Chapter 14
We got married when I was twenty-five.
The wedding was enormous.
Beautiful.
So over-the-top that Mia cried twice and my dad complained about the catering while still eating enough for a small village.
Adrian stood beside me in a custom suit, tall and composed, thanking guests one by one.
This was the same boy who once struggled to look people in the eye.
Now he did it.
Slowly.
Carefully.
But he did it.
On our wedding night, he refused to let anyone drag us into the usual post-reception nonsense.
“I’m sick,” he declared with complete dignity.
I laughed so hard I nearly ruined my makeup.
“You are not sick. You are impatient.”
“Yes,” he said. “Very.”
Then he kissed me like he had waited all his life to do it without a clock ticking nearby.
He had been beautiful at nineteen.
At twenty-five, beauty felt too small a word.
After the wedding, his grandmother called us into her study and announced that she wanted me to eventually inherit the Quinn company.
I pointed at myself in disbelief.
“Me?”
She gave Adrian a look.
Then, with deliberate innocence, she said, “Adu, I have a ruby necklace I plan to leave to you.”
He blinked once.
“Give it to Chloe.”
She nodded solemnly.
“And the main house?”
“To Chloe.”
“And the company?”
He looked offended that this was even a question.
“To Chloe.”
His grandmother spread her hands at me as if to say, See? My work here is done.
Then her expression softened.
“At my age,” she said quietly, “I have to think ahead. I can’t be with him forever. If I leave everything to you, it’s because I believe you’ll stay. Because I believe you’ll love him long after I’m gone. And because I know what you’re capable of.”
From senior year on, she taught me everything.
Business.
Power.
The ugly roots under polished family trees.
By thirty, I officially took over the company.
Not everyone liked that.
Whenever a particularly stubborn executive tried to make my life difficult, I had a very effective method.
I would bring Adrian into the office.
He would sit there in perfect silence, expression cold as winter glass, and when someone finally tried to challenge him, he would say, in that dead-serious voice of his, “I’m not normal.”
And somehow, that ended the conversation every time.
Meanwhile, he kept healing.
Kept changing.
Kept finding new rooms inside himself.
At thirty-two, he held his first solo piano concert in one of the city’s great halls.
I sat in the audience while people whispered around me.
“That’s Professor Quinn’s husband’s wife—”
“No, that’s his wife.”
“I remember their wedding.”
So did I.
I remembered all of it.
The fear.
The lies.
The stolen messages.
The quiet boy who once hid in closets and thought love made him a thief.
Now he sat beneath the stage lights and played like the world had finally become somewhere he could live.