A D R I A N

The boardroom smells like glass cleaner and money.

Elara sits two seats away, spine straight, eyes colder than the air conditioning. I want to reach across the mahogany table and wrap her hand in mine, but this isn’t the place. Not yet.

Arnold Chase, puffed-up investor with a gold pen and no soul, is holding court. The lawsuit sits printed in front of each board member like it’s gospel.

“She endangered guests. That CPR scene went viral for all the wrong reasons. Panic on the boardwalk. Bad optics. Do you know how many clients canceled?”

“Do you know how many children drown in silence?” Elara fires back before anyone else can. Her voice slices through the room.

Marina winces. Arnold scowls. I sat back and let her speak.

She doesn’t need saving. But I’ll burn down the room if they try to punish her for doing what none of them could: save a life.

Arnold doesn’t flinch. He’s too rich too.

“I sympathize, of course,” he says. “But guests don’t come to Seraphine for… triage theater. They want assurance. Not adrenaline. We’ve sold them moonlight serenity.”

“And safety,” I cut in. “Which you can’t promise without the occasional, what was it? High-drama resuscitation?”

Marina glances at me sharply. “Adrian..”

“No.” My voice lands flat, final. “We are not throwing our lead doctor to the wolves because she did her job better than expected.”

The room stills. It’s the first time I’ve used her title in public. The word our echoes harder than it should.

Across the table, Elara shifts. I don’t look at her. I feel her.

Marina recovers, flipping her tablet. “This isn’t about blame. It’s about optics. We’ve got a lantern festival in less than a week. This lawsuit, if it leaks..”

“If it leaks,” I say coolly, “then we show the footage of her saving that boy.”

“Brand damage..”

“Then rebrand,” I snapped. “You’re always saying a crisis is just a pivot with better lighting. So light the damn pivot.”

Arnold leans forward. “Adrian. If your personal investment in Dr. Quinn is affecting your decision-making..”

My pulse doesn’t spike. I tilt my head.

“I’ll pretend you didn’t imply that a woman saving lives on my island needs defending because I might want her in my bed.”

Silence. The kind that tastes like copper and warning.

I lean back, smiling without heat.

“Next topic?”

The agenda moves on. Logistics. Catering updates. Elara doesn’t speak, but she doesn’t shrink either.

When the topic circles back to medical protocols, she leans forward, slides her folder across the table, and clicks her pen once. Calm. Lethal.

“The emergency drills have been documented,” she says evenly. “Staff completion rate is ninety-six percent. Safety upgrades installed. I’ve submitted the incident logs and procedure compliance forms. You’ll find the timestamps noted on page three.”

She doesn’t look at me. Not until the moment I reach for the folder.

My hand brushes hers.

Not a graze. Not an accident. Intentional. Fingertips to the inside of her wrist, just once, just long enough to say what I won’t in front of the board.

I trust you.
I’ve chosen you.
You’re not alone.

She doesn’t flinch. But her pulse jumps under my touch. I slide the folder toward me, open to page three, and start reading aloud.

“Guest vitals stabilized in under two minutes. CPR initiated on-scene. Full recovery confirmed within six hours. Zero fatalities. No ICU transfers. No deaths to stain your lantern festival press kit.”

Marina looks like she swallowed seawater. Arnold drums a single finger on the table.

But I don’t care. Because Elara’s still beside me.
Still refusing to shrink.
Still electric under my hand, even now.

I close the folder.

Every eye shifts to me. Waiting.

Isabella isn’t here, but I feel her presence. Like a chess piece just out of view.

“I used to believe safety was assumed,” I began. “That luxury meant nothing bad could happen if we just built things beautiful enough. Hired the right staff. Managed the optics.”

Marina stiffens. She knows what I’m about to do.

“But that’s a lie. A costly one. And we’ve been paying for it in inches cut rope, missing shipments, blank boxes where emergency gear should be. Someone is bleeding us from the inside, and they’re counting on us being too focused on the lighting to notice the cracks in the floor.”

I don’t look at Elara. I feel her, every sharp edge of her, every quiet fire she’s kept lit in this building long before I caught up.

“What Dr. Quinn has done,” I say, steady, “is force us to see the cracks before they become graves. That’s not ‘panic.’ That’s prevention. That’s leadership.”

Marina interjects, “Adrian..”

I raise a hand. Not to silence her. To remind her I’m done playing nice.

“I hired her to manage the clinic. I didn’t expect her to teach this island how to survive. But that’s what she’s done. And if you think I’m going to let this board or this lawsuit gut that work because some VIP’s champagne hour got interrupted, then you’ve forgotten who the hell I am.”

The silence that follows is thick. Not shocked. Just… waiting to see if I’ll back down.

I don’t.

“And one more thing,” I add. “You want to fire her? You’ll need my signature.”

I lean back in my chair, fold my hands like I’ve already won.

“Good luck getting it.”

The doors hiss shut behind us. The boardroom echoes fade into polished marble silence.

Elara’s heels click once, then stop. I stop too.

She’s just behind me. Close enough that I feel her breath at my nape.

“That was reckless,” she says, voice low. Not angry. Not soft.

“Was it?” I ask without turning.

“You didn’t just shield me. You dared them to come for you.”

“They already were.”

Silence. Then the whisper of her footsteps, closing the distance.

“I didn’t need defending,” she says, and this time there’s steel under the softness. “I had it handled.”

I turn then. Slowly.

She’s fierce in the face, bright in the eyes. Her pulse is still high, I can see it beating just under the skin at her neck.

“I know you didn’t need it,” I say quietly. “I needed to do it anyway.”

The air between us stretches, electric and taut.

Her hand lifts like she might touch my chest. She doesn’t. But the ghost of the gesture burns.

“Don’t do that again,” she murmurs. “Don’t burn yourself just because I’m used to fire.”

I don’t promise I won’t.

I just look at her. And say, voice low enough to crack something between us, “They don’t scare me. But the thought of them silencing you? That does.”

Her breath hitches. One step closer, and we’d collide.

But the elevator dings. The moment shatters.

Ethan bursts out, eyes wild.

“You need to come now,” he pants. “Lantern Tide logistics have someone wiped the grid.”

I follow Ethan at a dead sprint, Elara beside me, not a step behind.

The operations floor is chaotic.

Screens flicker. Staff shout over each other. One of the coordinators is in tears.

“The grid’s corrupted,” someone yells. “We can’t track the lantern delivery crates, half the shipments rerouted, some marked fulfilled that never arrived.”

A wall display glitches, flashing red boxes where green should be.

“Backup?” I demand.

“Offline. Someone spoofed admin access and wiped the redundancies.”

I turn to Elara. Her arms are crossed tight, mouth grim.

“This isn’t a glitch,” she says quietly. “It’s a strategy.”

Ethan nods. “Timed too perfectly. The festival’s five days out, vendors are overloaded, any delay now is catastrophic.”

I drag my hands through my hair, adrenaline slamming into cold clarity.

Lantern Tide isn’t just a party. It’s our crown jewel. The thing that keeps Seraphine alive, profitable, respected.

And someone just lit a fuse under it.

“They knew exactly where to hit,” Elara says. “Not the glitz. The bones.”

The map flickers again. Then dies.

Total blackout.

The room exhales like a held breath breaking.

I step forward slowly, staring at the dead grid like it’s mocking me.

This isn’t sabotage.

It’s war.

Behind me, Elara murmurs, “It’s starting.”

And for once, I don’t try to control the fear curling in my gut.

I just nod.