Ambiguous Ending

I spent five years as Dominic Santoro’s wife in name only. Five years hidden behind closed doors, buried under his sheets, erased from his world. When he finally agreed to take me back to Chicago—to stand beside him, to be seen—I thought I had won. I bought a new dress. Soft. Elegant. Worthy of a Don’s woman. The night before we left, he looked at me through the mirror and said calmly, “Take the makeup off. Change into pants.” I asked why. He adjusted his cufflinks like I was nothing more than background noise. “Juliana Lancaster is back. Tonight is our engagement.” Russian Bratva. Lancaster blood. A marriage alliance. Seeing my silence, he laughed—careless, cruel. “What’s with that look? Didn’t we agree on this when we married? Brotherhood. Loyalty. No love.” Then he turned, eyes sharp and mocking. “Victoria Miller… you didn’t actually fall in love with me, did you?” I stood there, frozen. Because inside the inner pocket of his tailored suit— was my pregnancy report. And the Don of Chicago had no idea the woman he was about to sacrifice was carrying his heir.

Since I moved into this apartment, I kept dreaming about a man every time I fell asleep. The man told me he was my husband. However, I had only just started college. When I woke up, my lower back ached, and my body felt sore. My neighbor was a psychologist, and he prescribed some medication to help me sleep. Unfortunately, the dreams became even more real. One night, the man leaned close to my ear and whispered, “You can’t escape me.”

"Wider, Millie. Yes, that's it." I lay weakly on the examination table, my hands unconsciously gripping the sheets. The voice behind me was low and restrained, but it made my ears burn. This examination position was too embarrassing. My buttocks were forced to arch high like some kind of submissive gesture. "Doctor, I can't open any wider..." I bit my lower lip, my voice trembling deliberately. I could see my reflection in the metal bars of the examination table. My messy hair stuck to my flushed cheeks as my eyes shone with a watery, dreamy glow.

"Coach, please stop. I came here to learn how to drive, not to have an affair." Inside the instructor's car, because I kept failing to control the clutch, Coach Reeves, who happened to be my husband's friend, made me sit on his lap to teach me. The problem was, I was wearing a short skirt that day, and underneath it, I wasn't even wearing safety shorts. Even worse, he actually pulled his member out and pressed it straight against me.

"Please… stop pushing. I can't move." The concert crowd was packed and restless, bodies pressed tightly together. I found myself too close to the girl in front of me. She wore a short skirt that brushed against me every time the crowd surged. What caught my attention was how close we were: the faint warmth of her body through the thin fabric made my pulse quicken. For a brief moment, I thought I felt her react too, as if she sensed the same strange tension hanging between us.

Trevor Farren cheated on me—with a hostess, no less. He bought her a villa, handbags, necklaces, and even whisked her away to the Maldives. Everything I had, she had too. In my fury, I resolved to retaliate. I found myself in the smoky halls of a nightclub, learning shameful, provocative moves from the women there. I would seduce him and make him fall for me all over again. I vowed to crush him in the end. I'd ruin him. Strip him of everything he held dear until he tasted the bitterness of despair, the way I had. Standing before the mirror, I traced my curves with a sly smile. "Trevor, do you like what you see?"

I was touching myself in front of the teddy bear on my bed, because I knew a man was watching behind its eyes. He had sneaked into my home, lay on the bed where I slept, and left traces of himself on my clothes. When I noticed, he watched as I hid in a corner, trembling… not knowing that I had been waiting for him for a long time.

In the bedroom, I am being manipulated into various positions. A strange man reaches out toward me and fondles my body roughly with his callused hands. He leans in closer and tells me to relax because it will help release the milk quickly. The man before me is my husband's best friend. He was hired to be my lactation therapist. His hands roam across my waist slowly and pause right at my chest. I can hear him saying in a hoarse voice, "I'm going to start massaging here." I can't help but shudder before closing my eyes tightly.

I woke up and found myself transmigrated into my nemesis' doll. At first, I thought he was still a child at heart for keeping this. Then, I realized he was just unhinged. The doll's face looked just like mine. And then the bigger surprise was that he was a beastfolk. Every night, he would torture me with his literal serpent tail. I eventually told him I knew what he was. He imprisoned me on the bed and smiled at me gently. What came next were cruel words. "Since you already know, I'll drop the mask now. Tell me, do you want to use those toys or my tail?"

Have you ever heard of this secret, mysterious cruise? On a cruise ship that traverses the expansive ocean on New Year's Eve, rows of beautiful yet blind masseuses wait to be selected. To search for my sister, I pretend to be blind and think of a way to sneak onboard that cruise ship. A bigwig selects me and takes me back to his suite. He tilts my jaw and waves a hand before my eyes. "Are you really blind? Let's try something different, then…"