Chapter 4: Will You Satisfy Me?

Xena.

The night air hit me the moment we stepped outside and I realized it was the first clean breath I'd taken in hours.

Dante's car was already waiting. The long black car didn't need a logo to tell one it cost fortunes. A driver stood at the rear door without being summoned and I got in without being asked.

The door closed behind us and the city moved past the tinted windows in silence.

I looked down at my hands. The cuffs were gone — removed somewhere between signing and walking out, by the same wordless man in black who had held the papers up to my face. 

The detective had watched us leave with a sour expression, however he tried hiding it behind a smile..  which failed.

I had enjoyed that more than I was going to admit out loud.

"You'll want to know about the video."

Dante's voice came from beside me. He was looking ahead, jacket still perfect, like the last two hours had been a scheduled stop on an otherwise ordinary evening.

"I already know what it is," I said. "Deepfake. Adrian had it prepared in advance."

"Correct." He reached into his jacket and produced a folded document. Setting it on the seat between us without handing it to me. "I have the original file metadata, the generation timestamps, and a chain of communication between Adrian and the production company he commissioned. Three separate copies in three separate locations."

I looked at the document. Then at him.

"How long have you had that?"

"Long enough."

I filed the non-answer away and picked up the document. The letterhead was a legal firm I didn't recognize. The contents were exactly what he'd described — clean, detailed and organized by someone who knew what they were doing.

"I'm already in contact with two journalists," he continued. "By morning the narrative will have shifted enough that tonight becomes a question rather than a verdict. Within the week it will be a story about Adrian Yale fabricating evidence against his own wife." He glanced at me sideways. "His former wife."

"What about the divorce?”

"Already filed. You'll sign the finalization paperwork tomorrow."

I turned back to the window.

Three years in a hollow marriage, a household that treated me like staff without a title and a man who looked through me at dinner and considered that sufficient. All of it was ending in paperwork filed by someone I had met two hours ago in a police interrogation room.

I wasn't sad about it. That was the shocking part. No grief, no loss, nothing that resembled the end of something that had mattered. Just the specific exhaustion of a long task finally being marked complete.

"We've arrived," Dante said. And then the car passed through a golden gate that opened before we even got close to it.

The house was not what I expected.

I didn't know what I had expected exactly. Something imposing, maybe. Something that made a statement about who owned it.

The Yale properties usually did that with their sharp architecture and deliberate grandeur, everything selected to remind you where you stood in relation to the person who lived there.

This was large, yes. But something about it felt warm… unlike the Yale mansions I'd been to. 

It had warm lighting. The high ceilings didn't feel cold and the staircase curved without demanding your attention.

The staff who met us at the door were efficient and completely unreadable about the hour.

Dante said something brief to a woman who appeared to be running the household and then looked at me. "You'll be shown to your room. There are clothes and don't worry everything is in your size."

I didn't ask how he knew my size. I was too tired to be unsettled by it tonight.

"We'll go over the rest of the contract details in the morning," he added. "Get some sleep."

And then he was gone, disappeared into some other part of the house and I was being led upstairs by a woman who moved like she had never once been in a hurry.

When I stepped into the room, I swore ii had walked into a luxury hotel. Compared to here, Adrian's house was a slum.

Okay maybe not a slum however it was quite inferior. 

I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment and let myself actually feel the last several hours.

I had signed a marriage contract in handcuffs in a police station with a man I had known for approximately forty minutes. This was my life now.

I stood, moved to the window, and looked out at the city spread below. Chicago at this hour was all light and distance, everything flattened to something almost peaceful from up here. Down there somewhere, Adrian was probably already managing his next move. Hannah was wherever Hannah went after destroying something. My father was either on the phone or avoiding the phone, which amounted to the same thing.

And I was here.

I slowly breathed in and out. 

Okay.

I could work with this. I was going to have to work with this. Dante had resources, documentation, and apparently the ability to walk into a police station and rearrange the furniture. I had three years of quiet observation inside the Yale household, a very clear target, and nothing left to lose.

Mutual destruction of a shared enemy. I didn't need to trust him and didn't need to feel anything about him.

I was almost convinced.

A knock at the door.

"Come in."

Dante opened it. He had removed his jacket. His shirt was still perfectly pressed, sleeves rolled to the forearm, which was by gods —- it looked like it was sculptured by Leonardo DiCaprio himself. 

Savoring the view, I wished I could be that shirt he wore. Then I'd feel every single muscle—

"Settling in?" 

His voice jolted me back to my 

"I was." I turned from the window. "Is there something you needed?"

He leaned against the doorframe. Something in his expression had shifted from the controlled, boardroom version I'd seen all evening into a warmer kind.

"I have somewhere to be," he said.

"At this hour."

"I have someone to see." The pause was deliberate. "A woman I see regularly when I'm in the city. I'll be back by morning."

I looked at him for a moment.

Oh he was serious.

I almost laughed. I genuinely almost laughed. Twenty-four hours ago I was sitting across from Adrian at a dinner table. Now I was standing in a strange bedroom listening to my brand new contract husband inform me he was on his way to see another woman like I was his personal assistant being briefed on his schedule.

"And you're telling me this because?" I asked.

"Courtesy."

"Right." I tilted my head. "Think about what you just said."

He raised an eyebrow.

"You walk out of here tonight and someone sees you," I added. "Someone always sees you, that's how Chicago works and you know it. And what they see is Dante Yale — who will soon publicly announce he's acquired a wife — leaving his house at this hour to visit a woman who is not her." I held his gaze. "How long do you think it takes for the question of whether this marriage is real to become the headline instead of the video?"

He was quiet for a moment. 

"You'd be surprised how little people —"

"I wouldn't," I cut him off. "I spent three years inside a Yale household. I know exactly how much these people pay attention and how quickly they talk."

The silence that followed was a different quality than the ones before. He was looking at me with something that was either irritation or recalibration and I genuinely could not tell which.

Then — "What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not suggesting anything." I kept my voice even. "I'm telling you that if you need something tonight, your options just got limited."

He was still leaning against the doorframe. His eyes hadn't moved from mine.

"Is that so?" The words were slow. "And if I said I needed you to resolve that problem."

"Then I'd ask," I said, and held his gaze without flinching even as something in my chest did exactly that, "whether you could actually handle the answer."

His mouth curved. Just slightly. "The question isn't whether I can handle it." He pushed off the doorframe, taking one step into the room. "Will you satisfy me, Xena?"

The way he said my name was not something I was going to analyze right now.

I held his stare for one more second. Then I reached up, found the zip at the side of my gown, and pulled.

The fabric slid from my shoulder.

"The question," I said, letting it fall, voice completely steady knowing that this could cost me considerably more than I was showing, "is whether you would satisfy me"

The look on his face in the silence that followed was the first time all evening I felt like I had the upper hand.

I intended to keep it.