Chapter 45

Isabella's pov

I couldn’t sleep. Not when Adrian looked the way he did—so vulnerable, so painfully human beneath the layers of cold, calculated perfection he carried for the world. His breaths were uneven, each inhale a struggle against the pain that ran like fire through his shoulder.

Not when his breathing dipped and dragged, each inhale shallow, each exhale sounding like a man fighting with his own body. The mansion was silent around us—too silent. The kind of silence ...