“So.”She settled into the chair across from my desk.“You’re marrying him.”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”Clara sipped her whiskey, watching me over the rim.“The choices just get worse the further down you go.”
I laughed, and it came out raw.“Thanks for the optimism.”
“I’m not here for optimism.”She set her glass down, and her eyes sharpened into the look I recognized from her banking days.The look that meant she was calculating risks and returns, running scenarios, finding angles.“I’m here to help you survive this.And maybe make him regret ever targeting our family.”
The wordregretlanded somewhere deep in my chest.I hadn’t let myself think about revenge.Had been too busy drowning in grief and rage and the bone-deep exhaustion of being outmaneuvered at every turn.
“How?”I asked.“He owns everything.He’s thought of every angle.He?—”
“He has a weakness.”Clara’s voice was flat.Certain.“You.”
I stared at her.“He used me.The whole thing was manipulation?—”
“Maybe at first.”Clara cut me off.“But something changed.The way he broke things off, so brutal and sudden?That wasn’t a man who got what he wanted.That was a man running scared.”
I thought about that morning.The coldness in his voice.The way he wouldn’t meet my eyes.It was adequate.We’re done.
It had felt like cruelty.But Clara was right.It had also felt like panic.
“What are you suggesting?”
Clara leaned forward, and her voice dropped to something almost conspiratorial.“You want to hurt him the way he hurt you?Don’t fight him.That’s what he expects.He’s prepared for your anger, your resistance, your hatred.What he’s not prepared for is you giving him exactly what he wants.”
“I’m not going to?—”
“Listen.”Her hand closed over mine.“Make him fall for you.Really fall.Not the games he was playing before, but the real thing.Make him desperate, vulnerable, so convinced you’ve forgiven him that he lets his guard down completely.Let him think he’s won.Let him think he has everything he ever wanted.”
My throat tightened.“And then?”
“Then you tell him the truth.”Clara’s smile was sharp enough to cut glass.“That it was all a performance.That you felt nothing.That every touch, every smile, every time you let him inside you, it was just you learning his weaknesses.Taking notes.Preparing for the moment you’d tear him apart.”
The cruelty of it should have repulsed me.Instead, a dark hunger stirred in my chest.The image of his face when he realized.The devastation in his eyes when he understood that everything had been a lie.
The way I had felt, that morning when he dismissed me.When he made me believe I had meant something, only to prove I was nothing.
“He said I was adequate.”My voice came out strange.Hollow.“After he took my virginity.After I told him I loved him.He said it was adequate and walked away.”
Clara’s expression hardened.“Then make him feel what that’s like.Make him love you, Lena.Make him desperate and raw and so completely yours that he can’t imagine living without you.And then look him in the eyes and tell him he was adequate.Nothing more.A means to an end.”
I stared at the whiskey in my hand.My reflection wavered in the amber liquid, distorted and strange.
Could I do that?Could I be that person, calculating and cold, turning intimacy into a weapon?It wasn’t who I had ever imagined myself being.But then again, the girl I had been before wouldn’t have survived what he had done to me.
That girl was dead.Raphael had killed her.
“I don’t know if I can pretend to forgive him.”The words scraped out.“Every time I look at him, I want to scream.”
“You don’t have to forgive him.You just have to make him believe you have.”Clara squeezed my hand.“You spent months in his bed, Lena.You know how to play the part.The only difference is, this time you’ll know it’s a performance.”
She was right.I had learned his tells, his vulnerabilities, the cracks in his defenses where softness leaked through.I knew what made him gentle and what made him lose control.I knew how to make him look at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
I had done it once without trying.How hard could it be to do it on purpose?
“Take his money,” Clara continued.“His protection.His name.Let him think he’s saving you while you’re building your escape route.And when the time is right—when he’s given you everything and left himself completely exposed—you walk away.Or you stay and watch him realize what you’ve done.Either way, you win.”
