slightly, as though she realized she’d said too much. “From things you shouldn’t have to carry.”
I stepped back, her hand falling away. “I’m your husband. I’m supposed to carry what hurts you. But you won’t let me.”
Her voice cracked as she whispered, “Some things would only hurt us more.”
A strange, sickening sense of confirmation swept through me—confirmation of what, I didn’t know, but it felt like proof that she was hiding something. And that something was eating us alive.
“Tell me the truth,” I said, softer now. “Whatever it is, tell me.”
Her breath hitched. She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
And in that moment—her silence was louder than any confession.
I turned away, running a shaking hand over my face. “I can’t do this. Not tonight.”
“Adrian—please—” she took a step toward me, her voice raw.
But I flinched, not at her, but at the sound of her pleading. I couldn’t stand the sincerity in it, the way it twisted with guilt I didn’t yet understand. I walked past her, my steps heavy, my chest tight. “I need air.”
“Where are you going?” Her voice trembled with something close to panic.
“Out,” I said through clenched teeth. “I don’t know. I just… I can’t breathe in this house right now.”
I heard her suck in a breath. “Adrian, please don’t go like this. We’re not finished—”
“We are for tonight,” I said without looking back. “Talking to you feels impossible right now.”
A soft, wounded exhale filled the room behind me. I didn’t turn around. I couldn’t. If I saw her face—her hurt, her uncertainty—I might break. Or worse, I might crumble into a confession I wasn’t ready to make.
The moment the door closed behind me, I inhaled sharply—cold night air cutting down my throat like ice. I didn’t think, didn’t plan. My footsteps carried me with an instinctive desperation toward the only place where my chaos felt familiar.
The club.
I drove faster than I should have, hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles blanched. My mind replayed the confrontation in vicious loops.
Her silence.
Her trembling voice.
Her refusal to tell me what she was hiding.
And underneath it all—my own guilt, a festering wound that pulsed with memories of the masked woman.
When I reached the club, I climbed the stairs with the same frantic energy I felt the first night I fell apart there. The guards opened the door without a word. The bass thumped through my chest, warm and dark and welcoming in its anonymity.
Inside, the air wrapped around me like an embrace—even if it was the kind that suffocated rather than soothed. Women moved through the shadows, masked or unmasked, offering themselves, offering escape, offering everything except the one thing I needed.
I didn’t return their looks. Not yet. I wasn’t here for pleasure.
I was here to forget the look on my wife’s face.
The quiet perfection of her lie.
The unspoken truth sitting like a dagger between us.
I walked deeper into the club, letting it swallow me whole, convincing myself that Serafina’s distance was exactly what I thought it was—
a sign she no longer loved me,
not a sign she was hiding something far worse.
Back home, I imagined her standing at the window, watching my car disappear down the road.
And I prayed she wouldn’t look too closely at the man she’d married.
Because if she did—
she would see how close he was to falling apart.