DOMINIC

I was not a man who cared much for love. But loyalty. Loyalty I cared about.

I had come from a world where a man could be smiling at you one minute and slipping a knife between your ribs the next. My father had learned that the hard way. I had learned it watching him.

So I trusted no one. I moved carefully. I kept my circle small and my mouth shut.

And somehow, Seraphine had slipped through all of it.

To flush out the men who had wanted my father dead, I had to disappear in plain sight. Live small. Live quiet. Be the kind of man no one watched twice. The easiest way to do that was to get married. A wife. A boring job. A boring life. No one suspects a boring man.

Almost three years ago, I walked into a bar.

I saw her first.

Three women at a table, laughing about something I could not hear. One of them caught my eye. Soft features. Quiet smile. The kind of woman who looked like she did not know what she did to a room.

Celeste.

She had whispered something to her friend and they had all giggled. I knew they were talking about me. I had been about to walk over.

Then Seraphine cut across the floor.

Bold smile. Eyes that knew what they were doing. By the time she was done introducing herself, Celeste was gone from the bar. And from my mind.

I went home with Seraphine that night. She fit the role I needed. Loud enough to be seen, shallow enough to not ask questions, beautiful enough that no one wondered why I had picked her. I asked her out. I erased the other woman from my memory.

I made my choice.

Six months in, Seraphine could not stop talking about her best friend Celeste’s wedding. Some millionaire named Julian. A real catch. A big deal.

Seraphine wanted that life. She told me so. Often.

I told her to give me three years.

Apparently, she did not love me enough to wait quietly. Sometimes she complained. She sulked. She made scenes. But she stayed. And I appreciated her for that.

We got married almost two years later.

Nine months into the marriage, I found out she was sleeping with Julian.

Three months ago.

I had been so sure she was loyal. That was the joke of it. I had built my whole calculation on the fact that Seraphine, for all her faults, would not betray me. She was too lazy. Too comfortable. Too in love with the future I had promised her.

I had been wrong.

Once I knew, I started seeing all the rest of it. The old absences. The cold nights. The way she had started flinching from my hands months before I noticed. Excuses to skip touch. And when she did finally let me have her, she acted like she was doing me a favor.

After I found out, I stopped trying to touch her. She seemed relieved. She did not reach for me either.

Then I started watching.

Her mother knew. Her brother knew. When Sera said she was visiting one of them, and I called to check, they covered for her without missing a beat. Julian was spending money on her, and she was spending it on them. Designer bags for her mother. A new watch for her brother. The whole family was in on it.

The whole family was the same.

I started keeping evidence. Quietly. Carefully.

I had planned to hand her the divorce papers today. No matter where she was. No matter who she was with.

Two days ago I changed the plan.

Because Sera kept going to Celeste’s house. Smiling in Celeste’s kitchen. Hugging her. Calling her sister. And then fucking Celeste’s husband in Celeste’s own bed.

Celeste did not know.

The world thought Julian was a saint. Pictures of him bringing her flowers. Pictures of him kissing her forehead. The internet called her the luckiest woman alive.

I had never cared enough about Julian to bother with him.

Two days ago, I decided I would tear his mask off. Before I walked away from Sera for good, I would show Celeste who her husband really was. Petty, maybe. But satisfying. And from what I had discovered about Celeste, once she saw the proof, the marriage was over.

What I had not counted on was Celeste.

What I had not counted on was her looking me in the eye and suggesting we play the same game they were playing.

What kind of man would have said no to that?

Celeste was beautiful. She covered too much, dressed too modestly, hid behind her husband’s name. But I had seen her in that bar three years ago. I knew there was a fire under all that softness.

And now she was offering me access to it. No strings. No feelings. Just sex, and revenge, and a clean walk away at the end.

She had wrecked my world without knowing she was doing it.

And then I had her.

Damn!

The way her face changed. The sounds she made. The way her tight little pussy clenched around me like she had been waiting for me her whole life. She was seduction without trying, and she did not even know it.

One taste was not going to be enough.

My cock was already hard again, watching her lie there beside me, naked and flushed and quiet. I wanted back inside her. I wanted to roll her over and start again.

I needed to give her a minute. She needed to breathe.

Then I remembered.

I had come inside her.

I had not asked.

She was doing this because the two people she trusted most had gutted her. She was not mine. She had not signed up for that.

“I am sorry,” I said. “For finishing inside you. I should have asked.”

She turned her head on the pillow. Looked at me for a long moment.

“It is fine,” she said. “I am on the pill.”

I tried to make small talk with her. But then, her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

I turned my head. Looked.

The screen lit up with a picture of Julian.

The contact name above his smiling face read, My world.

My world.

I picked the phone up and held it out to her.

“Your world is calling.”

She took it. Looked at the screen. Took a breath.

She swiped.

I knew I had no right. I knew it the second the thought formed in my head. She was not mine. This was a transaction. A revenge pact. Nothing more.

I heard his voice come through the line, warm, casual, full of the easy confidence of a man who thought he was getting away with everything.

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