002

~Sandra’s pov~

Of all the people who could have walked into that club on the worst night of my life, it had to be fucking Ryan Hale!

Not a stranger. Not some random person who wouldn't know my face from a magazine.

No, it had to be the one man in the city who could destroy my reputation and dismantle everything I was trying to save with a single phone call, and he was standing right there in front of me with that arrogant, slow, cutting smile that had always made me feel like he could see straight through every wall I'd ever built around myself.

Ryan Hale, was my husband's brother… step brother to be exact. He was notorious in every circle I'd ever heard his name mentioned in, for being exactly as dangerous, cunning, sadistic and whorish as he looked.

And right now he looked very, amused and very very hungry… hungry for the juicy piece of meat he had just caught and was about to tear up.

And in that moment, I had a very very sick realization, that I was that piece of meat, and he was about to chew me raw.

I felt the blood drain clean out of my face. My fingers went cold around the shot glass I was still holding, and for one terrible second my brain just stopped working entirely.

He wasn't supposed to be here, he was not even supposed to be in the fucking country! He wasn't supposed to be anywhere near me, ever, because that was the unspoken rule of being Liam's wife.

The very strained and competitive nature between both brothers made sure that Ryan stayed far away from us and only ever existed at the edges of our lives.

So we only ever saw him at the mandatory family, and at company events where he'd look at me from across the room with those dark, sharp eyes like he was trying to see the inside of me.

We didn't talk.

We never did, because my husband had always made it very clear that I was supposed to stay as far as humanly possible from his irresponsible and manipulative brother.

So as the faithful wife that I was, I always kept my distance from him, but currently, that distance was only about two feet.

Now, He stood there with his hands in his pockets, smirking as his eyes moved from me to Raul, then back to me, then slowly down to the barely-there dress I'd bought in a lingerie store, and then back up to my face.

He grinned mischievously.

"Sandra, my dear sister in law," he said, in a way that let everyone know I was married and made me want to crawl directly through the floor and disappear forever.

"Ryan." My voice came out steadier than I expected, but I was dying on the inside.

He didn't say anything immediately after that. He just looked at Raul — that long, flat, assessing look that rich men use when they're deciding whether something is worth their time — and then he looked back at me with an expression that could only be described as victorious.

Like he'd been handed a gift he hadn't asked for and found it far better than anything he could have bought himself. I hated him for it with a sudden, white-hot intensity that surprised even me.

"Don't say anything Ryan," I said, before he could open his mouth. "Please, whatever you're thinking, just don't. Please just walk away and pretend you didn't see this."

He didn’t respond, but to my horror, he pulled out the chair across from me and sat down, then he looked at Raul again with that same flat, evaluating stare.

Then he reached into his jacket, pulled out his wallet, and put a folded stack of bills on the table between them without a word.

Raul looked at the money. He looked at Ryan. Something passed between them that I wasn't part of, some wordless male communication that I found absolutely infuriating, and then Raul slid out of the booth and collected the cash and started packing to leave his jacket.

I was watched all of this happen with my mouth open while my brain screamed “What the fuck was happening right now?”

I should stop this.

"Excuse me," I said sharply, and my voice had an edge to it I barely recognized. "I said go away, I did not ask for your intervention, or your money, and I would appreciate it if you would just leave us— "

"You're shopping below your budget, sister in law, he probably wouldn’t fuck you the way you want," Ryan said, and my mouth dropped.

Did he—Did he just say—How could he just say that so shamelessly?

I gaped at him and he finally turned to look at me with a smirk. "If revenge is your goal, you need to make it very painful for him and very very pleasurable for you. And that local escort cant give you that."

What? I was speechless.

Did he know something? Or was he just messing with me? I quickly shook my head. There was no way he’d know, I had only just found out myself.

And even if he did know, he wouldn’t care. He obviously hated Liam, and definitely didn’t like me based on our past miniscule interactions, so yea, he was probably just messing with me.

Raul, the escort I was supposed to sleep with left after that, like, he actually left me just because Raul had somehow silently told him to.

I watched him walk out of the booth and into the crowd and I felt a kind of helpless, humiliated fury rise up through my chest so hot it almost choked me, because Ryan had just sat down and dismissed the escort I'd hired with a fold of cash and a look, and he'd done it in front of me like I wasn't even there.

Like I was a minor inconvenience in a situation that was entirely his to manage, and I despised him for it so completely in that moment that I had to grip the edge of the table to keep myself from saying something catastrophic.

"You’ve done enough, you need to leave," I hissed at him but his annoying smile only grew wider.

"But I just got here, sister in law, don’t you want to spend some quality time with me first?" He teased and I forced myself to swallow my growing anger.

It was clear that he still wanted to mess around, so the best thing for me to do was to get to the point, and save myself.

"Ryan." I leaned forward and whispered seriously. "Please, I'm asking you, very sincerely, not to tell Liam or anyone else about this. Whatever you think you saw here tonight, whatever story you're already composing in your head — just leave it alone. Please. I didn’t even sleep with the guy, but if people find out he was even here with me, they would assume the worst and ruin my reputation and that is all I have right now. Please Ryan." I was practically begging now because my life literally depended on him keeping his mouth shut.

He looked at me for a long moment with those eyes that always seemed to be dissecting me. Then he said, very carefully, "Her name is Priya.”

I blinked in confusion so he added.

“The woman your husband is fucking tonight, her name is Priya. Liam's been seeing her for eight months. She works in the finance division of his company, she's twenty-six, and they have secretly had sex in your house at least twice that I know of. I found out 8 months ago, when they just started."

The air went out of me completely and I couldn’t breathe.