Adrian
The first night I didn’t go home, I thought the distance would calm me. I thought the silence would make the noise in my head fade, would give me room to breathe again.
But the silence only made everything louder—her voice, her sobs, her confession, Matteo’s arrogance, my own guilt, every mistake I’d made that led us here. By the second night, I was already slipping, drowning in a familiar burn that had nothing to do with passion and everything to do with whiskey searing down my throat.
By the third, I was unrecognizable—even to myself.
The hotel room was dim, curtains drawn tight, bottles scattered like casualties across the floor. I sat on the edge of the bed with a drink in hand, staring at the swirling amber liquid as if the answers to my life’s collapse lay somewhere inside it.
“This is pathetic,” I muttered to myself, taking another swallow anyway.
My phone vibrated again. Her name lit up the screen.
Serafina.
I let it ring. Again. And again. And again. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Because every time I imagined her voice—soft, breaking, pleading—I felt my resolve tearing down the middle.
“Just leave me alone,” I rasped at the device, though she couldn’t hear me. “Let me fall apart in peace.”
But peace was a myth. Peace didn’t exist in the hollowed-out space where my marriage used to be.
Another vibration.
This time, a message.
Please come home. Adrian, please.
I clenched my jaw, fingers tightening around the phone.
“No,” I whispered, throwing it onto the bed, rubbing both hands down my face. “No. Not yet.”
Not when I was still bleeding from the image of her in Matteo’s arms. Not when her confession replayed like a blade carving along my chest.
“I love you both.”
God. God.
I reached for another bottle, uncapped it, drank straight from the neck. The burn numbed nothing. The ache stayed. The jealousy festered. The guilt grew heavier.
Eventually, I stumbled to the window, dragging the curtain back just enough to see the city lights flickering far below. I pressed my forehead to the glass, breath fogging the surface.
“How did we get here?” I whispered. “How did I lose you like this?”
The room spun slightly. I closed my eyes, gripping the windowsill, breaths shallow.
All I saw was Serafina’s face when she said the words that destroyed me. And Matteo’s expression when he watched her cry—as if he had any right to hold her pain.
I let out a bitter laugh. “I should hate you,” I whispered to myself. “I should hate both of you.”
But I didn’t. Not truly. I hated myself more.
Because I had driven us here. Because I had sought escape in the arms of strangers long before she ever sought comfort in Matteo’s shadow. Because I had started the unraveling, and she had merely followed the thread.
The phone vibrated again.
This time, not a call. A message from someone else.
Marco, one of my security staff.
Thought you should see this.
A photograph followed. I frowned, swiping it open. And the world snapped back into focus.
It was Serafina. Walking into the council chamber.
Her chin high, her shoulders set.
Carrying Leonel on her hip.
Alone.
Leonel’s little arms were wrapped around her neck, his cheek pressed to her shoulder. His eyes looked tired. Confused. Searching.
My heart cracked open so violently the physical pain made me stumble backward onto the bed.
“Oh God,” I breathed, staring at the image as the room swayed. “Oh God… what have I done?”
She wasn’t just my wife.
She wasn’t just the woman I had betrayed.
She wasn’t just the woman struggling between two lives.
She was the mother of our children.
And I had abandoned her.
I had abandoned them.
Love—raw, primal, gut-wrenching—punched through my chest so fast I gasped for air.
“What the hell am I doing?” I whispered, clutching the phone with shaking hands. “I’m leaving her to carry everything alone. I’m leaving him—our boy—to wonder where his father is.”
My breath trembled. “I’m punishing her for telling the truth… when I never had the courage to tell mine.”
I dragged both hands through my hair, gripping tightly as if grounding myself. “This isn’t who I am. This isn’t who she married. This isn’t who my children deserve.”
There was another photograph attached.
Serafina walking out of the meeting hours later, Leonel asleep on her shoulder, her expression exhausted—bone-deep tired in a way that shattered me.
Tears blurred my vision. Actual tears.
“Oh Fina…” I whispered, tracing her image with my thumb. “You shouldn’t have had to do that alone.”
I sat there for several minutes, the weight of everything pressing down until I couldn’t breathe. The alcohol haze dissolved under the force of clarity and guilt.
Then my phone vibrated again.
A voice note from Serafina.
I stared at it for a long moment.
Then I pressed play.
Her voice cracked immediately. “Adrian… please. I know you’re hurting. I know everything is broken right now. But the kids miss you. I miss you.” A shaky inhale. “I’m scared. I don’t know what happens next. But please… come home.”
That was the moment something inside me snapped back into place—not healed, not whole, but resolute.
My wife needed me.
My children needed me.
And I loved them more than my anger.
More than my pride.
More than the shards of betrayal still cutting me open.
I wiped my face, grabbed my coat, steadied myself on trembling legs.
“No more running,” I murmured. “No more hiding.”
I stepped toward the door.
“For them,” I whispered. “I come home for them.”
But the truth was heavier, truer, more painful.
I came home for her.
Even broken. Even hurting.
Even knowing the future was uncertain. Love—deep, flawed, impossible—pulled me back. And I followed it.