MY VENGEFUL REBIRTH

CHAPTER 5— MIDNIGHT, RINGS AND RUIN

Midnight hits Graves Tower like a gunshot.

Adrian’s penthouse is 3,000 square feet of glass, steel, and sin on the 80th floor. The city sprawls below us, Damian’s kingdom, laid out like a chessboard we’re about to flip. I’m standing at the floor to ceiling windows, naked except for the bite marks Adrian left all over me. Neck, t**s, hips, inner thighs. I look like I got mauled by something vicious and holy f**k, I did.

He’s in the shower. I can hear the water running, steam curling under the bathroom door. He told me not to answer if anyone knocks.

“Let the bastard burn,” he said, dragging his teeth down my spine before he walked away. “He doesn’t get to see you ever again.”

But I hear the elevator ding. Private access. Only three people have the code: Adrian, me as of four hours ago, and Damian. Because Adrian bought this building out from under him last year and never changed the overrides. Petty. I f*****g love it.

The knock comes. Three sharp raps. Desperate but trying to sound controlled.

I don’t cover up. I don’t run. I died once doing what I was supposed to do.

I walk to the door and open it.

Damian Locke stands there looking like hell. Suit rumpled, tie loosened, eyes bloodshot. In his hand is a little velvet box. A ring box. The same one he proposed with eight years ago. The diamond in it could buy a small country.

His eyes drag down my body and his face goes white, then red, then something uglier. Possession. Rage. The look a man gets when he realizes his property has been stolen and ruined for anyone else.

“Vivienne.” My name sounds like glass in his mouth.

“Damian.” I lean against the doorframe, completely bare, not even trying to hide the fingerprints bruised into my hips or the way my thighs are still sticky with Adrian’s c*m. Let him see. Let it kill him. “You’re on the wrong floor. The morgue’s in the basement.”

He flinches. Good. “I had to see you. Celeste told me—”

“Celeste told you I’m alive?” I laugh, and it’s not nice. “Or did she tell you I’m alive and I’m f*****g your enemy so hard I can’t remember your name when I come?”

“Shut the f**k up.” He steps forward, and for a second I think he’s going to hit me. He did once, the first timeline. Backhand across the face because I asked about the charges on his black card. I didn’t die on that balcony by accident. He locked the door.

I don’t step back. I step in. Chest to chest, my n*****s brushing his shirt. “Make me,” I whisper. “Touch me again, Damian. Please. Give Adrian a legal reason to put you in the ground.”

He stops breathing. His eyes drop to my throat, where Adrian’s mouth left a mark that’s already turning purple. A brand.

“Who did that to you?” he asks, but he knows.

I smile. “The man who didn’t let me freeze.”

Behind me, the bathroom door opens. Steam rolls out, and then Adrian is there. Sweatpants slung low, no shirt, water still running down the ridges of his abs and the scar on his ribs from the knife fight that made him a legend. He looks like a god who f***s and kills with the same hands.

He doesn’t say anything. He just walks up behind me, wraps one arm around my waist, and pulls my back to his chest. His c**k is half hard against my ass, and he doesn’t hide it. His other hand comes up and cups my jaw, tilting my face up for a kiss that’s slow, filthy, and completely about ownership. He licks into my mouth like Damian isn’t even here. Like he’s nothing.

When he pulls back, he looks at Damian over my shoulder. “You’ve got five seconds to explain why you’re in my house, Locke.”

Damian’s hand tightens on the ring box until I hear the velvet creak. “I made a mistake,” he says, and his voice cracks. Pathetic. “Vivienne, baby, I was drunk. I didn’t mean to lock the—”

“Don’t.” My voice could cut diamonds. “Don’t you f*****g dare say it was an accident. You looked me in the eye through the glass. You smiled.”

Adrian goes still behind me. Dead still. The kind of still that comes before something gets broken. “He locked you out?” It’s not a question. It’s a death sentence.

“On our anniversary,” I say, and I’m not talking to Damian anymore. I’m talking to the man who has his hand on my throat now, not choking, just feeling my pulse like he needs to know I’m really here. “Snowstorm. Silk dress. He toasted Celeste while I died.”

