I Picked His Mistress, I Found My Self

Chapter 2

Seraphina hung up without explaining a thing.

When she was a child, the bar down the street closed at ten every night. That was when her father would stagger home drunk and take his fists to her mother, and to her. Ten o'clock became the hour she feared most in the world. All she ever asked of the man she married was a simple thing: be home before ten. Any later, and the old terror came crawling back.

When Damien first courted her, she knew the door to a family like the Hawthornes was hard to walk through, but she gambled on love anyway.

In the beginning, he came straight home after work. He turned down dinners, parties, every social obligation.

Then one day, she stopped by the office to surprise him with lunch, and walked in on him with his young assistant pinned against his desk, his mouth on hers. The moment his eyes met hers, his whole body went rigid.

He smoked outside their door for an entire night. At the stroke of ten, he walked in.

Seraphina sat on the couch with her arms around her knees and her eyes red. "It's ten. I forgive you."

Damien knelt down in front of her and slapped himself across the face, again and again, until his cheek split open, swearing he would never lose his head again.

Later, of course, he forgot. He pointed at the clock with righteous indignation. "I'm home on time. What more do you want?"

She wept, she screamed, and when none of it worked, she cut her wrist in the bathtub. After they pulled her back from that, she threw herself off the balcony. The fall left her in a wheelchair for months, and the first thing she did when she could move it herself was roll straight off a pier into the ocean. After that, she even took a whole bottle of sleeping pills.

Each time, Damien spent an extraordinary sum to drag her back from the edge, and somehow neither of them broke.

But her mother did. The news of Seraphina's first attempt triggered a heart attack, and it was Damien who flew in the most renowned specialists in the world to save her.

That was when Seraphina understood. Money was what mattered the most.

She stopped fighting. She stopped making scenes. She settled into being Mrs. Hawthorne, even handpicking his mistresses for him.

But this time, she didn't want to bear it anymore.

The man who had stormed off came back with a cold face, gripped her wrist, and dragged her into the car. He drove her to a private room at a club where his circle was already waiting.

"Seraphina, we'll vouch for him. Damien didn't mean to stay out last night."

"Yeah, the second he saw it was ten, he tried to leave. We were the ones who held him back, kept pushing drinks on him. Otherwise, he'd have been home long before."

"Look, every man has to socialize. Demanding a divorce just because he missed a ten o'clock curfew is unreasonable."

She had barely steadied her feet before the wave of accusations nearly drowned her.

Damien sat at the head of the table, a pretty young girl curled against his side, while he yanked impatiently at his own tie. "Fine, it was my fault. I've explained myself. Satisfied now? You drag everything to divorce. You're going to make us a joke."

Only then did Seraphina lift her eyes to look at the girl.

It was the first time she had seen her. She looked exactly like Seraphina at that age, with the same wide-eyed innocence, the same certainty that she was different from all the others.

"Mr. Hawthorne, if you treat your wife like this, will you treat me the same way someday?" The girl pouted. "Then I won't marry you. You're awful."

Damien pinched her cheek with weary affection. "Saying things like that at your age. Aren't you ashamed?"

She wouldn't drop it. "I gave myself to you at eighteen, you know. You'd better not treat me like that one day."

Seraphina's eyes burned. She, too, had given herself to him at eighteen. She, too, had believed she was different. And in the end, none of it mattered.

"All right, since there's nothing else, I'll head home."

Someone laughed. "Damien's just too responsible. I told him she wouldn't actually care, she just wanted attention. And he still went and rounded us all up to explain himself."

"Better not push it. Push too far and there's no affection left to push against."

Seraphina didn't argue. She left in silence.

She had barely cleared the doorway when Chloe Beaumont chased after her.

"You moaned beautifully."

The opening line was a warning. Seraphina pressed her fingers to her temple. "Thank you. I think so too."

Chloe was still just a girl, and her face flushed scarlet at the answer.

"Have you no shame? Praising yourself like that. Do you know Damien says you smell old now? If it weren't for the responsibility, he'd have thrown you out a long time ago."

Seraphina paused. She was twenty-eight this year. Not young anymore, that much was true. And her temper was nothing like what it had once been.

She brought her hand around in a sharp slap that left Chloe stunned.

"You dare slap me! I'm telling Damien. I'll make him divorce you!"

Seraphina caught a fistful of the girl's hair and yanked her head back, releasing years of pent-up rage in a single motion. Another slap silenced Chloe completely. Fear flooded her eyes.

"I don't care how in love you two are. If you've got the nerve, get him to divorce me. Don't stand here in front of me bluffing."

She let go. Chloe collapsed to the floor, sobbing as though her chest would split open.

Damien came out at the noise and stopped short. He lit a cigarette, irritation curling around him. "Brawling in public like this. There's nothing left of Mrs. Hawthorne in you. You're making a spectacle of yourself."

Seraphina looked him in the eye. "I've been a spectacle for a long time."

He looked away. She hadn't met his eyes like that in years, and the disappointment in hers felt like an invisible hand closing around his heart. He couldn't breathe. He didn't like that.

Chloe clung weeping to the hem of his coat. "Damien, help! She's nuts! She wanted to kill me. Look at my face. It hurts so much."