CEO IN COMA

003: Peach Tea and Surveillance Scandals

You know what I realized?

When a man leaves you a handwritten note while he’s in a coma, it does things to your central nervous system.

I spent the last twenty-three minutes pacing across a room that smells like lavender wealth, towel still on my head, rereading that stupid peach-scented note over and over again like it held the secrets to the universe. It didn’t.

It held attitude.

“You didn’t read the fine print, did you?”

“P.S. I like peaches. You smelled like peaches.”

Oh, I’ll give him peaches. Right across his smug, comatose face.

I grab the towel off my head and toss it dramatically toward a chair. It misses. Lands on a sculpture of a naked baby riding a dolphin. Why rich people decorate with that stuff, I’ll never understand.

Cupid my ass.

I storm back into the bath, because my skin was halfway to hydrated and I’m not letting that note ruin my 7-step glow-up routine. As I sink back into the warm water, I mutter to myself like a woman unraveling:

“He’s not in a coma. He’s faking it. He’s somewhere in this house. Watching. Laughing. Eating peach jam on toast.”

And just as the paranoia settles deeper into my pores, something clicks.

A soft whirr.

I sit up. Slowly.

There, across the room, inside the vanity mirror—the tiniest red dot blinks.

Oh, hell no.

I wrap myself in a towel like a woman on a mission and march up to the mirror. My fingers fumble around the frame until I feel it—a button, hidden at the top edge. I press it, and like some kind of secret passageway in a spy movie, the mirror clicks, then swings inward.

Behind it?

A wall lined with monitors.

Cameras.

Every room of the house.

Including this one.

Ten minutes later, I’m dressed in a borrowed silk robe that says MRS. MATHIALLY on the back-eye roll-holding a fire poker like a weapon, and charging through the hallway like a furious reality TV contestant about to start a catfight.

I don’t care if it’s midnight.

I don’t care if this estate is crawling with 24/7 security.

Somewhere in this bougie mansion, my fake husband is sipping tea and laughing at me through spy cams.

He picked the wrong woman.

3rd Person POV

Secret Surveillance Room – Moments Later

Dark was ready.

Let the record show: he was ready.

He even poured two cups of peach tea. One for him, one for her. The woman he hadn’t stopped thinking about for six months. The woman whose first kiss—and everything after that—had wrecked him in ways no business merger ever could.

The woman who was now banging on the locked steel door like it owed her rent.

“OPEN THIS DOOR, YOU JAMES BOND-LOOKING PIECE OF EXPENSIVE FURNITURE!”

He smirks.

God, she’s even better than he remembered.

Hyacinth’s POV

I don’t wait for permission. Of course I don’t.

I use the fire poker to bash the panel beside the door. It sparks. The steel slides open with a hiss. And there, sitting like the prince of espionage himself, is the man I swore was in a coma just hours ago.

Alive.

Smirking.

And drinking peach tea.

With a smirk on his face, “Evening, wife.”

That damn smirk again. The one that made me want to slap it off and kiss it in the same breath. Hormones? Fired.

I could throw up.

Or throw something. Preferably the chair beside me.

“YOU—” I choke, then throw my arms in the air. “You faked a coma?! Who even does that? Who wakes up in the morning and goes, ‘Yeah, let me just fall into a government-grade pretend coma and hire bodyguards to protect my billion-dollar nap’?”

Dark doesn’t flinch. In fact, he sips his tea again. Smirking, lips twitch as if Kentaro.

“I had my reasons.” Then gazed into his monitors.

“You mean lies,” I snap. “You had lies. A warehouse full.”

“I never lied,” he says, setting the cup down with irritating elegance. “I just didn’t correct your assumptions.”

I hate it when he said it with crossed arms. Argh!

I stare at him. “You manipulated me.”

He rises.

Six foot-something of pure, alpha-grade smugness. The kind of dangerous that doesn’t need permission. Jet-black hair in a tousled chaos that looks infuriatingly intentional. Grey silk shirt unbuttoned just enough to hint at sin. And that smirk—the same wicked curve of lips he wore when he robbed me of logic, dignity, and, oh yeah—my virginity six months ago.

My brain short-circuits like a toaster in a thunderstorm.

No. No, no, no. Focus, Hyacinth. You came here to yell, not melt.

“You married me,” I hiss, my jaw clenched tighter than my fists, “without telling me.”

He chuckled.

Not laughed. Chuckled. Like a handsome maniac who just lit a cigar with my birth certificate.

“I asked,” he says, lifting one maddening shoulder in a slow shrug. “You signed.”

I gape. “I thought it was for room service!”

“That’s on you, babe.”

“DON’T ‘BABE’ ME, DARK DEMETRECOV MATHIALLY!”

His full name ricochets off the walls like a slap dipped in gasoline.

He should’ve flinched.

He didn’t.

Of course he didn’t.

Instead—he grinned.

“You’re cute when you yell.”

Is this man for real?

“Don’t make me throw this fire poker,” I snapped, gripping the metal rod beside the fireplace. I swear I was one full smirk away from becoming a true-crime documentary.

He takes a step forward. I bounce back instinctively, breath hitching. “Then stop standing so far away.”

His presence wasn’t just physical—it pressured the room. Like the furniture should move out of respect..

My nervous system? Scrambled eggs.

My sense of self-preservation? Filing a restraining order against my hormones.

Because he’s close now. Too close. And I hate it.

God, I hate how my heart stumbles over itself like it’s forgotten we’re mad.

I hate the way his cologne—cedar, sin, and rich people—crawls up my spine and rewrites my rules of survival.

He moves like he owns every room he walks into—and unfortunately, that includes mine. My limbs are already betraying me. My knees whisper, Maybe we sit now?, while my pride shrieks, Stay angry, dammit!

“I swear,” I breathe, trembling like a soda can under pressure, “if you come any closer—”

“What?” he murmurs, his voice dipped in velvet and sin. “You’ll scream? Hm?”

With those baritone hum s***h whispered moan suggests I should be wet by now.

I blink.

Of course he said that.

This man is built on audacity. He probably bathes in it.

“No,” I shoot back, forcing steel into my spine. “Whatever this twisted drama is—you and your creepy castle and your cameras and your peach obsession—it ends tonight.”

He pauses.

And something in his eyes—just for a second—shifts.

“I need you to stay.”

It wasn’t sort of a beg. Neither a sense of responsibility is coercing me to do.

If it’s not a plea, nor my job—then why do I feel obligated?

I cross my arms. Tight. Defensive. “Oh, now you need me?”

“Not for me.”