Oh No!

Chapter 4

George didn't wait for her in the hallway. He paced the marble corridor like a caged animal, each sharp turn of his polished loafers clicking against the stone with metronomic fury.

His phone was pressed so hard against his ear that his knuckles stood out bone-white, the tendons in his forearm standing in rigid relief beneath the rolled-up sleeve of his once-crisp shirt.

Katherine trailed several paces behind, her gait uneven and deliberate, as though every step required separate calculation.

The soreness between her thighs burned with every movement, a raw, private sting that refused to fade, a constant, humiliating reminder of the hundred dollars she had flung away in a moment of reckless desperation. That temporary escape had metastasized into something far worse: a permanent nightmare stitched into her very skin.

"I don't care what the board says!" George barked into the receiver, voice cracking at the edges. "The liquidity isn't there, it's not even close! If my mother finds out about the design firm’s deficit, she’ll pull the surgical funding herself just to spite me. You know how she is. She’ll do it with a smile and a martini in her hand."

He stabbed the end-call button without waiting for a reply and spun on his heel to face her. The mask of George West, Great George West, darling of the society pages, heir apparent, untouchable was fraying visibly now. Sweat beaded along his hairline; a muscle jumped in his jaw; his eyes were bright and feverish.

"I hope you're happy," he spat, jabbing a trembling finger toward her chest. "The interior decoration company is a hollow shell. My father’s so-called legacy is nothing but a mountain of debt I’ve been trying to bury for three goddamn years. And now, thanks to this ninety-day circus the court dreamed up, I can’t even sell the Hamptons house to cover my mother’s medical expenses without your signature on every single page."

Katherine remained perfectly still. She watched him unravel with clinical detachment, a cold, dark satisfaction rising slow and thick in her chest like ink spreading through water.

For five long years he had been the sun, brilliant, distant, untouchable and she had been the grateful satellite, orbiting quietly, reflecting whatever light he deigned to throw her way. Now the orbits had reversed. The ornament had become the anchor. She almost wanted to laugh, but the sound stayed trapped behind her teeth.

"You have nothing to say?" George mocked, voice rising an octave. "No 'I told you so'? No 'we can fix this together, darling'? Nothing at all from the woman who swore vows in front of three hundred people?"

"I’m just wondering where we’re going to live, George," she said, the words calm and measured, almost gentle. "Since you've already cleared out the mansion, sold what wasn’t nailed down, and changed the locks."

His face went through a rapid, ugly sequence, fury twisting the mouth, desperation widening the eyes, and then, abruptly, a chilling calm settling over the features like frost. He stepped several paces away, turned his back to her, and placed another call.

When he spoke again his voice had dropped to something soft, melodic, almost tender, the register Katherine hadn’t heard from him in years. It was the voice he used to reserve for bedroom promises, for late-night whispers against someone’s throat.

He returned a minute later. His posture was straighter now, shoulders squared, chin lifted. His eyes shone with a sickeningly triumphant light that made the skin on the back of Katherine’s neck crawl.

"Change of plans," George announced, the words rolling out smooth and certain once more. "We’re moving. Today."

"Moving?" She repeated the word slowly, tasting its absurdity. "Where? I told you, I have no money for a rental. And clearly, neither do you."

"I don't need money when I have someone who actually values me," he said. His lip curled in something between a sneer and a smile. "My partner has heard enough about your little dramatics over the years. He’s offered us the guest wing of his place. He’s the most successful man I’ve ever met, wealthier than my father ever dreamed of being, and far more generous than a cold fish like you could ever understand."

Katherine blinked once, twice. The words refused to settle into sense.

"You want us... to live with your lover?" she asked quietly. "For three months?"

"I can't afford two households, Katherine!" His voice cracked again on her name. "I can barely keep the lights on at the office. This is the only realistic way to satisfy the court’s idiotic cohabitation order without me going bankrupt before the ninety days are even half over."

He closed the distance in two strides and seized her upper arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "And you will be on your absolute best behavior. He’s doing us, doing me—m a favor. He’s taking in my baggage, that’s you because he loves me. Because he wants me close. Don’t ruin this."

Katherine felt nausea rise in a slow, sour wave. She was being relocated like an unwanted piece of furniture, carted from one man’s house to another’s without consultation or dignity. .

She thought of her family back in the old neighborhood, the pride she had swallowed year after year to wear his name, and how she was now being paraded in front of his boyfriend as living proof of his past errors.

"I won't do it, George. It’s humiliating."

"You’ll do it because you have exactly twelve dollars in the world and nowhere else to go," he hissed, breath hot against her cheek. "Now get in the car. We’re going to the penthouse."

The black town car slid through the city like oil on water. George didn’t stop talking the entire ride. He gushed, actually gushed about his lover: how powerful he was, how he had built an empire from nothing but ruthless intelligence and perfect timing, how he made George feel truly seen for the first time in his life.

"He’s a god, Katherine. A literal god. He owns half this skyline, you’ve seen the billboards, the towers with his initials worked into the architecture. You’re going to feel like a peasant in his home, which is exactly what you are."

Katherine stared out the tinted window, watching the city streak past in smears of steel and glass. Her heart sank deeper with every block, every traffic light, every turn.

She had expected to walk out of the courthouse a divorcee today. She had expected, welcomed the prospect of starting over, even if it meant starting from the dirt. Instead she was being dragged, feet first, into the lion’s den of the man who had quietly dismantled her marriage.

The car slowed, eased down the ramp into a familiar high-security underground garage. Katherine’s breath caught, sharp and shallow.

She recognized the pattern of lights along the ceiling. She recognized the faint echo of tires on polished concrete. She recognized the sleek, obsidian elevators waiting at the far end.

The scent hit her the moment they stepped into the lobby, expensive ambergris undercut with cold marble and the faintest trace of bergamot. Her pulse hammered in her ears.

"We’re here," George said, hopping out with the bright, eager energy of a child arriving at a birthday party. He grabbed both their bags in one hand. "Welcome to the real world, Katherine. Try not to break anything."

They entered the private elevator. George hummed a low, pleased tune under his breath and checked his reflection in the gold-tinted mirrors, smoothing a stray lock of hair.

Katherine stood in the corner, knees trembling, arms wrapped tight around her middle as though she could hold herself together by sheer force.

The lift surged upward. Floors ticked past with terrifying, inexorable speed.

When the doors finally slid open, Katherine’s heart didn’t just stop; it shattered.

Raw concrete walls. Floor-to-ceiling glass that framed the glittering city like a stolen jewel box. The low, wide leather furniture she had memorized with her skin only hours before the exact places her palms had pressed, the exact angles her spine had arched.

"Killian, darling! We’re here!" George called out, dropping the bags with careless abandon and striding toward the center of the room, arms already opening.

Katherine stood frozen at the threshold of the elevator. Her vision blurred at the edges, the room tilting. This wasn’t a similar building. This wasn’t coincidence or cruel cosmic humor.

She had spent her last hundred dollars to hire her husband’s boyfriend.

She had clawed at the back of the man George worshipped, left crescent marks in his shoulders, whispered things she could never take back.

She was homeless. Penniless. And now she was a guest, unwanted, unasked for in the very bedroom of the man who had used her body as collateral, as a down payment on her own husband’s soul.

Katherine’s hand rose slowly to her throat. Her legs gave out without warning. She sank to the floor in a graceless collapse, the cold concrete biting through the thin fabric of her dress. The world tunneled to grey at the edges.

She didn’t just feel defeated.

She felt erased.

The realization echoed.

She had mouthwatering sex with her husband's boyfriend.