The Charges
Chapter 04 - The Charges
Adrian found Bianca at her sister's apartment the following afternoon, having called ahead first, uncertain whether she'd even agree to see him after what he'd done to her in front of the entire ballroom.
She opened the door slowly, a fading bruise visible along her cheekbone where his hand had connected, and something in Adrian's chest broke completely all over again at the sight of it.
"I'm so sorry," he said immediately, before she could say anything at all. "I don't have an excuse. I panicked, and I reacted the worst possible way, and I understand if you never want to see me again."
Bianca stood in the doorway a long moment, studying him, exhaustion and old grief and something considerably more complicated moving across her face all at once.
"Can I come in," Adrian asked. "I need to actually hear what happened. Claire told me, at the hospital, that I needed to ask you directly instead of assuming I already knew."
Something shifted in Bianca's expression at Claire's name, a specific recognition passing behind her eyes.
She stepped back and let him in.
They sat across from each other in her sister's small living room, the specific, careful distance of two people who loved each other and had somehow, in the space of a single terrible night, become nearly unrecognizable strangers.
"Before the ballroom," Bianca said slowly, "your father asked me to meet him in the study. He said he wanted to discuss something about the foundation's board seat, something he'd mentioned wanting my input on for weeks."
Adrian nodded, remembering that detail vaguely, an ordinary piece of family business he'd had no reason to think twice about.
"He didn't want to discuss the board seat," Bianca continued, her voice starting to shake. "The moment the door closed, he said something about how easily marriages like ours could fall apart, how much I depended on you for the life I currently had, how careful I should be about crossing him, ever, about anything."
"What did he do," Adrian asked, his voice gone very quiet.
Bianca's hands were shaking now, the specific tremor of someone forcing herself through a memory she'd spent the entire night trying not to fully relive.
"He grabbed my wrist," she said. "Hard enough to leave a mark, if you want to check, it's probably still there under my sleeve. He told me exactly what he expected from me, going forward, in terms that made it very clear he considered me something he owned rather than someone his son had married."
Adrian felt something cold and furious rising in his chest, directed now at an entirely different target than it had been twenty-four hours earlier.
"Did he," Adrian started, unable to fully finish the question.
"He didn't get further than that," Bianca said. "I pulled away and left the study before it became anything worse. I walked back into that ballroom shaking, terrified, and the first thing I saw was him crossing the room toward me, smiling like nothing had happened at all, like I was simply supposed to fall back into line the moment he decided the conversation was over."
"And you kicked him," Adrian said slowly, understanding finally, completely, arriving in his chest like a physical weight.
"I wasn't thinking," Bianca said. "I want to be honest with you about that. I wasn't calculating a response. Something in me just broke, watching him walk toward me like that, like nothing had happened, like I was just going to smile and let him keep treating me exactly the way he'd apparently always planned to."
Adrian sat with the full shape of what she was telling him, the specific, sickening realization that he'd slapped his own wife for defending herself against his father, a man he'd spent his entire life believing was simply strict, demanding, occasionally cold, never once imagining he was capable of something this predatory.
"Why didn't you tell me," he asked. "Immediately. Before any of it happened."
"There wasn't time," Bianca said, echoing his own words from the hospital waiting room the night before. "And I was in shock, Adrian. I hadn't even fully processed what had happened myself before I was standing in a ballroom full of people, and then he was right there in front of me again, and everything just, broke."
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Adrian's phone buzzed. He glanced at it automatically, and his face went pale.
"It's Marisol," he said slowly, reading the message. "Formal assault charges have been filed against you. My mother filed them, this morning, on my father's behalf, while he's still unconscious."
