Lex had very little patience for stupidity.

Unfortunately, the United States Senate seemed to produce it in abundance.

One senator in particular had made himself a persistent irritation, endlessly complaining about his wife during private gatherings. According to the man, his marriage had become a disappointment, his bedroom life was unsatisfactory, and his wife was somehow responsible for his own inability to appreciate her.

The comments were crude. Repetitive. Unbelievably arrogant.

And Lex was getting sick of hearing them.

He’d listened to the senator insult his wife over expensive whiskey, at political dinners, and during conversations that were supposed to concern matters of national importance. The man spoke about his marriage as though his wife were an underperforming employee rather than a human being deserving of basic respect.

Apparently, the senator believed that humiliating her made him look like a man.

Lex thought it made him look like an idiot.

The final straw came during a private dinner when the senator once again began discussing his wife’s supposed shortcomings, laughing about things that should never have been public entertainment.

Lex merely regarded him over the rim of his glass.

An idea occurred to him.

It was petty. Immoral, perhaps. Certainly unnecessary.

But Lex had never been particularly interested in taking the high road when a more entertaining alternative presented itself.

If the senator insisted that his wife was the problem, perhaps someone else ought to determine whether his assessment held any merit.

And so, Lex did something that would have horrified the man’s entire political circle.

He slept with the senator’s wife.

The arrangement was discreet, away from the cameras and the endless scrutiny of Metropolis’s political elite. Lex had no intention of turning the affair into a public spectacle. He wasn’t interested in romance, nor was he looking for another woman to complicate his already demanding life.

He was interested in proving a point.

What he discovered, however, was that the senator had been spectacularly wrong.

His wife wasn’t the problem.

Not remotely.

She was attentive, responsive, and far more comfortable expressing herself when she wasn’t being belittled by a husband who seemed determined to make her feel inadequate. Behind closed doors, away from the constant criticism she’d grown accustomed to, there was a confidence and warmth her husband had apparently never bothered to appreciate.

Lex found himself genuinely impressed.

More importantly, he found himself disgusted by the thought of how long she’d been made to believe something was wrong with her.

The senator had spent years blaming his wife for his own shortcomings, reducing their private life to a collection of insults he could share over dinner.

Lex had spent a single night discovering how little his opinion was worth.

And the experience left him with a rather simple conclusion.

The man wasn’t merely a terrible husband.

He was an incompetent one.

When the senator next cornered him at a political function, smugly returning to his familiar complaints, Lex listened with the same cool expression he’d worn a thousand times before.

Then he set down his glass.

“Senator, I’ve been meaning to thank you.”

The man frowned.

“For what?”

“For the introduction to your wife.”

The color drained from the senator’s face.

Lex adjusted his cufflinks, utterly unbothered.

“Curious thing, isn’t it? How a man can spend years blaming someone else for his own inadequacies.”

He offered the senator a thin, humorless smile.

“Perhaps you should spend less time discussing your wife’s shortcomings and more time examining your own.”

Then Lex walked away, leaving the senator to contemplate the spectacular consequences of his own arrogance.

Lex Luthor wasn’t a good man.

He’d never pretended to be.

But he also had very little respect for men who humiliated their wives to disguise their own failures.