And yet...
Hatred had never felt like this.
Hatred didn’t tighten my chest when she laughed softly at something trivial. It didn’t make my jaw lock when another man’s gaze lingered on her too long. It didn’t leave me restless, pacing rooms I had conquered a hundred times before.
She was under my skin.
In a way Maria had never been.
In a way no one ever could be again.
When Elena asked—hesitantly, carefully—for permission to go to that seedy jazz club every night, I should have said no. The logical answer was no. The controlling answer was no.
Instead, I surprised even myself.
“Yes,” I’d said coolly, as if granting a minor indulgence. “Go.”
Foolish, perhaps. But the thought of her caged completely—of extinguishing the last flicker of something alive in her—made something ugly twist in my gut.
I told myself it was strategy. Let her believe she had freedom. Let her grow careless.
Still, I wasn’t naïve.
I assigned two of my most trusted guards to follow her. Quiet men. Invisible men. Shadows trained to observe without being seen. Their instructions were precise.
No interference unless necessary.
No contact unless she’s in danger.
She never knows you’re there.
The reports came in nightly.
What she drank. How she sat alone at the bar, nursing cheap whiskey or red wine, eyes fixed on the stage as if the music were the only thing holding her upright. How she danced sometimes—slow, restrained movements, exhaustion weighing down her limbs rather than joy lifting them.
“She looks tired, boss,”one guard reported once. “Like she’s running on fumes.”
I told him to stick to facts.
Then came the detail that lit a fuse inside me.
“There’s a guy,” the guard said one night. “Mid-thirties. Slick type. Smiles too much. He talked to her.”
My grip tightened around the glass in my hand.
“Did he touch her?” I asked, voice deceptively calm.
“No. Just leaned in. Bought her a drink. She didn’t smile.”
The room felt suddenly too small.
My vision tunneled, heat surging up my spine like an electrical current. I paced my study with a glass of vodka clenched in my fist, the amber liquid sloshing dangerously close to the rim.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
She wasn’t mine.
The marriage was a construct. A trap. A means to an end.
