CHAPTER 2
1073 Words
ZIRAH
I pushed the door open slowly, my fingers trembling around the handle. For a second, I thought maybe I was dreaming. Maybe the grief and exhaustion had finally broken my mind and I was seeing things that weren't real.
But no.
The moment the door swung wide enough, reality hit me like a truck going full speed.
Declan was inside. Inside Mira. On his desk.
Her blouse was pushed up past her shoulders, her skirt bunched around her waist. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her into him with a force that made the desk shake. His mouth was on her neck, biting, sucking, groaning like a man who had zero shame.
Her moans bounced off the office walls. Loud. Breathy. She wasn't even trying to be quiet. She wasn't worried about being caught.
And why would she be?
Nobody walks into the Alpha's office without knocking.
Nobody except his wife.
Mira saw me first. Her head snapped toward me so fast her hair whipped across her face. Her eyes went wide, lips still parted around a moan that died the second our eyes met. The color drained from her skin like someone had pulled a plug.
Declan didn't stop right away. He turned his head lazily, still pressed against her, still buried inside her, and looked at me like I had interrupted something important. Not guilt. Not shame. Not even surprise.
Irritation.
Pure irritation. Like I was the problem.
My chest caved in. My lungs forgot how to work. My vision tunneled until all I could see was the two of them tangled together on the same desk where I once signed the contracts that saved this company from bankruptcy.
"Our daughter," I whispered. My voice came out small, broken, barely human. "She died today, Declan."
Tears spilled down my cheeks without permission. Hot, angry, desperate tears that burned my skin as they fell.
Mira scrambled off the desk, pulling her blouse down with shaking hands. Her face twisted with panic. "Zirah, I swear, I didn't mean to, I thought you two were already..."
Her words collapsed into each other, falling apart like wet paper. But I couldn't look at her. Not yet.
Because Mira wasn't just some random woman.
She was my stepsister.
The girl who grew up in my house after her mother married my father. The girl I shared a bedroom with for years. The girl I defended in school when people bullied her for being the new kid. The girl who sat beside me in the hospital just two nights ago, holding my hand while Naia's monitors beeped slower and slower.
She held my hand. She wiped my tears. She told me everything would be okay.
And now she was bent over my husband's desk with his fingerprints still fresh on her skin.
The betrayal didn't just cut. It carved.
Declan finally pulled away from her and zipped up his pants like he was getting ready for a casual lunch. No urgency. No panic. Just the slow, unbothered confidence of a man who believed he was untouchable.
"You're seriously going to do this right now?" he said, his voice flat and cold. "Cry about the kid again?"
My heart cracked open for the second time today.
He stepped closer, adjusting his belt, his eyes hard as stone.
"That's all you've been for months, Zirah. A walking funeral. Crying. Hospitals. Medications. I'm tired of it. You stopped being a wife a long time ago. You stopped being anything except a mother to a sick child who couldn't even survive."
Mira gasped. "Declan, stop."
But he wasn't done.
"Maybe she died because you weren't strong enough to keep her alive," he said. "Maybe if you spent less time pretending to be a CEO and more time being a real mother, she'd still be breathing."
The world tilted sideways. The floor shifted beneath my feet. A sound escaped my throat, something raw and wounded that didn't even sound like me. It sounded like an animal being gutted alive.
My nails dug into my palms so deep I felt skin break. Warm blood pooled in my fists but I didn't feel the pain. Not compared to what his words just did to me.
"You are disgusting," I whispered.
He smirked. That same arrogant Alpha smirk he always wore when he wanted to remind me who was in charge. "And you're pathetic. Always have been. Everyone thinks so. They just feel too sorry for you to say it."
I stared at him. This man I gave three years of my life to. This man I married at twenty one because I believed love could fix anything. This man who took my innocence, my trust, my loyalty, and fed it all to the wolves while I held his world together with my bare hands.
Something shifted inside me.
Not grief. Not sadness. Something harder. Colder. Something that felt like steel being forged in fire.
I moved before I could think. My hand swung fast and connected with his face so hard the sound cracked across the room like a whip.
His head snapped to the side.
For the first time in three years, Declan Sinclair was speechless.
"You always wanted an open marriage," I said. My voice was calm now. Steady. Frighteningly steady. "Every time we fought, you threw it in my face. Every time I caught you flirting, you told me I was overreacting and that I should just agree to open things up."
He touched his cheek, eyes burning with shock.
"Well congratulations, Declan." I straightened my back and looked him dead in the eyes. "You got your wish. Open marriage it is."
The room went silent. Mira's hand flew to her mouth. Declan blinked, confused, like he couldn't process the words coming from the wife he thought would always bend.
"But here's the thing," I continued, stepping closer until my face was inches from his. "You don't get to choose the rules anymore. I do."
I turned toward the door, pulled it open, and paused without looking back.
"And Declan?" I said softly. "You're going to regret every single word you said to me today."
I walked out.
And for the first time in three years, I didn't look back.
But what I didn't know was that my next stop would change everything. And the three men waiting for me there would make sure Declan Sinclair never slept peacefully again.
- Writer
