Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
In a private members’ club, the crystal chandelier spilled a haze of suggestive light across the room. The air was thick with aged whiskey and the cloying sweetness of expensive perfume.
Adrian Sterling lounged against the sofa, a cigarette balanced between his fingers. Through the curl of smoke, the face that had made countless women fall for him looked even lazier, more dangerously handsome. Vanessa Cole, draped in a champagne slip dress, sat on his lap with all the confidence of someone who knew exactly what she was doing. Her fingertips brushed the line of his throat as she purred, “Adrian, does your girlfriend really not care? If I were her, I wouldn’t be able to stand all these women hanging around you.”
The room erupted in laughter.
One of the men slapped Adrian on the shoulder and teased, “Only you could keep Claire Bennett that obedient. Three years now, and no matter how late you stay out or how many women rotate through your side, she never even calls to check on you. That’s not a girlfriend. That’s a saint.”
“Obedient?” Adrian let out a ring of smoke, smugness plain in his eyes. “She’s in love with me to the point she can’t leave. If I say one, she’d never dare say two. If I tell her to wait, she won’t move an inch before I say so.”
Vanessa curled deeper into his arms on purpose, her lips almost brushing his ear. “Then do you love her?”
Adrian gave a short, amused scoff. He didn’t answer directly. Instead, he pinched Vanessa’s chin and said in a flippant tone, “A woman who knows how to behave can stay a little longer.”
At that moment, the private room door opened softly.
Claire Bennett stood in the doorway with a black document envelope in hand—the contract Adrian had been in such a rush that morning he’d forgotten to take with him. Her appearance silenced the room for a few brief seconds. Every eye turned toward her, eager and entertained, waiting to see a scene.
Vanessa lifted her chin provocatively, looped her arms around Adrian’s neck, and kissed his cheek like a declaration of war, leaving behind a faint lipstick mark.
Adrian didn’t push her away. He only lifted a brow at Claire and spoke as casually as if he were addressing household staff.
“Leave it there. You can go.”
Claire’s gaze passed over the lipstick on his cheek without lingering. No pause. No flicker of emotion. She walked over, set the envelope on the coffee table, and said in a voice as still as dead water, “Don’t forget to sign it. It has to be delivered to the other party before three this afternoon.”
“Yeah, got it.” Adrian waved her off impatiently. “Go on. Don’t kill the mood.”
Claire said nothing else. She turned and left.
Her heels made no sound against the carpet, as if she had never entered the room at all.
Only after the door shut did someone mutter in disbelief, “Jesus. Is Claire made of stone? She can put up with even that?”
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
“What’s there to put up with?” Adrian crushed out his cigarette and picked up the envelope, flipping through it with open contempt. “She knows exactly where she stands. Without me, she’s nothing. After the Bennett family went bankrupt, the fact that she got to stay by my side was already more than she deserved.”
No one saw Claire after she stepped out of the club.
In the cutting night wind, she pulled a slim menthol cigarette from her bag. It took three tries to get the lighter to catch. When she finally inhaled, the smoke hit her lungs with a sharp, needling burn.
It wasn’t that she minded.
She simply did not care.
For three years, all that gentleness, patience, and utter compliance had been an act she had performed with painstaking precision. She played the role perfectly. Adrian enjoyed the performance. Everyone around them believed she loved him desperately.
Only Claire knew the truth.
The man she had loved had never been Adrian Sterling.
It was only his profile—so painfully similar, by seven parts out of ten, to Ethan Rivers.
And this performance was almost over.
Adrian discovered the secret account by accident.
That night, Claire had worked late into the evening and fallen asleep at the desk in the study. Her smartphone was still lit beside her, unlocked.
Adrian had come home after another round of social drinking. At first, he only meant to wake her.
Then his eyes drifted to the screen.
It was an old social media account, long abandoned. But the profile picture was Claire with another man.
In the photo, Claire was smiling so brightly her eyes curved with it, her arms wrapped around the man’s shoulders as she leaned against his back. The delight and trust in her expression were so vivid, so unguarded, that Adrian had never seen that version of her before.
The man’s profile was clean-cut and striking, his features composed, his presence quiet and steady. He did, in fact, resemble Adrian a little—but where Adrian carried polish and edge, this man had a depth of calm that Adrian had never possessed.
Almost against his own will, Adrian tapped into the account.
There were no dramatic declarations, no polished captions. Just scraps of ordinary life, one post after another. The timeline ended five years ago.
“Today Ethan spent twenty whole minutes talking to a girl from student government about work! I’m so mad. Can he seriously not tell she likes him? He’d better wash my socks tonight to make up for it.”
“Ethan made his first real money from his startup and bought me a lipstick—the exact shade I casually mentioned before! How is he this good to me? I have to be good to him from now on.”
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
“Had a fight with Ethan. He actually raised his voice at me. But the way he coaxed me afterward was so cute… fine, I forgive him. I love him, so of course I should accept everything about him—except him getting too close to other girls.”
There was a video too, the image a little shaky.
Onscreen, Claire was pouting at the camera, her eyes rimmed red, like a small, offended cat. From behind the camera came a man’s voice, gentle, amused, helpless in the way only someone deeply fond could be.
“How are you this jealous? All I did was pick up a notebook for a classmate.”
“That’s different,” Claire shot back without a shred of guilt, her voice bright and fierce all at once. “If I get mad, it’s because I love you. If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t care who you talked to or who you helped. Ethan Rivers, listen to me. From now on, you are not allowed to be nice to other girls. All your niceness belongs to me.”
The Claire in the video was petty, jealous, unreasonable even.
Nothing like the Claire now—calm, composed, never complaining, so emotionally steady that even watching him kiss another woman had left her unmoved.
They were like two completely different people.
Adrian’s fingers went rigid around the phone. It felt as if an invisible hand had closed around his heart and kept tightening, pain spreading through his chest in sharp, crowded waves.
He had always believed Claire’s gentleness, her patience, her utter willingness to give way to him, came from loving him so much she had lowered herself into the dust for his sake. He had enjoyed that effortless devotion, squandered her tolerance without restraint, even taken pride in it—showing off to others as if his ability to keep her by his side said something admirable about him.
But now he understood.
It wasn’t that she never got angry. It wasn’t that she had no temper.
It was just that none of those intense emotions had ever belonged to him.
All her tolerance toward him had come from not caring.
Just as all his recklessness with her had come from the certainty that she would never leave.
The study was warm, overheated even, but Adrian felt cold to the bone.
He looked at Claire asleep at the desk, her head resting on her arms, a faint crease between her brows as though she were trapped in a bad dream. He had looked at this face for three years. He knew every line of it.
And yet in that moment, she felt like a stranger.
He suddenly remembered how every time he came home reeking of alcohol and another woman’s perfume, she never asked where he had been or who he had been with. She would only hand him a bowl of hangover remedy soup in silence.
Every time he forgot their anniversary—or even her birthday—she would only smile and say, “It’s okay. I forgot too.”