Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Adrian Pierce and I had a four-year relationship no one could ever know about.
He paid my tuition. I slept with him.
The day it ended, he bit down on a cigarette after sex and said, “I’m getting engaged. Be good about it. Don’t make a scene.”
I nodded obediently. “Don’t worry. I’m going abroad for grad school.”
A flicker of displeasure crossed his face, then he let out a soft, mocking laugh.
“Probably for the best. After four years, I’m ready for a change anyway.”
Years later, we met again.
He was my boss.
In public, he acted calm and detached.
In private, he cornered me in a dark hallway and pushed a hotel key card into my hand.
“One more time?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Sorry. I’ve changed my tastes. Men over twenty aren’t really my type anymore.”
At the company’s corporate gala, I never expected to run into Adrian Pierce.
He sat at the head table, composed and impossibly polished, every inch the heir to an empire. Around him clustered smiling faces and eager flattery.
My director practically dragged me forward.
“Claire, this is the boss who acquired our company. Opportunities like this don’t come twice. Go say hello.”
My fingers tightened around my wine glass. They were cold.
“Mr. Pierce, this is the manager of our planning department,” Director Lee said with a broad smile. “An Ivy League talent. Excellent at her job—”
Only then did Adrian lift his eyes.
His gaze skimmed over my face, paused for the briefest moment, then moved on.
“Is that so?”
He gave a quiet laugh.
As if he doubted the packaging.
After all, in his eyes, I had once been nothing but a country girl too poor to stay in school.
Director Lee shot me a look. “Claire, come on. A toast to Mr. Pierce.”
I bit down hard and started to raise my glass—
“No need.”
Adrian’s voice cut through the moment.
“She’s allergic to alcohol.”
My chest tightened.
I remembered a night years ago, when his friends had been pushing drinks on him. In a panic, I had taken a glass for him instead. My face had flared hot the second I swallowed it.
He had pinched my burning cheek and laughed.
“Idiot. You turn red after one drink. That’s an alcohol allergy, got it?”
“Don’t drink when I’m not around.”
Director Lee froze. “Mr. Pierce… you know each other?”
Adrian said nothing.
He would never acknowledge a relationship like that.
And I had no wish to bring it up either.
So I smiled and smoothed it over for him.
“Mr. Pierce’s family sponsored my education back when I was in school. I’ve always been very grateful.”
I lifted my glass and drained it in one swallow.
“This one’s to you.”
His brow tightened, almost too slightly to notice.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
The truth was, in the years he’d been gone, I’d had plenty to drink.
Bit by bit, I’d built up a tolerance.
As for that allergy… I wasn’t that fragile anymore.
He looked at me, something in his expression dimming.
Then he turned away and said to Director Lee, “Claire can be stubborn. Please be patient with her.”
Director Lee nodded at once. “Of course, of course. Claire’s one of our best people.”
I stopped listening after that.
I muttered something about the restroom and escaped.
Out in the hallway, a few coworkers crowded around me.
“Claire, that was Adrian Pierce. How do you even know someone like him?”
“I heard his fiancée’s a Sinclair. When are they getting married?”
“No idea.” I shook my head. “I only knew the Pierces because they helped pay for my schooling.”
I truly hadn’t expected the man who bought our company to be Adrian.
His whole life had been mapped out in his father’s image, and yet somehow he’d gone into business.
The others kept pressing.
“Claire, he must’ve been one of those campus heartthrobs back in the day, right?”
“Did he date anyone? I bet tons of girls were after him.”
I looked over at that distant figure.
So many years had passed, and he was still the kind of man who drew every eye in the room.
I first met Adrian Pierce in the fall, ten years ago.
He came to our town with his father for a charity outreach trip.
My father was drunk that day. He tore my textbooks to pieces and tried to force me to quit school and marry some man he’d picked out for me.
I was in the yard, clutching the ruined books and crying, when I looked up and saw a boy standing at the gate.
He was beside a black sedan, watching me with a frown.
He was wearing spotless white sneakers.
They looked absurd against all that yellow dirt.
I glanced down and pulled my feet back, trying to hide my worn-out shoes with the soles coming loose.
I had never seen a boy that beautiful before.
So the princelings from novels really did exist.
Maybe out of pride, maybe because it would have looked bad otherwise, his father took me in.
I rode in their car all the way from that poor rural town to the city.
Adrian sat there frowning the entire time, openly displeased.
He probably thought this was the sort of problem that could be solved with money, and instead his father had brought home dead weight.
What he didn’t know was that no matter how much money was given, it never would have made it into my hands.
That was how I ended up at the Pierce family estate.
His parents were both busy, so most of the time the house held only Adrian and the housekeeper.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
On my first day there, he tossed me a pair of sneakers and told me not to dirty the floors.
They were light and pretty, but one size too small.
I couldn’t bear not to wear them. So I forced my feet into them and endured the pain, day after day.
At school, Adrian was the center of everything. Great grades, easy charm, and a face girls couldn’t stop staring at.
We were like two parallel lines.
He belonged in the sky. I was down in the dirt.
Whenever we happened to run into each other, I only ever walked faster.
Because he had told me before: don’t tell anyone you know me.
The girl he liked was Vanessa Sinclair.
A girl as dazzling as he was.
They were perfectly matched—same world, same shine, same future. Even teachers praised them as the golden couple.
I lived in the dorms at school and only returned to the Pierce estate during breaks, to the small room next to the housekeeper’s.
Most days, I lived cautiously, carefully trying to please Adrian.
I ran errands for him. Did his laundry. Cooked for him.
At once proving I was useful and making myself as invisible as possible.
My chance to stay in school had come too hard to risk. I was terrified of upsetting him and being thrown out.
I was like a thief, peeking into a life that had never belonged to me.
He had everything—an unbeatable family name, a flawless face.
To everyone else, he was heaven’s favorite son, too perfect to touch.
Until one day, I accidentally caught him smoking in the
The year we graduated college, his family started screening suitable women for him to marry.
The last time happened at his apartment.
He was rough that night. Wild, almost.
When it was over, he leaned against the headboard, lit a cigarette, and said, “I’m getting engaged.”
I had my back to him as I got dressed.
My hands paused for half a second.
I already knew. Vanessa Sinclair was back in town.
The Sinclairs had been bleeding money for years, and they had taken the initiative to propose a family merger marriage.
The one that got away had returned. A stand-in like me was naturally supposed to exit the stage.
He said, “Be good. Don’t make this difficult.”
I nodded obediently. “Okay.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t cause problems for you.”
He wrapped his arms around me from behind and fastened my bra for me himself.
“That obedient?”
I reached over, picked up the gold bar from the nightstand, and slipped it into my bag.
Two hundred grams. Heavy in a very real, very honest way.
I smiled a little. “I got into Stanford. I’m leaving in a few days.”
The man behind me went still.
He stubbed out his cigarette, and his expression changed instantly.
“How do I not know about this?”
He’d been too busy going out with his friends, too busy getting back together with Vanessa Sinclair.
Of course he knew nothing about my life.
“Claire.” His voice turned cold. “Who said you were allowed to leave?”
I turned to look at him.