“He’s suffocating,” Rosália corrected smoothly. She didn’t feel a single ounce of pity. She felt entirely liberated. “He has absolutely no power left at the firm, Katherine is financially useless to him, so he’s trying to violently tighten the leash on me to prove to his shattered ego that he still owns something.”
With a cold, detached precision, Rosália finally unlocked the screen and typed a response.
Rosália:I am at the Gala. Stop blowing up my phone, David. You are acting like a lunatic.
She watched the three grey dots appear instantly. He was staring at his screen, waiting in the dark of their empty house.
David:Why did you go with Sean? You are a married woman. I am leaving the house right now. I am coming to pick you up.
A dark, genuine laugh escaped Rosália’s lips. The image of David, wearing a wrinkled suit, pacing his home office and frantically demanding obedience while his life burned to the ground, was almost poetic. She looked up at Sean, her dark eyes flashing with a wicked, intoxicating thrill.
“He says he’s driving here to pick me up,” she murmured.
Sean’s jaw locked. His large, warm hand slid smoothly and unapologetically around her waist. He pulled her flush against his side, his hand resting heavily and possessively against the bare skin of her lower back. The intense heat of his touch was an absolute brand, staking a claim that David could never break.
“Tell him not to bother,” Sean commanded softly, his eyes burning with dark fire.
Rosália looked back at the screen, her fingers flying over the glass.
Rosália:Don’t embarrass yourself, David. There is no need for you to come. Sean and I have another event to attend shortly after this anyway. Go to sleep.
She locked the phone and dropped it back into her clutch, effectively silencing him. She buried him in theagonizing, suffocating paranoia of wondering exactly what that “other event” was, letting his toxic imagination tear him apart.
“Look,” Sean murmured, his voice suddenly sharp as he nodded toward the street below.
Rosália stepped closer to the glass railing, looking down at the red carpet.
A standard black town car had pulled up to the curb. The door opened, and Katherine stepped out into the chaotic, flashing lights of the paparazzi.
She looked absolutely desperate. She was wearing a heavily sequined, aggressively plunging designer gown that clearly looked like a last-minute rental. Her smile was incredibly tight, practically brittle, as she posed for the cameras. She was throwing her shoulders back, desperately trying to project the illusion of the successful, wealthy, untouchable influencer she had been just a week ago.
Rosália watched with cold, absolute detachment as Katherine walked up the red carpet toward the heavy velvet rope.
The head of security, a massive, imposing man in a black suit holding a glowing iPad, stepped directly into Katherine’s path. He didn’t smile. He didn’t bow his head in reverence like the hotel staff used to. He simply held up a large, unyielding hand, physically blocking her from the entrance.
Even from the balcony, three stories up, Rosália could read the agonizing exchange.
Katherine’s brittle smile faltered, her face dropping. She gestured wildly to herself, pointing at the museum doors, hermouth moving in a frantic, panicked explanation. She was likely dropping Sean’s name, demanding they check the VIP list again, screaming that she was the guest of a billionaire.
The security guard looked down at his iPad. He shook his head slowly, and pointed a stern, dismissive finger back toward the dark street.
Denied.
The paparazzi, practically smelling the humiliation in the air, swarmed the rope. The blinding white flashes of their cameras erupted like violent strobe lights, capturing every single agonizing, pathetic second of Katherine’s public execution. They photographed the security guard denying her entry. They photographed her panicked, flushed face. They photographed the exact, devastating moment the realization hit her that she had been completely, permanently erased from society.
Katherine stumbled backward. She held her hand up to shield her face from the relentless, mocking flashes, looking like a terrified, trapped animal. She turned, the rented sequins catching the light, and practically ran back down the carpet. She fled into the dark city streets, leaving her entire manufactured life behind her on the pavement.
On the balcony, the silence between Sean and Rosália was heavy, electric, and incredibly profound.
Rosália turned her head, looking up at the billionaire standing beside her. Sean was already looking at her. The dark, ruthless satisfaction in his eyes perfectly mirrored the exact, intoxicating feeling blooming in her own chest. They had completely starved the parasite out.
Sean’s hand tightened on her waist, pulling her even closer, his thumb gently, intimately stroking the curve of her spine. The museum, the gala, the paparazzi—it all faded into background noise.
“The check is signed,” Sean murmured softly, his gaze dropping to her lips, the heavy promise of the night ahead vibrating in the narrow space between them. “Shall we go to dinner?”
“Yes,” Rosália breathed, a genuine, radiant smile breaking across her face, feeling more alive than she had in ten years.
Chapter 18
