Chapter 2 Adam Steel

"Responsibility is a noose dressed like a necktie."

The suit itched.

Not because it didn't fit, it was tailored to my frame so precisely I could hear my tailor whispering "perfection" with each stitch but because it represented everything I hated about this week. This engagement. This charade.

A celebration of a mistake wrapped in roses, diamonds, and empty champagne flutes.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Thirty-nine.

Soon to be forty.

Old enough to know better.

Too tired to pretend I didn't.

I adjusted the cuffs of my black shirt and buttoned my jacket with a quiet exhale. My shoulders filled it out like armor. People always said I looked like the Steel brother who had his shit together, sharp blue eyes, neatly combed hair, a jaw cut from discipline. The face that screamed: he's the one to fear at the negotiation table.

But behind that, behind the stoic silence, was a man who'd fucked up in the worst way.

Charlotte.

God. Even thinking her name made my stomach turn.

I didn't love her. I never did. I tolerated her, the way a man tolerates a buzz in the background annoying, but bearable. I never even touched her until the night I made the biggest mistake of my life.

A moment of weakness.

A night of guilt.

And now? Twins. Engagement.

Headlines.

Christopher had the gall to toast me at dinner yesterday. Told me I was "owning up."

But owning up doesn't mean being happy about it.

I didn't love Charlotte.

Hell, I didn't even like her.

But I wasn't a man who ran from consequences. I stood up. Straightened my back. And walked into the fire I lit with my own hands.

I poured myself a glass of bourbon and stood by the window of my high-rise apartment. The view was beautiful. Empty. Like her eyes when she told me she was pregnant.

She cried. I didn't.

I felt nothing. Just the click of a cage closing over my life.

Jordan was coming back. That'd be a party.

My younger brother, sharper than a blade and twice as dangerous. He never minced words, sugarcoated nothing. And he hated Charlotte with the clarity that only Jordan could possess.

Called her a "two-timing snake"to her face once.

Didn't apologize either.

Said it with a cigarette hanging from his lips and walked away like it was nothing.

I envied him sometimes.

His freedom. His brutality.

He didn't care what people thought. He didn't bow.

But me?

I was the eldest.

The one who held the name up.

The one who cleaned the mess.

And now, I was cleaning my own.

I finished the bourbon and placed the glass down hard enough to crack the silence.

Then my mind, as it always did when I was alone... drifted to her.

Fay Wolfgang.

Goddamn.

That woman.

She had this way of looking at you like she saw all the parts you kept hidden.

No judgement. No agenda.

Just pure understanding.

We were friends first. Colleagues. Collaborators. But under all that, there was something else brewing. Something real.

She told me once, in that low, quiet voice of hers, "If we ever want to explore something more, I'd like that. Just say the word."

It wasn't flirtation. It wasn't desperation.

It was honesty.

And how did I repay that?

By getting Charlotte pregnant two weeks later.

I'll never forget her expression when I told her.

The flicker in her eyes. That split-second of disbelief before she swallowed it.

She nodded once, smiled softly, and said, "Congratulations."

That word stung more than a slap.

She walked away, and she never looked back.

Didn't call. Didn't text.

God, I missed her.

I missed her laughter.

I missed the way she challenged me, held me to standards pretended ited didn't exist.

With her, I didn't have to be the perfect Steel brother.

I could just be... Adam.

Now? I was engaged to a woman I couldn't trust to hand me the right coffee order.

I looked down at my phone. No new messages.

Not from Fay. Not ever again.

I thought about calling her.

Texting.

Saying something. Anything.

But what would I say?

"Hey, I know I blew up the possibility of a future between us, but I miss the way you made me feel alive?"

Pathetic.

She deserved better than apologies.

Better than me.

Christopher had told me once, "You didn't just lose a woman. You lost the only real one you had."

He was right.

Charlotte was all surface. Gloss and games. The kind of woman who knew which fork to use at a gala but didn't know how to hold a genuine conversation unless it involved gossip and status.

She wanted the Steel name.

She got it.

But me?

I wanted peace.

A woman who didn't want to control me. Who saw past the suits, past the power.

And that woman was gone.

Because of me.

I checked my reflection one last time. I looked like I had it all together.

As always.

The world would never know otherwise.

But inside?

There was a war.

A slow, smoldering battle between responsibility and regret.

One I was losing more every day.

Jordan would be here soon.

He'd probably rip Charlotte to shreds the moment he saw her.

He never held his tongue.

And maybe... maybe I needed that.

Someone to remind me that this wasn't love.

That I didn't belong here.

That I'd thrown away the one thing that ever felt real.

Fay.

Her name echoed like a curse and a prayer.

She wasn't just a chapter I lost.

She was the book I should've written.

But I didn't.

I closed it.

And now I was stuck rereading the wrong story.