The air in the penthouse drops twenty degrees.

Damian starts babbling. “It wasn’t like that, I panicked, I was going to come back for you, I love you—”

“You love my father’s company,” I snap. “You love my trust fund. You love that I was quiet and stupid and didn’t ask where you were at 3 a.m.”

I step out of Adrian’s arms and walk to Damian. He looks hopeful for one second. Stupid man.

I’m close enough to smell his cologne. The same one he wore on our wedding day. The first one. I reach up, take the ring box from his shaking hand, and flip it open. Two carats. Flawless. Worth more than most people’s houses.

“Pretty,” I say.

Then I drop it. It hits the marble and bounces, the diamond popping out and skittering under the couch.

“Vivienne—”

“Shut up,” I tell him, soft. “It’s my turn to talk.”

I walk back to Adrian, and he opens his arms like he knew I’d come home to him. I climb him, wrapping my legs around his waist. He catches me easy, one hand on my ass, the other fisting my hair. I’m wet again just from the adrenaline, from the hate, from the way Damian is watching with his whole world falling apart.

“Do you want to watch?” I ask Damian over Adrian’s shoulder. My voice is honey and poison. “Do you want to see what it looks like when a man actually f***s his wife like she matters?”

“Vivienne, don’t—”

Adrian doesn’t wait. He walks us to the couch, drops me down on the leather, and shoves my knees apart. He’s still in those sweatpants, and when he pushes them down, his c**k springs free, thick and angry and already leaking for me.

“You sure, princess?” he asks me, and only me. Damian could be on fire and he wouldn’t look. “Once he sees this, there’s no going back. He’ll never unsee you taking me.”

I reach down and spit in my palm, wrap my hand around him and stroke, slow and dirty. “I don’t want to go back. I want him to burn.”

Adrian lines himself up and slams home in one brutal thrust. I scream. Not pain. Victory. My nails rake down his back. “f**k!”

He sets a pace that’s meant to punish. Meant to show off. Every snap of his hips makes the couch shake, makes my t**s bounce, makes Damian make a sound like he’s been stabbed.

“You see this, Locke?” Adrian growls, f*****g me harder. “You see how wet she gets for me? How she claws at me? You never made her come like this, did you? Too busy with your mistress. Too busy killing her.”

“Adrian,” I gasp, my head thrown back. “Don’t stop. Don’t you f*****g stop.”

Damian moves. I think he’s going to lunge. I think he’s going to try to pull Adrian off me.

He doesn’t get the chance.

Adrian has one hand on my throat, the other hooked under my knee to open me wider, but his eyes flick up. He pulls out of me, leaving me empty and whimpering, and he’s across the room before I can blink. He has Damian by the throat and against the wall in two seconds. Feet dangling.

“You locked her out,” Adrian says, and his voice is the sound of graves opening. “You watched her die.”

“Adrian,” I say, sitting up, legs shaking. “Don’t kill him. Not yet.”

He looks at me, Damian choking in his grip. “Give me one reason.”

I stand, walk to them, naked and wrecked and powerful. I put my hand over Adrian’s on Damian’s throat. “Because death is too quick. I want him to live. I want him broke. Alone. I want him to wake up every day knowing I’m alive, and I’m yours, and I’m happy.”

Adrian studies me for three heartbeats. Then he lets Damian drop. Damian hits the floor coughing, gasping.

“Get out,” Adrian tells him. “Crawl back to whatever’s left of your life. And know that she’s upstairs right now, taking my c**k and my name.”

Damian looks at me one last time. There’s no love there. Just loss. Just the realization that he created me. This version of me. The one who doesn’t freeze.

He leaves. The elevator doors close.

The penthouse is quiet except for our breathing.

Adrian turns to me. “You good?”

I walk to him, press my naked body to his, and feel him hard again already. “I’m better than good. I’m alive.”

He picks me up and carries me to the bedroom. “Then let’s make sure he hears you being alive all f*****g night.”

And we do.

Word count: 1,062