CHAPTER 9
ADAM’S POV
Three days–that’s how long it’s been since Aria worked up the nerve to walk out of our home.
As a businessman, a few hours is enough for me to get over losses, as only a fool will continuously mourn a loss when he should be moving on to the next best opportunity to make up for it. It has always been like that with people too, I don’t care who leaves because in the long run there is always someone better who can replace them.
Yet, it’s been three whole days and I can’t get over this foreign feeling that tightens my chest each time I think of her. I can’t seem to attach my usual logic of loss and replacement to the one person I shouldn’t even care about losing. Unable to accept that the tight feeling in my chest means something, I resort to the ones I can actually cope with. I let the feelings of distress, anger, humiliation and total disrespect take root in my mind because really, those are basically the things Aria has done against me in the last 72 hours.
The reasons for the feeling of anger, humiliation and disrespect are already quite clear.
Distress is the one I shouldn’t even be feeling but can’t help because Aria has been gone for three freaking days and I have no idea where. 1
This city might be big, but I am bigger.
I have half if not all of the business owners in the city eating out of my palms. My connections spread through every
corner of this city and even beyond; all I need to do is make a few calls and I will have whatever I want at the single blink of an eye.
All I had to do to make Aria regret leaving home that night was to make a few calls then sit back while she accepts defeat and comes crawling back to me because she has nowhere else to go.
I stayed up all night, expecting that moment to happen. Expecting her to walk through that door with a defeated look on her face. It never happened. Her phone has been off ever since she left and I had to resort to desperate measures, ordering my personal assistant to get every single footage of the surveillance cameras along the route from the house to all the places she passed on the way to her old apartment and the hotels.
There has been no results yet as most of the hotels claim that their footage gets deleted every six hours to protect the privacy of their customers which means they have nothing on Aria. Each hour that passes without any knowledge of her whereabouts, my chest grows even tighter and it becomes hard to keep telling myself that I only care because my pride was hurt by a woman I don’t feel anything for.
I don’t realize how deep in thoughts I am until I feel a light tap on my shoulder that makes me turn around to lock eyes with Sophia.
“How long have you been standing there?” I ask, fearing that I have blacked out for a little too long
“Long enough to know you didn’t hear me call your name four times.” She smoothly gives me the answer I had been dreading while sending me a crooked smile.
I stare up at her as she stands above me, looking comfortable in a slightly showy and suggestive nightwear. She has been here ever since Aria left. Her presence in the house doesn’t bother me because I barely have enough time to think about her while also being distressed by Aria’s disappearance.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there.” I say, apologizing.
Sophia comes to sit beside me on the couch without an invitation from me. She sits close enough for her naked knees to touch mine as her nightwear already rode up to her thighs in light of her sitting position. I look away, choosing to keep my focus on the door.
+25 BONUS
CHAPTER 9
“What is going on with you, Adam?” She asks.
“What do you mean? I am perfectly fine.”
“You don’t seem that way to me,” She says with a snort and waves her hand around the living room, “Did you even notice how you have been sitting in the same spot every single time and staring at the door so intently it could actually burst into flames?”
I look around us and I don’t dispute her because what she says is the truth. I refuse to admit it to her though.
“It’s nothing. Work has just been stressful lately and being alone in silence helps me relax and think.” I reply. I feel her warm hands grab my shoulder as she massages it slowly. Back when Sophia was my girlfriend, every single touch from her excited me but now, I feel nothing.
“You are all tensed up, Adam. I can feel the tension in your muscles. Let me help you. I can’t believe that bitch is still giving you trouble despite her absence,” she says, her voice dropping low as she goes to stand behind me and starts to massage my shoulders to case this tension she speaks of but I feel no change.
Sophia continues to massage my shoulders and for the first few seconds, she keeps her hands on the same spot until they suddenly begin to navigate other parts of my body. Her hands slip into my shirt to rub my chest seductively and she slowly continues down my chest, over the tight muscles of my stomach and edging dangerously close to my lower body. Just before she reaches into my pants, I grip her wrist to stop her.
“Sophia, no.”
“C’mon, Adam, I just want to help you relax. Such a hot and handsome millionaire who got duped and trapped in an unhappy marriage deserve nothing but the best,” she whispers hotly into my ears, her voice dripping with raw seduction that normally would have gotten me all excited.
“Not like this.” I say to her again, freeing her hand and hoping she gets the memo. She surprises me by coming around to sit on my lap biting her lips with eyes full of lustful intentions.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to help?” She says again, adding another layer to her attempt at seducing me when all I want is just to get her off me in the most painless way possible. She leans down, aiming for my lips but the irritation coupled with the underlying annoyance from the past three days makes me push her off me somewhat roughly.
Her reaction is a gasp of shock as she stands. She looks back at me fiercely.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I was only trying to help. 1
“And I already made it clear that I do not need your help, at least not in the way you are trying to do so.” Lretort” and she scoffs.
“I can’t believe you are treating me this way knowing I am carrying our child. Your child!”
The reminder has me wincing. It is clear that she thinks carrying my child means more than the responsibility it is.
“Listen, Sophia. I am not disputing the fact that I am the father of the child you are carrying but that is just all there is to it. Your pregnancy changes absolutely nothing between us other than the fact that I have a responsibility to protect you and the child, nothing more. Things can’t go back to the way they used to be between us.” I say in the calmest way possible but even that approach still infuriates her as she turns red with anger.
“I can’t believe you just sat there and told me that I mean nothing to you! That I mean nothing more than a woman who is carrying your child! How could you say that to me, Adam?” She fumes.
My phone rings just in time to save me and I pick up immediately I see my assistant’s name on the screen.
CHAPTER 9
+25 BONUS
“I have news.” He says.
“I swear to God, if you tell me one more time that you haven’t been able to find-”
“I found her sir,” he cuts me off, “At least the footage where she was last seen.”
Something similar to relief washes over me as he says that. He ends the call after telling me he has sent the footage to my phone. I open his message in the next second and press play on the footage immediately. It is short and only starts from the moment she collapses to the ground to the final part where a stranger rushes over to save her
A man. One who looks way too familiar but that I can’t fully tell because his back is turned against the camera. I zoom in over and over again but I still can’t tell who it is that saved her but I have one of the answers I’ve been looking for. 1
She is with the stranger and the thought of it has me clenching my fists as my eyes remain fixated on my screen.
