Semua Bab Surrendered Desires: Bab 1 - Bab 8

The silence between us is thick, crushing, and worse than any fight.Daniel stands in the doorway of our bedroom, the glow of my phone screen still casting a guilty light across my face. The voice note I just played, Luca’s voice, still echoes in my ears.I shut the journal quickly, like a child caught with something forbidden, but it’s too late. He saw it, he heard it and he is not saying a damn word.“Daniel…” I whisper, standing slowly, heart beating like it might give out. “It’s not what you think.”He lifts a brow. “No? Because I think I just heard a man tell my wife he never stopped wanting her.”His voice is quiet. But the kind of quiet that terrifies me.“I—I didn’t answer him. I haven’t done anything wrong.”He steps into the room now, slow and measured, arms crossed over his chest like he’s bracing for impact. “But you wanted to.” His gaze drops to the leather journal in my hand. “You were going to.”A sharp breath escapes me. “It’s not that simple—”“You were going to meet

The air between us crackled with silence.Luca didn’t say another word as he stepped into the hotel room, and I didn’t stop him. I should have. I know I should’ve. But knowing what’s right and doing it? Two very different things. He placed the coffee and the painting gently on the side table, then turned to me with a gaze so gentle it disarmed every defense I had left.“I didn’t mean to come here like this,” he said. “But I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about you. About us.”I stood near the window, wrapped in the hotel’s white robe, arms folded across my chest like a barrier he’d already broken through. “And what exactly are we, Luca? Because last time I checked, I’m still married.”His expression didn’t change. “Are you, though?”I flinched at the honesty in his voice. Not cruel. Just… true. “Daniel threw me out.”He nodded. “And what do you want now?”“I don’t know.” I bit my lip. “I shouldn’t want you. Not like this.”“But you do.” His words weren’t a question. I looked at him.

You know that feeling when the air feels heavy? Like the universe is holding its breath, waiting to see what you’ll do next? That was me the morning after I found the letter, the one I wrote to myself, like a ghost of the woman I used to be trying to claw her way back.I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t, because every time I closed my eyes, I saw Luca’s face. The look he gave me right before I walked out. That quiet devastation he didn’t say out loud.And Daniel… still lying in that hospital bed, bruised but breathing, was just a few miles away. Our marriage had fractured long before the crash, but now? Now, guilt pressed into every corner of my chest. I told myself I needed coffee but what I really needed was to feel something that didn’t twist.I head downstairs to the café in my hotel, still in yesterday’s clothes, still smelling like someone else’s story. The city outside looks like nothing had changed. But everything inside me had changed. I took my coffee black, bitter, and fast. Shortl

I stood in the elevator of Daniel’s penthouse tower, the flash drive still warm in my pocket like a gun that has been loaded. The numbers above the door ticked higher: forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. Every second pulled me deeper into a war I didn’t start… but I would be damned if I didn’t end it. My reflection in the elevator mirror looked too calm, too elegant in my silk blouse and leather coat. A woman shaped by Manhattan and masked by control.But underneath, I was shaking, not with fear but fury. I had watched the footage a dozen times last night. Daniel’s voice, calm and deliberate, plotting my collapse like it was just another legal case. Vanessa, sipping wine like she already tasted my ruin.They thought I wouldn’t find out, and that I would stay loyal to a lie, but I was done being the polite wife in a luxury cage. Tonight, I was the storm they never saw coming. Ding. The elevator doors opened. His private hallway glowed with soft lights and silence, the silence you buy wh