HIS STRIPPER, HIS WIFE novel Chapter 107

Chapter one hundred and seven

Adrian

By the time I walked back into the office, Victoria was still there, sitting like she owned the place.

“I shouldn’t meet you here,” I said, but she just shifted in the chair and didn’t answer at first.

She stood up slowly and walked toward me, stopping close, too close. She reached out to touch my arm, but I moved back before her hand could land on me.

“I know it will take time for you to ease back into me. Don’t worry, I will be here waiting for you. See you next time,” she said, smiling like she had already won something, and then she turned and walked out.

The moment she left, I dropped into my chair, but my mind wasn’t in the room anymore. It was still stuck on the way Bianca had looked standing in that doorway, pale, holding herself together like she was one wrong move away from falling apart.

I sat there for a while, my fingers hovering over my phone, debating whether to call and ask if she had made it to the hospital. But every time I thought about it, the scene from earlier played back in my head, Victoria pinned against the wall, Bianca’s face when she saw us, I couldn’t bring myself to dial her number. It felt wrong, like I didn’t have the right to check on her after that.

I opened the next file on my desk instead, forcing my eyes to move across the page, trying to focus on numbers that were looking like they meant nothing to me at that moment. I read the same line four times without understanding a single word of it.

Then a notification popped up on my screen, an email forwarded from the secretary. I almost ignored it, but something made me click on it anyway.

“Here we go again,” I muttered under my breath, already expecting another one of those routine memos that filled my inbox every day. It was a letter of excuse, the approved format employees sent in when they needed to leave early or take the day off. I wasn’t even planning to read the details, my eyes were already moving to close the tab, until I saw the name at the top.

Amanda.

Suddenly I found myself paying attention, my eyes moved fast over the words, taking in every line like my life depended on it.

“My close friend is in a tight situation. I have to be there, I’m the only one she has.” I read

I closed the email immediately, What close friend? Bianca didn’t really talk about having close friends outside of Amanda, and Amanda had been with the team all day scouting locations, I remembered that from the mumbled conversation I overheard when Felix mentioned the campaign shoot earlier.

I reached for my phone without thinking twice and dialed Bianca’s number. It rang and rang before going to voicemail. I tried again, it was the same result, the third time, still nothing.

“Pick up, Bianca,” I muttered to the empty office, tapping my fingers against the desk, my leg bouncing under the table in a way it hadn’t done in years, not since I was a nervous teenager waiting for exam results.

I called a fourth time, and just when I was about to give up and toss the phone onto the desk, someone finally picked up. But it wasn’t Bianca’s voice that came through the line.

“Hello, who is this?” a man’s voice asked, distracted, with noise in the background that sounded like machines beeping and people talking over each other.

“This is Adrian, I’m trying to reach Bianca. Is she there? Can I speak with her?” My voice came out louder than I meant it to,

There was a short pause, then the voice came back, and I felt my whole body go cold at what he said. “The owner of this phone was rushed into the emergency ward. I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“Wait, what hospital, what happened, is she okay?” I was already standing up from my chair, my heart now beating very fast, but before I could get another word out, the line went dead.

I picked up my desk phone and called Felix immediately, my hand almost shaking as I dialed the internal line.

“Sir?” Felix answered, his voice calm as always, completely unaware of the storm going on in my chest.

“Right away, sir,” he said, and I could hear him already moving, his voice fading slightly as he must have started making calls of his own.

The next few minutes felt like the longest of my life. I stood by the window, staring out at the traffic below without really seeing it, I thought about how she had looked in the elevator earlier, how she pushed my hand away. I should have noticed sooner, I should have insisted on taking her myself instead of standing there trying to explain Victoria to her when she clearly needed something else entirely.

My phone buzzed on the desk, Felix’s name flashing on the screen with a message. I grabbed it so fast I almost knocked over the cup of coffee sitting beside my laptop. He had sent an address, a general hospital not too far from the office, along with a short note that said the driver who had taken her there had called it in after she collapsed in the back seat.

Collapsed? I didn’t wait another second. I grabbed my car key from the drawer, shoved my phone into my pocket, and walked out of my office so fast that my secretary had to call after me twice before I even registered she was speaking.

“Sir, your two o’clock meeting,” she said, half standing from her seat, clearly confused by the speed at which I was moving.

“Cancel it. Cancel everything for today,” I said without slowing down, I didn’t wait to hear what else she had to say. I was already halfway to the elevator, my mind somewhere else entirely, somewhere far from that building and everything in it.

The drive to the hospital was a fast one and when I finally pulled up outside the hospital, I didn’t even bother parking properly, just left the car close to the entrance with the hazard lights blinking and rushed inside. The smell of antiseptic hit me immediately, with the sound of a machine beeping somewhere down the hallway.

“I hate hospitals” I said to myself as I walked straight to the reception desk, my breathing still uneven from how fast I had moved.

“Good afternoon, I’m looking for a patient that was brought in a short while ago. Her name is Bianca,” I said, my voice coming out rushed, barely giving the nurse behind the desk time to look up properly.

She glanced at her screen, typing something in slowly, too slow for how fast my heart was beating in that moment. She frowned slightly at whatever she saw on the screen, then looked back up at me with a serious look.

“And you are?” she asked carefully, her eyes studying me like she was trying to decide how much she was allowed to say.

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could get the words out, I noticed her eyes moved, looking past me toward the hallway behind the reception desk, toward a set of double doors that had just swung open.