Chapter 11
For a long moment, Hudson just stared at me.
Then he laughed without humor.
“You guessed the first time we met, didn’t you?”
“I suspected something was wrong,” I said. “I did not suspect something this twisted.”
He looked tired suddenly.
Stripped down.
“Even if the last year was Adrian,” he said quietly, “the first two years? I was there every day. Talking to you. Replying. Staying up with you. Are you really sure you fell for him and not me?”
I stood.
“I’m not interested in sorting my feelings for a liar who used another person’s pain as a convenience.”
His jaw tightened.
I kept going.
“Do you know what disgusts me most? It’s not just that you lied to me. It’s that you were so sure Adrian would never defend himself. That because he doesn’t speak easily, you could say anything and walk away clean.”
Something in his expression turned defensive, almost angry.
He started to say something about how unfair the Quinns had been to him, how the Hale family had sacrificed things too.
I cut him off.
“Your family gained status, money, projects, access. Do not stand here and talk to me like you were the one stripped bare.”
My phone rang.
Mr. Cole.
His voice was frantic.
“Miss Chloe, could you come to the Quinn residence? Something’s wrong with Adrian.”
I was already moving.
Halfway out the door, I stopped and turned back one last time.
“Those stories you told me in the beginning,” I said. “About the kidnapping. About hiding in closets at night. About your parents dying to protect you. Were those yours?”
He did not answer.
He did not have to.
I understood.
And that understanding nearly split me in half.
Because I had spent so many nights aching over those memories.
And all that time, they had belonged to Adrian.
As if that were not enough, another realization hit me on the way out.
The Hale family.
The one I had been sent to meet on my first day in New York.
I turned back again.
“My mother sent me to meet the Hale grandson the day I arrived,” I said. “We apparently had some childhood marriage arrangement. I’m really glad you never showed up. It saved me from ever having to be tied to someone like you.”
For the first time, the regret on his face looked real.
Too late.
So late it was insulting.
I left him there with his coffee and his silence and drove straight to the Quinn estate.