Sean simply held her. He wrapped his massive, powerful arms around her shaking frame, entirely enveloping her, his chin resting against the top of her head as he let her cry until she was completely hollowed out.
They stayed like that for a long time in the dark, the only sound the wind rushing through the trees and Rosália’s jagged breathing.
Finally, she pulled back just an inch. Her eyes were red and swollen, her mascara smudged, but a desperate, frantic terror had set in.
“What am I going to do now?” she asked, her voice a raw, hoarse whisper. She looked up at Sean, entirely lost. “I can’t... I need to get out of here, Sean. I won’t be able to face him. If he walks through that door right now, I’ll completely fall apart.”
Sean lifted his hands, his large, warm palms cupping her tear-stained face. He held her gaze, steadying her trembling completely.
“You are going to be strong,” he commanded softly, his thumbs brushing away the fresh tears spilling over her cheeks. The absolute certainty in his dark eyes demanded she believe him. “Because there is more I need to show you. Things that go much deeper than just sex on a staircase.”
Rosália’s breath hitched, fresh fear blooming in her chest, but Sean’s grip on her face tightened just enough to ground her.
“I have a plan, Rosália,” he murmured, his deep voice carrying a dark, ruthless promise. “I swear to you, you are not going to get hurt. But we are going to make sure they do not get away with making us look like fools.”
Chapter 7
Rosália
The engine of Rosália’s SUV hummed a low, vibrating rhythm, but she made no move to turn the key and cut the ignition.
She sat completely frozen in the driver’s seat, staring through the windshield at the sterile, imposing glass facade of the private medical clinic downtown. Her hands gripped the leather steering wheel so tightly her knuckles ached, but she couldn’t seem to command her legs to move. She didn’t have the courage to open the car door.
If she walked into that building, the nightmare became a documented, medical reality.
Her mind was a chaotic, spinning vortex, endlessly replaying the horrors of the past few days. The video of David and Katherine on the stairs was burned into the backs of her eyelids—a vicious, looping nightmare she couldn’t escape. But it was theotherthings Sean had shown her later that night, the cold, irrefutable proof spread out across the table in his study, that had truly shattered the foundation of her life.
She wasn’t ready to think about the depths of that particular betrayal yet. If she looked too closely at what David had actually done, she would shatter completely.
Instead, her mind obsessively snagged on the timeline.
The security footage on the stairs. The time stamp glowing in the corner of the screen.
It had clicked into place with sickening clarity at three in the morning. The video was recorded the exact same evening she had come home from the gallery to find them sitting far too close at the kitchen island.
Katherine hadn’t come over because her laptop was broken. David hadn’t offered to walk her across the dark lawn because he was being a chivalrous, exasperated neighbor dealing with a drunk girl. He had practically carried her out the door because he couldn’t wait another second to get his hands on her.
Rosália closed her eyes, a wave of profound, suffocating humiliation washing over her. She remembered pacing her kitchen. She remembered scrubbing her beautiful marble countertops until her hands were raw, anxiously waiting for her husband to return, worried about him. And the whole time—for those entire twenty agonizing minutes—he had been violently thrusting into his twenty-nine-year-old lover on a carpeted staircase right next door.
How could I be so stupid?she thought, a bitter, broken tear slipping free to track down her cheek.How did I not see it?
A sudden, sharp rap on the driver’s side window made her violently jump.
Rosália gasped, her eyes flying open. She turned her head, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Standing just outside her car door, the collar of his dark wool coat turned up against the biting city wind, was Sean.
He wasn’t glaring today. He was looking down at her through the tinted glass with a faint, grounding smile, his dark eyes radiating a quiet, steadying warmth.
Rosália blinked, stunned, and quickly hit the unlock button. She pushed the heavy door open, stepping out into the cold morning air. She quickly wiped the stray tear from her cheek, trying to pull the shattered pieces of her composure back together.
“Sean,” she breathed, entirely bewildered. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t hesitate. He stepped into the space between the open car door and her body, effectively shielding her from the wind and the prying eyes of the street.
“When I heard your appointment was scheduled for this morning, I realized I couldn’t let you come here and sit in that waiting room alone,” he said. His deep voice was a low, comforting rumble that instantly settled the frantic buzzing in her head.
Fresh tears immediately pricked the corners of Rosália’s eyes, hot and fast. The sheer, unexpected kindness of the gesture threatened to break the last of her defenses. She swallowed hard, forcing the emotion back down.
