Mag-log inRomanThe office is quiet on a Saturday.That’s why I like it.No calls routed through the main line, no assistants moving through the corridor, no scheduled meetings pulling my attention in six directions at once. Just the work, stripped of everything performative.I was here by seven.My phone has been lighting up since nine.I’ve been letting it.I finish reading through the Diamond Club correspondence, make two notes in the margin, close the file. Pour a second coffee. Open the next document.My phone buzzes again. This time I pick up.“Dave, tell me,” I say.“You need to come home.” His voice is tight in a way Dave rarely allows himself. “Right now, Roman. Vivienne has lost her mind completely. She’s broken two vases, a mirror, and Gerald is standing in your living room threatening to dismantle everything you’ve built before Monday morning.”As expected. She’d rather bark like a wounded animal than walk away with whatever dignity she has left.“Is anyone hurt?”“Not
RavenThe church is full by the time I arrive.I take my seat near the back, my hands folded in my lap, and I have made my peace with what I’m about to watch. I told myself I’d be brave. I told myself I’d hold my head up. I didn’t tell myself it would be easy.The minutes tick past.Then more minutes.Someone whispers, “Where is the groom?”Another answers, “Roman Bellerie has never been late a day in his life.”Vivienne laughs a little too brightly. “He must have been caught in traffic.”No one laughs with her. Vivienne keeps glancing toward the entrance, and her smile gets a little tighter each time. The murmuring starts low, a ripple through the pews, people checking watches, leaning toward each other.The priest finally steps forward.“Miss Cole.”Vivienne turns to him hopefully.“I can allow another twenty minutes.”A heavy silence settles over the church.“If the groom has not arrived by then…” He pauses, almost reluctantly. “…I will have no choice but to cancel today’s ceremon
Raven (Present) I wake alone. The room is quiet, the kind of quiet that tells you the person who was here left a while ago without bothering to wake you. I lie there for a moment, disoriented, before I reach for my dress and pull myself together piece by piece. I check the time on my phone. Six in the morning. Two hours until Roman’s wedding. Of course he’s gone. He’s getting ready, probably has been for an hour already, probably never even thought about whether I’d wake up alone in that room or how that would feel. I push through the door into the main house and stop. The living room is full. Family I recognize, people I don’t, all of them moving through the early stages of wedding preparation with the kind of bright, busy energy that makes my stomach turn. Dave spots me first. “Where have you been?” He crosses to me immediately, real worry in his face. “I looked for you all night. Your phone kept going to voicemail.” “I was at a friend’s. I needed t
Roman(Past)Three days.That was all it had been, and watching them from across the kitchen I wouldn’t have known it because they had bonded so well.Erica sat cross-legged on the living room floor with Raven in her lap, doing something with her hands that made the little girl laugh. Raven kept reaching up and grabbing Erica’s face with both hands, turning it toward whatever she wanted her to look at, and Erica let her every time without irritation.I sipped my coffee and watched.Catherine appeared beside me, leaning against the counter with her arms folded, her attention on the same scene.“Of all the people you could have chosen,” she said, “why her?”“Because she won’t walk away.”“You don’t know that.”“I know I have something she needs and something she fears. That’s more reliable than loyalty.” I set the mug down. “Three months I spent finding the right person. Not someone I could simply pay, anyone can be bought out of a contract eventually. I needed someone with skin in the
Roman (Past) The woman who stole from me sat across from my desk trying hard not to look afraid. She wasn’t entirely successful. Her hands were shaking in her lap, though she’d pressed them flat against her thighs hoping I wouldn’t notice. I noticed everything, and admired her for being brave enough to try. I slid the document across the desk. She looked at it without touching it. “Pick it up,” I said. She picked it up. “What is this?” I watched her read line by line, her expression changing as she worked through it, and somewhere around page three something that might have been a laugh escaped her, short and disbelieving. “You’re insane,” she said, without looking up. “Keep reading.” She read. Set it down. “A contract marriage.” She said it slowly. “Ten years.” “Correct.” “You want me to be your wife.” “On paper. In public. To anyone who matters.” I leaned back in my chair. “There is a child. A girl. Three years old. She needs a mother pres
Raven“Come here.”He’s moved to the couch, sitting back with his legs spread and his eyes on me, and I look at the distance between us like it’s a mountain because my legs are not working properly right now.I push off the table.My knees nearly buckle immediately and I have to grip the edge and breathe through it. Every muscle I have feels like water. I’m still trembling, still breathing hard, my hair everywhere and tears dried on my face and he’s sitting there watching me try to pull myself together with dark patient eyes.I make it to him on legs that barely cooperate.He reaches up and unzips slowly and pulls his cock out and wraps his hand around it, running his fist up and down the length while he looks up at me, and my mouth goes dry.“Don’t keep me waiting,” he says. “Come sit that hot pussy on daddy’s cock.”I swing my leg over him and sink down slowly and the stretch as he fills me makes my eyes roll back and a long broken moan leave my throat that I have no control
Raven“Vivienne is home. You will be nice to her.”That was what he called and told me when I was getting into the car.I am going to meet my soon-to-be stepmother. The irony of this whole situation is almost laughable.I am sitting in the back of this black limousine as James drives me to the pent
RavenI pull out my phone.Her name is Vivienne Cole. I’d known the name long before Roman ever did, everyone knew Vivienne Cole. She was Miss America at twenty-two, she has the kind of beauty that didn’t seem real, the kind you stared at as a little girl and genuinely wondered if she was a differe
Roman I have been in rooms with presidents. I have negotiated deals that made grown men sweat through their suits. I have buried a woman I loved and kept my composure at her graveside because my daughter needed me to be steady and I was. I am not steady right now. I knew she was coming. I had
Raven In a few minutes, I’ll see Roman again after three years apart, and God help me, I might lose my mind just thinking about it. James drives smoothly and unhurriedly, as if there is no such thing as urgency in the world. I’d forgotten that about him. I’d forgotten a lot of things about Boston







