CHAPTER 1
Silas
My shoulders bowed under the weight of my sins.
I had been careful.So careful.
Never gaveherspecial attentions in public.
Didn’t indulge too frequently.
Deleted all her messages immediately.
Paid for the room in cash.
The Governor couldn’t be too careful.
But Whitleigh and I had somehow been spotted—photographed—coming out of the hotel.
It was possible my PR team could play it off. Just a late-night meeting. Just legislative session strategizing. If we ignored the gossip, maybe it wouldn’t blow into a full-fledged scandal.
But it meant I would have to tell my sweet wife about my infidelity. About mysecret life.
Whitleigh was—very discreet. She was a longtime acquaintance, a female friend of mine from college. Someone with the samemutual interests.
She also worked in government as one of my legislative aides. So it was easy. So easy to discard my marital vows.
To fall back into what I craved, the world of sin and seduction. . . ofdominance.
Our meetings were brief and feral, with barely any words exchanged. It was all about the meeting of our bodies, the slap of flesh on flesh, and at last—a self-loathing release.
I’d swear off the illicit meetings, promise myself I’d remain faithful, but always the temptation to cheat, to get the kind of sex I wanted, would get the better of me.
Even now, my skin crawled with a heady mixture of lust and revulsion at my own baser instincts.
Why couldn’t Istop?
I wasn’t a good man, not at all.
And my poor wife didn’t deserve the shame and embarrassment my mistake was going to bring.
I hadwantedto stop, but sinning with Whitleigh felt so right. And I was no saint. Even though I knew, Iknewit would shatter my wife if she ever found out. I was a risk taker and I had played the odds.
But for once, I’d lost.
In politics, the name Silas Di Pietro was feared. Not content with the wealth I’d inherited from my grandparents, I’d set my sights on the Governor’s Mansion, and my ruthless tactics kept me in control.
Politics was about power, and no one had more of it than I did. The men who tried to get through me with their bleeding-heart requests met my stone-cold heart. While outwardly, I pretended to care, it was an open secret in state government that anyone begging for help would need to pony up a significant donation to my campaign.
My wife was the only thing about me that was soft.
I could never have brought all this debauchery home to my sweet little Paloma. In a life full of brutality, grit, and power, she alone was all that was pure and good. It was like I had two supernatural entities on my shoulder—a good angel that said tostick to sweet vanilla sex with my lovely wife, and a devil that said I couldn’t be satisfied without my secret life as a dom.
At first, I had tried to deny the temptation, and for the first year of our marriage, I stayed away.I loved my wife.Loved her fiercely.
But it was too hard. My urge to dominate, to control, was too powerful.
Marriage bonds hadn’t held me. After all, I took pride in being the kind of man who couldn’t be held back by polite society.
