LOGIN"I see that you like her." My dad commented on the drive back home.
"She is beautiful." I shrugged, going through my phone. I was letting Lucas know to hold down the VIP slot at the club tonight."Well, hopefully, this alliance brings more money to the family." My dad smiled at my mom.I was silent for a while as I stared at my dad through the rearview mirror. As nice as my dad could be, he was very ruthless when it came to business. That was where I got my business sense from."But Dad, you know you can lend him the money and put your lawyers to work in case there is an issue. You could make a lot of money if the company collapses. You just have to have the right clauses." I suggested."Jonathan, you are acting like you still don't know anything about business. Why do I need to lend him money back and still pay my lawyers? That would be me spending unnecessarily and I hate that. With a marriage, you get to influence the heir to McGregor's wealth." My father said."You have always been the businessman." I praised him."Just like you are." My father gave me a curt nod.By the time we got back home, I jumped down from the SUV and strode to my Lamborghini."You are going out?" My Mom asked."Yes Mom, I am and I will be back soon." I beamed at her.My mother didn't look pleased, but I wasn't bothered. I had already gone to dinner tonight with her and my father and had agreed to get married to Anna. I wasn't going to let her ruin my life all at once."Bye, Mom," I said and slid into the lush seat of the Lambo.Like a racer, I sped to the SirenHome, a secluded nightclub for men like me. The security guard at the gate screened my card before letting me in. It wasn't like the other clubs where anyone was allowed to come in and go out as they pleased. This club here catered to the needs of men like me and my entire body was twitching with anticipation.I climbed down from my car and ordered a valet to park the car. With quick strides, I marched past the oak doors of the establishment.Pop music greeted my ears the moment I walked past the door. Another perk of SirenHome was that whatever happened in the club always stayed in the club. Secrets were highly prioritized here."You are welcome, sir." A stripper smiled handing me a mask.I returned her smile as I took in her every curve. With a satisfied grin on my face, I wore the mask and strode to the VIP area. I only had to show the guards at the door my ID and I was allowed to walk in.The moment I passed through the security doors at the VIP area, I tore the mask away from my face."My own man." Lucas grinned at me as he gave me a warm hug.I clasped hard on his shoulder and grinned at him."I am so sorry that I am late tonight.""Well, the party had to wait for the man of the moment. Now that you are here, we can begin." He acknowledged.I nodded my head and with that, the events of the night started.With great precision, the men who were to battle took the stage and the fight began. This was my favorite pastime, one that even the media knew nothing about. I have always loved wrestling scenes and though I may not fight, I made sure to use my money to get the best experiences.I sat in the front seat along with Lucas and we enjoyed the fight. I couldn't help but grin the moment the fighter I had placed money on won the fight."Oh for fucks sake!" Sanjo, a young Mexican who was learning to enjoy the billionaire life cursed beside me. He had placed money on the fighter who had lost the match."Hey boy, I told you there was a lot you had to learn in situations like this," I told him with an I-told-you-so grin."But he looked muscular. It was only natural to place my money on him." He bemoaned."The muscles aren't the only things you should be looking out for young man," I said to him and stood up.As much as I may know a lot about stuff like this, I hated teaching them. One way I had managed to keep my wealth was to keep my strategies and secrets to myself."I think we should get going. I have a lot of activities in the morning at the office." Lucas said leading me toward the door."Come on men, the night is just getting started." I grinned at him."Maybe it is. But you know me. I love to lead by example. You taught me that." Lucas playfully jabbed me."Yeah, I know."I was about to agree to leave with him when I saw the lady with the red matching lingerie. She was a stripper, but there was just something so sexy about her.She caught my eye and the look she gave me was both inviting and sultry at the same time."Alright. I see that you have gotten yourself a new catch. Have fun bro." Lucas patted me on the shoulder and walked away.I didn't turn for a second to look at my friend. Instead, I walked up to the lady who had caught my eye."Who do we have here? The phenomenal Jonathan Clarkson." She breathed through her red lips."I see you are familiar with the name?" I inquired."What I am familiar with are the exploits." She winked as she intentionally brushed her palm against my groin.The single act of her sent a jolt of electricity running through my body and I knew I wasn't going to feel sane if I didn't bang this woman tonight.JONATHAN'S POVThe investigator I hired, a quiet, unassuming man named Foster who came recommended by a colleague who had once needed similar discretion during a messy divorce, asked for two weeks before he could deliver anything conclusive. Two weeks felt like an unbearable, impossibly long length of time to carry this particular weight alone, and yet I understood the necessity of patience if I wanted proof clean enough to survive whatever denial Anna or Lucas might eventually offer.Foster had asked few questions during our brief meeting, taking careful notes with the efficient detachment of a man who had heard a hundred versions of the same story before mine, wives and husbands and business partners all suspected of the same quiet betrayals. There was something almost comforting in his lack of curiosity, as though my particular heartbreak was simply another entry in a long, unremarkable ledger rather than the singular catastrophe it felt like from inside my own chest.He had asked,
