Chapter Two: The Sin We Shared
1179 Words
The first lie I ever told my husband was that I belonged to him.
The second was tonight.
I didn’t slip away from the ballroom—I escaped. Through corridors lined with oil paintings of dead Adlers whose empty eyes had judged generations before mine. The masquerade below had turned decadent, drunken—mask after mask of plastic civility—and I couldn’t breathe in the gold-drenched rot of it anymore.
The storm outside Berlin was growing violent. The sky cracked open with thunder as if the heavens were trying to stop me from reaching that door at the end of the east wing.
But I opened it anyway.
And they were waiting.
Aleksei and Matthias.
Two men who moved like wolves in suits.
Two men who had no right to look at me the way they did.
Aleksei leaned against the window frame, stormlight crawling over his tattoos like a serpent made of ink and regret. His black shirt was unbuttoned halfway, soaked from the rain, stuck to the lines of his body in a way that made my mouth dry.
Matthias stood beside the fire, turning a lowball glass in his palm like he was weighing the consequences of shattering it. Of shattering everything.
He didn’t look at me right away.
But when he did, it wasn’t gentle.
“You sure this is how you want to burn?” Matthias asked, voice deep, low, and already dangerous.
I stepped inside.
“I’ve already been burning,” I whispered. “At least this time I get to choose the fire.”
Aleksei’s grin was slow, wicked. “Then come, Adlerin. Let’s sin properly.”
He was the first to touch me.
His hands were impatient—hot and searching, like he’d waited too long to know how I tasted and had no time to waste.
He pulled me in and kissed me like he wanted me bruised from it. And I let him.
God help me, I wanted him to bruise me.
Matthias hadn’t moved. Yet.
His eyes tracked the path Aleksei’s hands took down my spine, along my thighs, over the edge of silk that was my only armor.
“You’re not afraid?” he asked, almost disappointed.
I turned my head, breathless. “Do you want me to be?”
“No,” Matthias said, setting the glass down. “I want you aware.”
Then he approached.
And I realized just how wrong it was that I wasn’t afraid.
Because this wasn’t desire.
It was a slow detonation.
Matthias kissed me like a contract being signed in blood. Deliberate. Dangerous.
And Aleksei pressed behind me, breath hot against my neck, hands slipping under silk to claim what didn’t belong to either of them—yet somehow, in that moment, belonged to both.
The world blurred as I was lifted.
Aleksei sat on the edge of the Adler piano, pulling me into his lap like I was the last truth he’d ever touch.
Matthias stood between my knees and unzipped my dress—slow, reverent. “Say stop,” he murmured.
I didn’t.
The dress fell.
Aleksei groaned. Matthias swore.
I was bare. Cold. Alive.
And no one said a word.
For a heartbeat, it was just the rain outside, the fire, and three souls tethered by a sin none of us could name yet.
Then the door opened.
Dominik stood there.
And the world did stop.
My husband, in his black suit and the face of a king carved from winter.
His eyes swept the room—the dress on the floor, the piano, me.
Them.
And for the first time since I married him, Dominik looked human.
He looked broken.
“Ivy,” he said, voice tight.
My name from his mouth was usually cold steel.
Tonight, it trembled.
He stepped in and closed the door behind him with too much care. Not a slam. Not a rage-fueled entrance.
Worse.
He was calm.
Which meant he was about to kill something.
Aleksei didn’t even flinch. “You left her alone, brother. What did you expect?”
Matthias didn’t speak. But his hand stayed on my thigh.
Dominik’s eyes dropped to it. “Matthias.”
His voice cracked like a command in war.
Matthias didn’t move.
“She’s not your possession anymore, Dominik,” he said flatly.
“She’s my wife,” he barked.
I stood, stepping between them, still in nothing but lace and rebellion. “You didn’t act like a husband,” I snapped. “You acted like a warden.”
Dominik turned to me slowly, as if seeing me for the first time since our wedding day. “So this is how you punish me?”
“No,” I said softly. “This is how I choose myself.”
He looked away, jaw twitching. “You don’t know what you’ve started.”
I stepped closer. “Then stay and stop me.”
He stared at me.
I stared right back.
And then Dominik, the man who never bent, took a step forward.
And kissed me.
It was nothing like Aleksei’s hungry fire or Matthias’s calculated worship.
It was violent. Desperate.
Raw.
He kissed me like a man losing his mind.
And I kissed him back.
That was the true sin.
Not the kiss.
But the fact that I wanted all three of them.
Right there.
Right then.
A war began on that bed.
Aleksei took my wrists above my head and murmured things in Russian I didn’t understand but felt like prayer. Matthias pulled me onto his lap and fed me his control, one stolen breath at a time.
And Dominik…
Dominik watched.
He sat in the velvet armchair and drank his scotch and burned through me with his eyes. Until I said his name.
And he shattered.
He joined us with the force of a storm breaking open. His hands claimed, his mouth punished, and we were all gasps and tangled limbs and heat that threatened to swallow the world.
It was not love.
It was annihilation.
And I craved every second.
The storm outside never stopped.
Neither did we.
By the time morning cracked over Berlin, the windows were fogged and the chandelier above the bed was swinging slightly from the motion it had endured.
We lay like kings and queen on a battlefield.
Naked. Marked. Silent.
And for a moment, I believed this madness could be a new kind of truth.
Until the silence shattered again.
My phone buzzed.
I reached for it, half-asleep, sore in ways I couldn’t name.
One text.
Unknown number.
“He’s coming. You have until noon to disappear. After that, there will be blood.”
My breath caught.
I looked around the room.
Dominik was gone.
Matthias sat by the fire, his shirt unbuttoned, his face unreadable. Aleksei slept like sin beside me.
And I…
I stared at the message again.
A name wasn’t necessary.
I already knew.
The one person more dangerous than Dominik.
The one man I hadn’t yet touched.
The one who had been watching us all along.
His father.
- Writer
