Chapter 136: Talia

Adrian's POV

I walked into Kanez Hotels with my jaw still tight from the night before, but by the time I reached my office, I had already buried my emotions somewhere I could access later.

"Get Mario," I said to my assistant before my office door had even fully closed behind me.

Mario appeared within minutes, tablet in hand, already half a step ahead of whatever I was about to ask of him, which was exactly why I kept him around.

"I need an emergency meeting," I said. "Today. As soon as you can pull the right people together."

"Which people," he asked.

"My three biggest private investors. The ones with deep pockets and even deeper appetites for risk."

Mario didn't ask why. He just nodded and started making calls.

By early afternoon, I had three of the wealthiest and most influential people I knew sitting around my conference table, the kind of people who could move markets with a single signature and never once break a sweat doing it.

"I want in on ADEX Tech," I said, once everyone had settled.

One of them, a man named Whitfield who had made his fortune in shipping before pivoting hard into technology, raised an eyebrow. "Your brother's company."

"My brother's company," I agreed. "An AI development firm with more untapped potential than half the tech sector combined, and a CEO too busy managing his personal life to notice the cracks forming in his own boardroom."

I laid it out for them plainly.

ADEX Tech was sitting on technology that could be worth multiples of its current valuation within the next few years if it was handled properly.

Alexander had built something genuinely impressive, I had never denied that. But he was distracted, stretched thin between a collapsing marriage and a company that needed his full attention, and distracted men made room for opportunity even when they didn't mean to.

"I want the three of you to approach him separately," I said. "Express interest in buying significant shares. Let him believe you're each acting on your own behalf, with your own capital, your own ambitions."

Whitfield studied me carefully. "And the money behind these purchases?"

"Comes from me," I said. "Quietly. Through channels none of you need to worry about tracing back."

The room went still for a moment as that settled. None of them objected. People like this rarely objected to opportunities that made them richer without requiring them to take on the risk themselves.

"Timeline," one of the others asked, a sharp eyed woman named Delacroix who had built her fortune in private equity and had never once lost a bet she made on a man's weakness.

"One week," I said. "I want the first conversations with Alexander started by the end of this week. I want shares moving before he has time to realize what's happening underneath him."

They looked struck, but that didn't last for long, they knew what was involved, there was no reason for them to doubt me. We had been business partners for the longest time and this was in their best interest.

I didn't say anything, just stared at them, waiting for their verdict, there was no need to try and persuade them.

They agreed.

We spent another hour structuring the details, making sure everything would look clean on paper, making sure nothing would trace back to me beyond what absolutely had to.

Delacroix asked the question none of the others had bothered to ask. "Why does it matter to you this much? You already have an empire of your own. Why fight your brother for his?"

I looked at her for a long moment before I answered. "Because he was handed something he never had to earn, and he is about to lose it without ever understanding why. I want to be the reason he finally understands."

She didn't push further after that. None of them did. They didn't need to understand my reasons to take my money, and I didn't need them to.

Once they left, I called my lawyer.

Marcus Jones arrived within the hour, already carrying the kind of private agreement I'd asked him to draft weeks ago, back when this was still only a theory I was testing in my own head rather than a plan already in motion.

"This protects your interest entirely," he said, sliding the documents across my desk. "On paper, your three investors hold the shares. In reality, the agreement makes clear that you remain the sole beneficial owner, with full control over any future sale, transfer, or voting rights tied to those shares."

I read through every line twice before I signed it.

One by one, my investors signed beside me, sealing an agreement that would let me quietly swallow my brother's company from the inside without him ever seeing the hand doing it.

It felt good. It felt like the kind of victory I had been building toward for years.

It still didn't feel like enough.

After the lawyer left and the office finally emptied out, I picked up my phone and dialed Talia's number, the urge to hear her voice sitting heavier in my chest than I wanted to admit.

Camille answered instead.

"She's asleep," Camille said. "What did you want me to tell her?"

I opened my mouth and found I had nothing I actually wanted to say through a third party. Everything I wanted to tell Talia needed to be said to her face, not relayed through her godmother over a phone line.

"Nothing," I said. "I just wanted to talk to her. I'll see her in person tonight."

"All right," Camille said, and the call ended.

I sat there a moment longer than I should have, staring at the phone in my hand like it might still ring back with her voice on the other end of it.

What I didn't know, what I couldn't have known sitting in my office that afternoon, was that on the other end of that call, Talia hadn't actually been asleep at all.

She told me later that she'd heard my voice come through on speaker, that she'd shot upright in bed so fast it startled Camille, eager and ready to talk to me, only to realize the call had already ended before she could get a single word out.

I would have given anything to have known that in the moment.

To have stayed on the line one second longer.

Instead I closed my laptop, gathered the signed agreement into a folder that would never see daylight outside my private files, and told myself the day had still gone exactly as I'd planned it.

But the truth was, some part of me had spent the entire drive home that evening replaying the sound of her name in my own mouth, wondering what she would have said if Camille had just put the phone in her hand a second sooner.

I had spent my whole life building things in silence, moving pieces other people couldn't see until it was already too late to stop them. This was the first time silence had ever actually cost me something I wanted.

I was quickly realizing that these emotions I felt for Talia were in fact not tame, I'll need to rein myself in soon.