JONATHAN'S POVI spent three days trying to talk myself out of what I had seen, constructing increasingly elaborate explanations for a hand resting on an arm, a closeness that could, if I squinted hard enough at the memory, be explained away as nothing more than two friends comforting each other during a difficult stretch for this family.I replayed the image constantly, at my desk during meetings I barely absorbed, lying awake beside a wife I no longer knew how to look at without suspicion coloring every ordinary interaction. Each time I replayed it, I found some new detail to doubt, the angle of the light, the brevity of the moment, the possibility that grief over Lucas's strange, distracted behavior lately had made me see intimacy where only friendship actually existed.It did not work particularly well. Every explanation I built collapsed the moment I actually looked at Anna across the dinner table, at the careful way she avoided lingering too long in conversation with Lucas whene
JONATHAN'S POVI noticed the pattern before I understood what it meant, the way a man notices a draft in a house long before he locates the open window causing it.Anna had grown distant again, in a way that reminded me uncomfortably of the weeks after the accusation I had made without evidence, except this time I had made no accusation at all. She excused herself from rooms more often than she used to. Lucas found reasons to leave whenever I entered unexpectedly, always polite, always plausible, and always somehow slightly too quick.I told myself I was imagining things, that months of scandal and suspicion had trained me to see betrayal in ordinary behavior. I had been wrong before, badly wrong, and I did not want to become a man who accused his wife of infidelity every time she left a room without explaining herself.I thought back to the foundation dinner, to the warmth I had genuinely felt dancing with her, the honesty in her voice when she thanked me afterward. That warmth had f
ROSE'S POVI spent the following week turning the photographs over in my mind more often than I actually looked at them, calculating and recalculating the exact moment that would extract the most value from what I now held.Timing mattered more than the evidence itself. I understood this the way I understood most things worth understanding, through years of watching wealthier, more comfortable women make careless mistakes with information they did not respect enough to handle properly. A scandal revealed at the wrong dinner party, in front of the wrong witnesses, could collapse into gossip and sympathy for Anna before I ever extracted anything useful from it. Delivered with precision, in private, to Jonathan alone, it could reshape everything.I made lists in my head, running through every possible scenario the way a chess player considers moves several steps ahead of the current position. If I revealed everything to Jonathan directly, would he believe me, or dismiss it as another man
ROSE'S POVI did not respond to the message immediately. I had learned, over years of navigating situations where information was currency, that eagerness was the fastest way to lose leverage before a negotiation even properly began. I let the message sit unanswered for a full day, watching to see whether whoever had sent it would grow impatient enough to reveal something about themselves in the process, the way most people eventually did when a silence stretched longer than they expected.I spent that day going through my own notes again, cross referencing dates against Celia's reports, trying to imagine who else might have reason to watch this particular house closely enough to notice what I had noticed. A private investigator hired by Anna's own family, perhaps, worried the arrangement might collapse before the debts were fully settled. A rival of Jonathan's, looking for leverage in some business matter entirely separate from his marriage. Neither possibility fully satisfied me.Th
ROSE'S POVI had learned a long time ago that people underestimated women like me, and I had learned to use that underestimation the way other people used money or connections, quietly, patiently, and to devastating effect when the moment finally called for it.Jonathan believed the meeting at the café had settled something between us, that his agreement to a proper paternity test meant I would sit back now and wait obediently for whatever verdict his doctors decided to hand down. He had always been like that, confident that kindness offered on his own terms erased whatever debt he actually owed. He had humiliated me in front of half the city when he married Anna instead of even considering what we once had, had let his lawyers threaten me the first time I tried to claim what was rightfully my son's, and I had no intention of simply waiting patiently for his mercy now.I remembered the early years with him clearly, before the arrangement with Anna's family had reduced our history to a
ANNA'S POV.He cupped my face in his palm and kissed me deeply just like a person who is in love. The kiss was slow and tender not as rough as he used to have it. He took his time to suckle my lower lips, licking the lipgloss I applied. At first, I didn't respond but later on, I reciprocated the kiss
LUCAS POV. I grinned like a child heading out of Jonathan's study room. Not entirely because of my joke to get Anna to hear my voice but because of the location of their honeymoon. I typed on my phone, taking slow steps along the passages that led to Jonathan's bedroom. I clicked send and smiled bro
JONATHAN POVI searched all over the house for Anna but couldn't find her. I asked the maid and I was told she went out. I should have been less concerned but for unknown reasons, I was angry that I didn't find her at home.The thought of her going to see another man came to my mind. I don't know why
ANNA'S POV"Something" He kept saying.My heart raced to different dimensions. My mind drifted to only one thing. I'm just hoping it's not what I'm thinking.There was no way I was going to him access to my body now. I bit my lower lips as sensations washed through me. My body started arching for more.







