TRUST

ADELINE'S POV

I have two days. Two days until the signing of the contract. Liam dropped by Adrian's place yesterday and dropped off the modified contract. It's in my possession now and all I have to do is find a way to switch it when the time comes. With Dante's and Liam's help of course. Dante told me not to worry about the switch and that when the time comes, he'll know exactly what to do and I basically trust Dante with my life so I know everything will be taken care of.

Today I need to look for a way to get into Adrian's safe in his study. I managed to grab Adrian's keys when he was hugging me goodbye today and now all I have to do is get past the one guar that has been standing in front of the study all day. It's the guard that I punched in the face the other day and I'm hoping he has learned his lesson on whether or not he can tell me what to do.

I walk downstairs confidently and towards the guard. I stop immediately in front of him and raise my brows at him in a condescending and confrontational way. He looks at me with fear in his eyes because he knows he cannot hurt me if he wants to live and he's hoping I don't punch him again.

"You look scared. Good." I say to him with a smirk on my face. "Let me through please. I dropped my earrings in there the other day and I need to get them back. Not that I have to explain myself to you but I'm particularly choosing peace today."

I end my request with a sweet smile as I dangle the keys on my index finger. I need to get in and out before Adrian realizes his keys are missing. Knowing Adrian and how paranoid he is, he'll take a U-turn and come back here in a jiffy just to find his keys.

And I'll be waiting for him at the door with an innocent look on my face to tell him he dropped them in my room.

"The boss like it when everyone stays out of his study. Especially when he's not here." The guard says standing his ground.

"Oh yeah? Well then, I guess I should just call him and tell him that one of his guards is being very disrespectful to me right now. I wonder what he might have to say about that? I wonder what he'll do to you?" I grab my phone out of my pocket and act like I want o call Adrian and the guard immediately steps out of my way.

Adrian probably thinks that his guards being scared of him is a good thing but it is that same fear that keeps pushing them to disobey and lie to him. I went out without supervision the other day and they couldn't tell him because he would have killed them, and now I'm about to step into his study and I bet this guard still won't tell him because of fear of what Adrian might do to him.

I guess people fearing you isn't always a good thing.

I step into the study and shut the door behind me and immediately get to work. All I need to do is figure out the combination of the safe. I try Adrian's birthday first obviously but it doesn't work. I guess he's not as stupid as he looks. But people like Adrian never set random passwords so I just need to brainstorm and think about all the things I've learnt about him these past few weeks and I know I'll find something.

I pace back and forth in the massive study and then an idea pops up in my head. Adrian loves the color red and apparently, it's his favorite color. He doesn't particularly wear red but he says red is a color to be weary of. When people see red, they think of sexy, hot, danger.

Red is the first color of the rainbow. His favorite color being red is the first personal thing I learnt about him. So, my guess is the first digit out of four to unlock his safe is the number '1'.

But that leaves three more numbers. Adrian loves money, I suddenly think. He took me to a restaurant once and the bill was seven hundred and fifty-nine dollars, $759. Adrian decided to pay eight hundred dollars, $800. For some unknown reason, Adrian says he thinks every number should end with perfect zeros. He hates decimals and fractions and he hates seeing other numbers behind anything concerning money apart from zero.

It's a stupid code for a safe, but it's also a code that no one would ever think of. Confident with my answer, I enter '1000' as the password to the safe and it opens easily with a click.

"Fucking dumbass." I giggle to myself and my eyes widen with happiness and relief when I take out the contents of the safe. I don't even have time to red through them but I know they must be important so I take pictures of every single thing I find, shove them back orderly into the safe.

I compose myself and then I walk out of the safe smiling at the guard as I hold up a pair of earrings that I already had in my pocket before entering the study. Just as I walk out of the study, I hear a car pull up in the driveway and of course, it's Adrian. I quickly walk out before he can walk inside and plant a kiss on his cheeks.

"You dropped these." I say in a sweet voice. He lets out a breath of relief and pulls me in for a hug.

"You have no idea how many lives you just saved." He says quit seriously and my stomach churns in an uncomfortable way.

"Thank you, baby. I would love to stay and chat with you but I have to head back now. I only came back because I was looking for these." He dangles the keys in my face with a satisfied smirk before turning on his heels and getting into his car again.

I've been so lucky since I started lying and it makes me wonder for just how much longer luck will be on my side. I run upstairs for some privacy and I send everything I filmed to Dante before going through them myself. I don't send them to Liam. I want see how bad the evidence is before getting Liam involved.

As soon as I send the images to Dante, he calls me before I even get to take a look at them.

"Have you seen those already?" He asks quickly with a strained voice.

"No. I was just about to-"

"Don't." He says firmly.

"What? Dante why? I have to know what Adrian is up to-"

"Just please Adeline. Don't look at those. At least not yet." He pleads.

"Dante, if I can handle Adrian being a racist murderer, I think I'll be able to handle whatever these images tell me." I say.

"Promise me please. Promise me you won't look at those images. Not until after the signing of the contract. I know this sounds crazy but please baby I need you to trust me okay? I need you to be in the right state of mind on the signing day and if you look at those images, it'll ruin everything. Just give me until after the signing and we can look at them together. Okay?"

I hesitate before answering him. He sounds like he's hiding something from me but I don't know what. I take in a deep breath, sigh and finally reply him.

"Okay. I promise. I wont look." I agree, but only because he sounds desperate and he might be right. Seeing something triggering in the images I took might set me off balance. I was able to read a few words while I was taking the pictures but I was in such a haste that I didn't really know what I was seeing. If Dante is this worried, then it has to be something extremely bad.

"You haven't sent these to Liam yet, have you?" Dante asks me.

"No. I didn't want to involve him in case what I found was too dangerous." I say.

"Good. Good. That's good. I promise everything will make sense once the signing is over. We'll finally be rid of him. I promise princess." Dante says in a reassuring tone.

However, I can't help the shiver that runs up my spine. It's a really bad feeling. A feeling that tells me that whatever Dante and I started when we decided to go along with my plan, that this is only the beginning.

I trust Dante. Although I've always known he was hiding something from me, I trust him with my life and I have this strange feeling that whatever it is he's hiding, I'll find out once Adrian is behind bars. I just hope it's something that I can handle, because I don't know if my mind and heart can take anymore stressful information.