The taste of burnt coffee was the least offensive thing about this Sunday morning.
I heard the soft padding of her bare feet on the marble floor before I saw her. Serena was making her grand entrance, of course, giving me plenty of time to brace for the first volley of the day.
She walked past the kitchen like it was a runway. She wasn't wearing one of her usual manipulative dresses; it was just her—a sculpted, slim figure in a simple black bra and panties. It was an image designed to remind me of the beautiful thing I craved and the monster it contained.
"Looks like you still haven't done what I told you, Damien," she drawled, not even sparing me a glance as she swept by.
I squeezed the mug until my knuckles went white. "Of course it wasn't done," I muttered, the words barely a rasp. How could it be?
She paused only long enough to flick her wrist , a gesture that always felt like a dismissal of my entire existence. "Well, you should get to it." And then she was gone, her sickeningly sweet, expensive perfume lingering like a toxic cloud.
I forced myself to walk toward the study. Well, you should get to it. The words echoed in her tone—casual, dismissive, utterly entitled. I sat down at the oversized mahogany desk, the blank blueprint paper mocking me.
I picked up a drafting pencil, but my hand wouldn't move. A cold thought cut through the fog of my obedience: I am the man. Why am I taking orders from this woman?
The shame hit me, swiftly followed by the memory that always pulled me back. When I was nothing, Serena was all I had . She found me when I was broke, bruised, and invisible. I owed her. But the debt had become a chain, and the chains were strangling me.
I snapped the pencil down and pushed off the desk. This wasn't about the blueprints. This was about the lies.
I walked to the study door and shouted down the hall. "Serena! Come in here. We need to talk about the plans."
Silence. The expensive house ate the sound, leaving only the dull echo of my own pathetic voice.
I called again, louder this time, letting the desperation lace my voice. "Serena! I need you in the study! Now!"
Nothing. No reply, no footsteps returning. Just the soft padding sound of her bare feet disappearing deeper into the mansion.
My blood began to boil. She wasn't busy. She was simply making a point: I was a tool, and a tool doesn't call its owner.The thought of following her like the well-trained servant I was made my stomach turn. But the need to hold her accountable for the dreams she had crushed was a desperate, physical ache.
I stalked out of the study and found her in the master bath—a sprawling, marble tomb lit by morning sun.
She was standing at the mirror, her slim, sculpted body still in the bra and panties, a tableau of deliberate vanity. She wasn't doing anything that required focus. She was simply applying lipstick. A fresh, nude pink that perfectly complemented her skin, which she painted with the meticulous slowness of a woman with all the time in the world.
My throat was tight with a white-hot fury I hadn't let myself feel in years. "I know you heard me calling you," I said, my voice dangerously low.
She finished the final stroke of color, pressed her lips together with a soft smack, and then her eyes found mine in the mirror. They were flat, disinterested, completely untouched by my trauma.
"Yeah," she replied. "But as you see, I'm busy."
I took a heavy step toward the marble vanity. "Where did the woman I fell in love with go, Serena? The one who talked about the marriage? The one who said we'd build an empire?" My voice cracked. "I don't feel appreciated! I feel like your dog!"
She finally turned from the mirror, slowly, deliberately, her expression shifting from boredom to cold annoyance. "You earned this life with your loyalty."
"Loyalty?" I choked. "I killed for you! What about your mother, Serena? I eliminated the only person who could have ever taken this away from you, and you treat me like an errand boy?"
She blinked, her perfect pink lips curving into a smile of absolute, chilling contempt. She leaned against the closet door, crossing her arms over her chest, utterly relaxed.
"You did it because I told you to." She held my gaze, her eyes utterly cold. "Now get out of my sight and finish those blueprints before I find a new dog to fetch for me."
That was it. That was the final, defining truth.
In that moment, the love died, and only a pure, blinding need for freedom remained.
My gaze snapped to the heavy glass carafe of bath salts sitting on the ledge beside me. It was solid, etched crystal—heavy enough to do the job.
I grabbed it. The cool glass felt right in my furious hand. There was no thought, no conscience, only the primal, blinding need to end the source of the suffocation.
I moved across the marble floor in two wide strides. Serena barely had time to register the feral look in my eyes before the crystalline weight in my hand swung hard and fast.
The sound was shockingly dull. She didn't scream. Her eyes went wide—not with pain, but with a flicker of confusion—before her perfect, sculpted body crumpled to the white marble floor, the nude pink lipstick smeared across her cheek.
Silence. Absolute, perfect silence.
I stood over her, breathing hard. I had won.
Then, the world flickered.
A sudden, sharp spike of nausea hit me. The air seemed to shimmer and crackle. The smell of blood, copper, and expensive perfume vanished.
I blinked. I was still in the kitchen.
The bright, relentless Sunday morning sun streamed through the window. My hands were empty, resting on the cool surface of the counter. And in the mug, just where I had left it: the burnt, bitter coffee.
My lungs were still dragging for air, fighting the adrenaline. I brought the mug up, my hand shaking violently, and took a frantic gulp. The burnt coffee hit the back of my throat, and I immediately choked.
Coughing and sputtering, I slammed the mug down. A hot spray of coffee sloshed over the pristine marble countertop.
Had I dreamed it? The memory was sharp, vivid, and terrifyingly real. But the bathroom was silent, the kitchen untouched.
And then I heard the sound I dreaded most.
The soft padding of bare feet on the marble floor.
Serena walked past the kitchen like it was a runway. She wasn't wearing one of her usual dresses; it was just her—a sculpted, slim figure in a simple black bra and panties.
"Looks like you still haven't done what I told you, Damien," she drawled, her voice a cruel, familiar melody. She swept past, but then her feet stopped right beside the slick, dark pool of spilled coffee. She finally glanced down, then back at me, her face twisting into a mask of disgust.
"Ugh, have some decency," she snapped, cutting off the rest of her usual routine. "I've taught you better than that."
She stepped over the mess and continued her path, disappearing into the hall.
I stood there, staring at the coffee stain on the floor—the only mess in an otherwise perfectly restored world. The uncertainty was the real poison. I was trapped between two horrors: the crushing guilt of murder, and the sickening fear that the nightmare was still waiting for me to wake up.
I had to be sure. I had to know if the murder in the bathroom had been real.
I had to go back to the study, and pretend the day had only just begun.