The dawn light was cruel.
It sliced through the sheer curtains of Alina’s penthouse bedroom in Berlin, catching the bruises blooming on her thighs—gifts from Nicholas’s reckless devotion—and painting them in gold and violet. She lay tangled in silk sheets, chest rising and falling with the weight of last night’s confessions and betrayals.
She should have felt triumphant. She had cornered him about Paris, forced him to kneel beneath her words and her body. He’d begged, bled apologies in her ear, then claimed her with a feral hunger that had made her forget everything but his name.
But as the sky blushed pink, victory felt hollow.
Because power was never content. It was a beast that devoured satisfaction.
She should have raged. Exposed him. Shamed him. But instead—she wanted more.
She
