Chapter 6 - Would You Like to Repeat That?
Adrian did not look down at the money on the floor.
Slowly, with terrifying, unhurried grace, he turned his head toward Nathan. The warmth that had illuminated his amber-gray eyes when looking at Claire vanished in an instant, replaced by a bottomless, glacial abyss. The atmospheric pressure in the aisle plummeted another ten degrees.
Adrian stood at his full height of six-foot-three. He towered over Nathan, his broad chest and tailored shoulders completely dominating the narrow corridor between the wooden fruit stands. The faint, metallic gleam of his platinum watch caught the warm overhead lights as he tucked his left hand casually into the pocket of his trousers.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't curse. He spoke in a tone that was conversational, clear, and perfectly calm—the exact tone a man might use before ordering a building cleared or a ship scuttled.
"Would you like to repeat that?" Adrian asked.
The words hung in the air like razor wire.
Nathan flinched, an involuntary physical reaction, his boots scraping backward against the polished concrete. "I... Mr. Moretti, I didn't... I had no idea..."
"You had no idea," Adrian repeated smoothly, tilting his head a fraction of an inch to the side, his gray eyes analyzing Nathan’s trembling posture with the detached curiosity of a butcher studying a side of beef. "You were waving paper in her face. You were speaking about her position to raise a child."
"I was just—we were just old acquaintances, sir," Nathan stammered, sweat breaking out across his forehead, glistening beneath the store lights. He wiped his palms against his navy trousers, desperate to project composure, but his voice cracked pitifully. "A misunderstanding. Truly. I was simply offering some... financial assistance. Out of old courtesy."
"Courtesy," Adrian murmured, the word rolling off his tongue like velvet-wrapped iron.
He took one single step forward.
Nathan reflexively recoiled, colliding hard with the edge of an artisan olive oil display. Glass bottles clinked warningly against each other, the sound sharp and fragile in the dead silence. Nathan’s fiancée whimpered softly, pressing her back against a shelf of organic pasta sauces, her diamond ring catching the light as she shielded her face.
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"My woman does not require your charity, Mr. Sterling," Adrian said, his voice dropping into that dark, lethal register that made captains of industry sweat through their collars. "And if you ever raise your voice in her presence again, if you ever step within fifty feet of her cart, her apartment, or her breath... I will ensure that your father’s logistics firm loses every crane, every berth, and every operating license from here to Jersey City."
Nathan’s jaw hung slack, his breath coming in shallow, hyperventilating hitches. "Yes, sir. Of course. We’re leaving. We’re leaving right now."
