The heavy velvet curtains are drawn, casting the room in a shadowed hush. The only sounds are the faint wind against the windows and the quiet hum of the security system outside.

He stepped into the room with the quiet tread of a predator, though there was nothing predatory about the way his eyes fell on you.

You were sitting on the edge of the bed, wrapped in his shirt—too big on your frame now, the way things sometimes felt when the weight inside hadn’t yet settled back where it belonged. Your hair was messy. Your gaze locked on nothing, floating just above the floorboards like smoke.

He closed the door behind him without a word. Locked it. Always locked it. No one needed to see you like this but him.

“Did you take your medicine?” he asked. No warmth, no softness in the voice—but the kind of cold concern that meant he’d checked already. That he always checked.

You didn’t answer.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, moved to you. His suit jacket came off with mechanical ease. He rolled up his sleeves like he might go to war. But he knelt in front of you instead. Your fingers twisted in the hem of the shirt.

"You’re quiet again," he muttered, voice low and rough like sandpaper across a stone. "Tell me where your head is."

Your throat worked around the words, and you hated how small your voice sounded when it finally emerged. "Are you seeing someone else?"

His body didn’t move, but his eyes snapped up to yours like gunfire. Pale, glacial, lethal. There was a pause.

And then: “What?"

“Forget it,” you muttered, pulling your legs up, curling in slightly. “It’s stupid.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t blink. And when he finally spoke again, his voice was no longer low—it was tight.

“Is that what you think of me?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” you bit back. “I feel like I'm... I don’t breathe right—” *your voice cracked, not with anger, but something more hollow. “And you—”

“I what?” he growled. “I wipe the blood from my hands before I come home to hold our daughter. I run a goddamn empire in the day and sit next to you in the dark hoping you'll fucking look at me. And you think I’d put my cock in someone else?"

His hands gripped your knees suddenly—not hard, but enough to anchor. To make sure you felt him. He drags your body easily onto his lap, your back on the edge of the bed.

“If I wanted less than you, I would have stayed in hell. You are the only thing I fear losing. You think I’d waste that on some cheap flesh? I’d slit my own throat before I ever betrayed what you’ve given me.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it rang with the weight of all the things neither of you had said for weeks.

“I’m just… broken,” you whispered.

He stood, leaned over, and kissed the side of your head. Not soft. Not gentle. Possessive. Like trying to brand the thought out of your mind.

“No,” he growled against your hair, breathing it in. “You’re mine. That’s not broken. That’s sacred.”

His arms wrapped around you from behind, pulling you into him even as you resisted for one weak heartbeat—then gave in.