The devil's wife

The ghost in the system

The moment the computer beeped, I felt my pulse twist into something jagged and cold, like the whole room suddenly tilted even though I stood completely still. The screen lit up with one short line, too simple to be real and too dangerous to ignore.

STOP LOOKING FOR ME – A

Adrian’s initial burned like a brand.

Damian stepped beside me, shoulders tight, jaw locked so hard I swear I heard his teeth grind. “This is fake,” he said, but the break in his voice gave him away.

“Then you explain the timestamp,” I whispered, because my throat refused to form anything louder.

“Emails can be manipulated,” he snapped, running his hand through his hair again and again as if he could tear the truth out from between his fingers.

“Not this one,” I said, with a steady voice.

His eyes locked on mine, sharp and furious. “How would you know?”

I knew because I had lived in Adrian’s shadows longer than anyone realized, and I had watched the man unravel thread by thread. Also, because Damian had no idea what his brother had been capable of.

“I know because nothing about his death ever made sense,” I said, as I stepped toward him, refusing to flinch under the weight of his suspicion and to be small the way he wanted me to be.

He turned fully toward me, his chest rising and falling so fast, like he was balancing between breaking and exploding. “You lied from the beginning,” he said. “You married him, you betrayed him, and now you’re trying to tell me he’s alive? Are you insane or do you just think that I am?”

Something inside me snapped.

“You think I betrayed him?” I shot back, taking another step forward. “You have no idea who betrayed whom.”

He froze, because he didn’t believe me and because Damian Cross didn’t know how to handle uncertainty, it rattled him, stripped him of control, and he hated that more than he hated me.

He moved fast, grabbing my wrist and pulling me flush against him. His breath was hot against my cheek. “Then tell me,” he growled, “Tell me what you know, Sera. Tell me why the hell my dead brother is emailing us like he’s on a tropical vacation.”

“I don’t know,” I whispered, and it was the most honest thing I’d told him in months, but honesty didn’t soothe him, it ignited him.

He pushed me back against the desk very desperately. His hands planted on either side of my hips, caging me in a way that made my chest tighten with desire and rage all at once. His face was inches from mine, eyes burning like they wanted to drag the truth out of my skull.

“You’re lying,” he breathed, the heat of his words ghosting across my lips. “You’ve been lying since the day you married him.”

“And you’ve been blind since the day he died,” I shot back, refusing to look away and refusing to bow. “You’re so desperate to blame someone that you picked the easiest target. Me.”

His jaw clenched, but he didn’t move back. If anything he moved closer, the energy between us crackling hard enough to burn.

Then his anger shifted, twisted and turned into something else entirely. The next thing I knew, his lips were on mine.

The kiss wasn’t soft, or sweet, or careful. It was punishment, it was accusation, it was every lie we’d told ourselves about hating each other thrown into a spark that caught fire too fast to put out. My fingers curled into his shirt, pulling him closer even though I should have pushed him away. His hand slid into my hair, gripping just enough to make my blood rush downward and my resistance snap like brittle glass.

We kissed like we wanted to break each other, and we did, but then Damian pulled away abruptly, as if touching me burned him, as if kissing me was the one truth he wasn’t allowed to want.

“Damn it,” he muttered, pacing back, running both hands over his face. “This is hell.”

“No, this is the truth you keep refusing to look at.”

He let out a bitter laugh. “And what truth is that?”

“That your brother wasn’t who you thought he was,” I said softly. “And if he’s still alive, then we’re both in more danger than you’re ready to admit.”

Damian stared at me, something flickering behind the anger. It was fear, maybe, or understanding, but he shut it down, locking the emotion behind a wall I couldn’t see through.

“This conversation isn’t over,” he said roughly with a low voice. “Not by a long shot.”

Then he turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the glass.

The silence that followed felt heavy, thick and choking. I pressed my back to the desk, inhaling slowly and trying to ground myself and before I could catch my breath, something buzzed.

It was my phone

Not the phone Damian knew about, the one he’d inspected, interrogated and locked in a drawer.

My other one. The phone only Adrian had ever had the number to.

I pulled it out slowly, pulse thrumming against my ribs.

It was one message from an unknown number.

My fingers trembled from the dawning realization that everything was shifting faster than I could hold onto. I opened the message.

>You shouldn’t have married him. – A

My lungs stopped working. Another message arrived immediately, flashing across the screen like a warning carved in lightning.

He doesn’t know the truth. But I do. I stared at the glowing letters with dread coiling up my spine like cold metal.

A final message popped up a heartbeat later:

>And I’m coming for what’s mine.

I didn’t move.

Suddenly I wasn’t afraid of Damian’s anger anymore. I was afraid of Adrian’s return.