LOGIN**Dominic**The door clicked shut behind her and the silence slammed into me like a fist.I sat frozen behind my desk, eyes locked on the document she had placed in front of me. The paper looked harmless under the office lights. Just ink and signatures. Just lines and numbers and names arranged in a particular order on a page. But it had done something to the room when she set it down, changed the air in it, and now the office felt like a place I did not recognize even though I had spent more hours in it than anywhere else in my life.My hands stayed flat on the wood. I could not move them. Could not touch the paper. Could not push it away. My chest had a tightness in it that had started when she walked in and had not loosened once.Five months ago I had put that contract in that drawer. I remembered the exact day. The transfer processed cleanly. The plan had been precise and cold and simple the way all good plans are: break Garrett through the woman he was about to marry, use her pai
**Nadia**I kept my feet planted and let the words keep coming, low and steady, each one placed carefully, each one sharp enough to cut."You paid her to ruin me. And it worked."I told him everything the document had cost me. Not because I wanted his guilt. Not because I needed him to understand the size of it. But because I had carried every piece of it alone for long enough and he was going to sit in that chair and hold the weight of what he had built while I put it down in front of him piece by piece.I told him about the hotel room in Vegas. The keycard heavy in my palm. The walk down that hallway with the carpet muffling my footsteps and the noise of the casino a distant blur below and the particular quality of quiet on a hotel floor late at night that makes everything feel more exposed than it should. The moment I pushed the door open and the sounds hit me before the sight did. Skin. Movement. Voices low and then not low. The wet rhythm of two bodies that had no reason to stop
**Nadia**I walked into Dominic's office at Marcello GlobalMy heels clicked sharp against the polished floor with every step. The document stayed folded tight in my hand. I did not knock. I pushed the heavy door open and stepped inside without slowing down. His assistant said something behind me, her voice rising at the end like a question. I did not turn around. The door shut with a soft click that cut off the sound of the outer office and left only silence.Dominic sat behind his massive desk. His jacket was on. Laptop open. The posture of a man in the middle of something that mattered. He looked up when the door opened and his eyes found mine across the room and for one single second something warm moved across his face. The thing he did not always catch in time. The thing I had spent weeks learning to recognize.Then he saw my expression.I crossed the room. Ten steps. Maybe twelve. My hand shook only once, a small involuntary tremor that moved through my fingers and was gone b
**Nadia** I stared at the contract. My fingers tightened around the paper until the edges bit into my palms. I read the first line. Then I read it again. The words did not change. They sat on the page clean and cold and perfectly still, the way a knife sits before it moves. *Priya Nair agreed to seduce Garrett Cole. On the eve of his wedding to Nadia Reeves.* She agreed to make sure I discovered them. I stopped. I made myself breathe. Then I kept reading. Payment confirmed. The large sum matched the receipt I had already seen. Wired one week before Vegas. One week before I stood outside that hotel suite and heard sounds I could not unhear. One week before my engagement ended and my life split open on a marble floor not so different from this one. I turned to the last page. Dominic Marcello's signature sat at the bottom. Bold. Unhurried. The kind of signature that belongs to someone who signs things without hesitation because they have never had reason to doubt their own decisi
**Nadia** I stared at the two pink lines. The test felt slippery in my damp palm. I blinked hard. The lines stayed exactly where they were. Positive. Clear and undeniable. I lowered myself to the bathroom floor. Cold marble pressed through my thin robe and into my skin. My back found the tub. I pulled my knees close to my chest and sat there. No shouting. No wild laughter. Only a heavy quiet that filled every corner of the room. Minutes slipped by. Ten. Fifteen. Maybe twenty. I did not move. The test stayed warm in my hand. My thumb kept brushing the plastic edge without thinking, the way you touch something to confirm it is real. Something tiny lived inside me now. Dominic's child. The thought sat deep in my chest. Warm. Heavy. Real in a way that the lines on the test were not yet real. I closed my eyes. The air conditioning hummed low above me. My breathing slowed until it matched the quiet room. Disbelief wrapped around me like a thick blanket. Not bad. Not good. Just there,
**Nadia**Three months of marriage felt like breathing for the first time.I woke to the smell of coffee and the soft clatter of Dominic in the kitchen. His warmth still clung to my skin. I stretched under the sheets, smiling before I could stop myself. Life had settled into something steady. Good. Mine.I walked into the kitchen barefoot. Dominic stood at the counter in gray sweatpants, hair still tousled from sleep. He looked different these days. Lighter. The tension that used to sit in his face had eased.When he saw me, his expression shifted. That private smile, the one meant only for me.“Morning, wife.”He pulled me in and kissed me slow. His hands settled on my hips like they belonged there. I kissed him back, tasting toothpaste and familiarity and something deeper that had grown between us.We still argued sometimes. Quick sparks over small things. But we never stayed apart. We always found our way back, closer than before.I poured coffee and opened my laptop at the island.
**Nadia**"Don't."He said it the moment he walked through the door, before I had said a word, before I had done anything except look up from the couch where I had been reading for the last hour.Just that. One word. Low and tight and carrying the specific weight of a man who had spent the day hold
**Nadia** I sat alone in the quiet corner of the penthouse library with my laptop open on my lap. The screen glowed soft against the dim lights. My fingers hovered over the keys before I typed the words that had burned in my mind since the locked room. Congenital insensitivity to pain. The sear
**Dominic** I paced the bedroom in the dark, my bare feet silent on the floor. My hands itched to touch her again. Nadia lay curled on her side in our bed, breathing slow and even. The sheet had slipped down to her waist, leaving her back bare. Moonlight from the window traced the curve of her sp
I stood under the bright lights of the ballroom, the hum of voices and clinking glasses pressing in from every side. My dress hugged my body, elegant and expensive, but it did nothing to ease the tension in my shoulders. Raffael hovered a few steps behind me like a silent guard. Dominic’s hand r







