Two can play the game

"Your husband spent last night in Suite 402 at the St. Regis with my wife." The gulp of sparkling water froze in the back of my throat. It went down the wrong pipe, burning like battery acid, but I forced myself to swallow hard rather than spray it across the linen-draped table. I set the crystal glass down, taking three seconds to align the base perfectly with the edge of my coaster. If my hands shook, if even a single drop spilled onto the tablecloth, he would see it. I lifted my gaze to meet Damon Cross’s eyes. "Mr. Cross," I said, keeping my voice low, smoothing out the tremor with sheer willpower. "I don't know what kind of sick game you're playing, but it isn't funny." "Look at me, Sienna." His voice wasn't loud. It was a dark, grounded murmur that seemed to draw all the air out of the room. "Do I look like a man who jokes about his marriage dying?" He didn't. Damon sat there in a slate-gray suit, looking less like a grieving husband and more like a predator waiting for the right moment to snap a spine. His dark eyes were cold, steady, and utterly void of doubt. "Julian is in Chicago," I said, the words falling out like a desperate script I’d rehearsed in my head. "He’s at a trade conference. He called me from his hotel room at midnight. He told me he couldn't sleep because the room was too cold without me." Damon didn't flinch. He didn't offer a sympathetic tilt of his head or a soft sigh. He just reached into his inner suit jacket, pulled out a thick manila envelope, and dropped it onto the table between my plate and his. The heavy thud echoed louder than a gunshot in the quiet luxury of the restaurant. "He called you from his hotel room at midnight," Damon repeated, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the table. The scent of sandalwood and rain drifted across the space between us. "Was he breathing heavily? Did he sound out of breath, Sienna? Because at 11:58 PM, Chloe was taking a video of him in the mirror of Suite 402." My stomach did a violent, nauseating flip. "Stop," I whispered. "Open it." "No." "Open the damn envelope, Sienna." "Julian loves me!" My voice cracked, the raw sharp edge of it drawing a quick glance from a waiter two tables away. I dragged air into my lungs, my chest aching as if the ribcage was caving in. "He loves me. You don't know what we've been through. You don't know what we built together. He wouldn't—he couldn't do this to me." "I thought the same thing about Chloe six months ago," Damon said softly. For a split second, the cold mask slipped, revealing something jagged and bleeding underneath—a raw, quiet fury that mirrored the sudden panic tearing through my own gut. "I thought she was just distant because of work. I thought I wasn't present enough. I blamed myself, Sienna. I spent six months buying her diamonds and booking surprise trips while she was taking your husband into our bed." "Shut up," I choked out, my fingers tightening around the edge of the table so hard my nails dug into the polished wood. "Just shut up." Damon didn't argue. He simply slid the envelope closer to my hand until the edge of the paper brushed my knuckles. "Look at the truth, or go home and let him kiss you with the same mouth he used on my wife an hour ago. It's your choice." The sheer disgust that surged through me at his words made me want to throw up right there on the floor. My hand moved before my brain could stop it. My trembling fingers broke the seal, tearing the top of the envelope open with a violent rip. I pulled out the stack of glossy eight-by-ten photos. The world went instantly silent. The murmur of the restaurant, the soft jazz playing overhead, the clinking of silverware everything evaporated into a ringing, high-pitched vacuum. The first photo was crisp. Sharp focus. Julian standing under the warm ambient lighting of a hotel hallway, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his hands resting possessively on a woman's hips. Chloe. Her face was turned up toward his, laughing, her fingers tangled in his dark hair. The same hand she’d used to hug me at brunch last Sunday. The same mouth she’d used to tell me I was like a sister to her. I flipped to the next photo. Julian’s face buried in her neck inside the elevator, his eyes closed in an expression of helpless, desperate greed I hadn't seen on his face in years. Next photo. A time-stamped shot through a sheer curtain. Julian on the edge of the bed, pulling her down into his lap. My breath hitched a wet, strangled sound that tore from my chest. My eyes burned, but no tears came. Just a blinding, searing heat that spread from the pit of my stomach up into my throat, suffocating me. Everything I had sacrificed the law degree I walked away from, the double shifts at the diner until my feet bled, the freezing winter nights where we shared one blanket because we couldn't afford heat, the tuition money I handed over to him without a second thought—it all rushed up to choke me. I had poured my youth, my body, and my soul into making him a man. And he had taken that man and handed him to Chloe like trash. "Sienna," Damon's voice broke through the numbness. I looked up slowly. My vision was swimming but not with tears, but with suffocating rage so absolute it made my teeth ache. Damon was watching me closely, his eyes tracking every micro-expression on my face. He wasn't looking at me with pity. That was the only reason I didn't tear those photos to shreds and throw them in his face. He didn't pity me. He was looking at me like a fellow survivor standing on the ash heap of a burned-down life. "They think we don't know," Damon said, his voice dropping into a harsh, dark whisper that vibrated right through my bones. "They think they're smarter than us. They're going home to us tonight, pretending everything is fine, laughing at how soft we are." I swallowed the iron taste of blood where I had bitten the inside of my lip. I set the photos down on the table, aligning them just as neatly as I had aligned my glass. "Why did you bring this to me?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm, even as every nerve in my body screamed for violence. "Why not just file for divorce and ruin her?" Damon leaned in closer. His dark gaze locked onto mine, holding me captive in the suffocating space between us. "Because taking half her money isn't enough," he murmured, a dangerous, dark glint flaring in his eyes. "I want to take everything from them. I want to break them until they're begging on their knees. But I can't do it alone." He reached out, his long fingers stopping an inch from mine on the table, warm heat radiating off his skin. "They think we're predictable, Sienna. They think we're weak." His lips curved into a sharp, predatory smile that sent a shiver straight down my spine. "So tell me... do you want to cry about it, or do you want to make them burn?"