Adrian’s POV
"Get out of my son's house." My mother’s voice could cut glass.
The silence stretches for three heartbeats, then four. Then Mom speaks again, her voice carrying that steel edge I remember from childhood when she was truly angry.
"I asked you to leave, Lolita."
"I heard you perfectly well, Eleanor." Lolita doesn't move from her position in the foyer, still standing too close to me. "I was just leaving anyway. Adrian called me for help with the baby, and I've fulfilled my obligation."
Mom's eyes cut to me. "You called her?"
The accusation in her tone makes me defensive. "I needed help. Sophie was out with you, Bellamy was…"
"So you called the woman who destroyed your adolescence?!" Mom's voice rises despite her obvious effort to maintain composure. "The woman who manipulated you for years?"
"We were friends once, Eleanor." Lolita's tone is mild, conversational, like they're discussing weather instead of decades-old wounds. "Or have you rewritten that history entirely?"
"We were never friends." Mom's hands clench at her sides. "I thought we were. I trusted you, let you into my home, into my family. And you…" She stops herself, visibly struggling for control. "You ruined everything."
Sophie stands frozen near the entrance, shopping bags still in her hands, eyes wide as she watches this confrontation unfold. She looks between the two women with growing confusion, sensing weight she doesn't understand.
Lolita remains relaxed, almost amused by Mom's fury. "I ruined nothing. I simply revealed what was already there. Adrian had such potential—still does, actually, though he's wasting it on domestic mediocrity."
Her gaze flicks to me with something that might be disappointment. "I merely helped him understand his capabilities."
"You groomed my son." Mom's voice drops to something deadly quiet. "Don't dress it up in pretty language about potential and capability. You targeted a teenager and molded him into…"
"Into what? Someone who can read people like books?"
Lolita interrupts, genuine curiosity in her tone.
"Who understands power dynamics and psychological manipulation? Who became a brilliant professor commanding lecture halls?" She gestures toward me. "I gave him tools, Eleanor. What he built with them isn't my responsibility."
While they face off, my attention catches on movement in the background. Bellamy appears through the front door, arms full of additional shopping bags Mom and Sophie must have left in the car. He sets them down near the entrance, and Sophie immediately moves to help him organize them.
Something between them has shifted. I notice it in the small details—the way Sophie smiles at Bellamy with nervous energy, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Once. Twice. Three times in the span of thirty seconds. The gesture is unconscious, almost teenage in its self-consciousness.
Bellamy smiles back—not his usual detached professional expression that maintains careful boundaries. Something warmer. Softer. His eyes linger on her face a beat too long before he catches himself and looks away.
A pleasant awkwardness hangs between them, an intimacy I recognize but don't want to name. The kind that comes after a moment has passed between two people, after a line has been acknowledged even if not crossed.
I don't like it. Can't articulate why beyond the obvious—she's mine, he's my employee, there are boundaries that shouldn't blur. But there's something deeper, more primal in my reaction. Territorial. Possessive. Threatened.
"I think it's best if you leave now." Mom's voice pulls my attention back to the confrontation. "And don't come back. You're not welcome in my son's home."
"It's Adrian's home, actually." Lolita's correction is mild but pointed. "Not yours. Perhaps he should decide who's welcome."
All eyes turn to me. Mom is furious and hurt while Lolita is calmly expectant. Sophie is confused and anxious, Bellamy remains carefully neutral.
"You should go," I tell Lolita, voice coming out more tired than firm. "Thank you for your help today, but… Go. For now. We’ll be in touch."
Lolita's smile suggests she finds my diplomacy inadequate but acceptable. She gathers her coat with unhurried movements, deliberately taking her time despite the obvious tension.
"Give my love to Amelia." She moves toward the exit, swaying her hips with deliberate provocation. "Such a promising child. I do hope you'll let me be part of her life as she grows. Someone should teach her how to navigate the world with intelligence instead of sentiment."
The threat is subtle but unmistakable. Mom hears it too—her entire body goes rigid. But Lolita is already out the door, clicking down the hallway in expensive heels, leaving wreckage in her wake like she always does.
Mom stands in the foyer breathing heavily, hands still clenched. She looks older suddenly, exhausted by the encounter.
"I'm tired," she announces to no one in particular. "I need to lie down."
She retreats to her room without waiting for response, without looking at me or Sophie or acknowledging the shopping bags still scattered across the floor.
The door to the guest room closes with careful precision that's somehow worse than slamming.
Sophie hasn't moved from where she's standing. The shopping bags are still around her ankles. She's looking at me with an expression I can't quite read—somewhere between bewildered and carefully held back.
"Lolita's been helping you with Amelia?" The question is soft, surprised even. Like she's trying to fit a shape into a hole it doesn't belong in.
"Just today." My voice comes out more defensive than I want it to. "You were out, Bellamy was with you. I needed another pair of hands."
Sophie doesn't respond right away. She nods, slowly, the way she does when she's filing something away rather than actually agreeing with it. Then she bends down and picks up two of the shopping bags, turning toward the kitchen.
Bellamy picks up the rest, murmurs something I don't catch as he follows her.
A moment later I hear her laugh—quiet, a little reluctant, like she didn't quite mean to. The sound draws my attention like a hook.
"What's funny?" The question comes out sharper than intended.
Sophie glances up, startled. "Oh, nothing. Just something Bellamy said about the coffee shop we stopped at. You wouldn't find it interesting."
"Try me."
She exchanges a look with Bellamy. "It's just… There was this barista who kept getting our orders wrong, and Bellamy made this comment about," She trails off, smile fading under my scrutiny. "It's an inside joke. You kind of had to be there."
Inside joke.
Something shared between Sophie and Bellamy that excludes me. A private moment, a private reference, a connection built during the hours they spent together today while I was home struggling with my daughter.
The phrase stings more than it should, lodges somewhere in my chest and burns.
"I'm going to check on Amelia," I say, turning away before Sophie can see my reaction.
I climb the stairs with deliberate slowness, Lolita's earlier words replaying in my head. ‘Bellamy seems to be spending excessive time near Sophie. One might almost think his duties extend beyond security.’
At the time, I dismissed them as Lolita's typical manipulation. Her enjoyment of planting seeds of doubt, watching relationships deteriorate from carefully placed suggestions.
But watching Sophie laugh at inside jokes with Bellamy, seeing the way she tucked her hair behind her ear like a nervous teenager, noticing how his professional detachment has softened into something warmer—those observations don't seem like nonsense at all.
They seem like warnings I was too stupid or too arrogant to heed.
Doubts and anxiety settle in my chest with increasing clarity. How long have they been building this connection?
How many moments have I missed while locked in my study or sleeping in separate rooms? How many inside jokes and shared laughs and small intimacies have accumulated without my notice?
And worse—does Sophie even realize what's happening? Or is she too exhausted and desperate for connection to recognize that she's developing feelings for the man who's present when I'm absent?
I stand outside the nursery door, hand on the knob, listening to Sophie and Bellamy's voices drift up from downstairs. Their laughter. Their easy conversation. The comfortable silence between their words.
The kind of intimacy that used to exist between Sophie and me. Before the pregnancy. Before the scandal. Before everything fell apart.
Now those words, Lolita's carefully planted observations, don't seem like manipulation designed to torment me.
They seem like the truth I've been too blind to see.