Midnight With The CEO

The moment the first gray light crept through the curtains, Lina's eyes flew open.

For a second she lay completely still, taking in the unfamiliar ceiling, the expensive sheets, the heavy silence of a hotel room that wasn't hers. Then it all came rushing back.

She moved fast. She slid out from under the covers, scooped her clothes off the floor, and pulled them on with shaking hands - one shoe, then the other. She didn't look at the man still in the bed. Didn't look for her bag until she spotted it by the door. She grabbed it, eased the door open as quietly as she could, and stepped into the bright, empty hallway.

Only once the elevator doors closed did she let out the breath she'd been holding.

Behind her, Damian opened his eyes.

He stared at the dent in the pillow beside him, then at the empty room, and a slow smile crossed his face.

Ran off again.

The guilt hit Lina somewhere between the hotel lobby and the street outside.

By the time she pushed through her front door, it had settled into something heavy in her chest. That was stupid. Using a stranger to get back at Julian - what had she actually solved? She didn't even know the man's name.

She was still standing in the hallway, lost in her own head, when the front door burst open behind her.

She turned slowly. Julian was leaning against the doorframe, still in last night's clothes - shirt wrinkled, eyes red, reeking of alcohol and someone else's perfume.

Lina looked at him the way you'd look at something you'd already decided wasn't worth your time.

That look.

That was the one that always set him off.

"Don't look at me like that." His voice dropped low and sharp. "I said don't look at me like that!"

He snatched the belt off the hook by the door. The first snap of it cut through the air like a warning. The second one wasn't a warning.

Lina didn't scream. Didn't beg. Didn't give him the satisfaction of a single word. She stood there and took it - teeth clenched, eyes dry - staring straight ahead while he wore himself out.

That stillness of hers seemed to infuriate him more than anything else could have.

Eventually, his arm slowed. The belt dropped from his hand. He was too drunk and too tired to keep going. With one last curse muttered under his breath, he shoved past her and staggered into the bedroom.

Lina sat down on the sofa.

After a moment, she reached down and picked the belt up off the floor. She turned it over in her hands.

Six months. That's how long they'd been married. And in those six months, she'd watched Julian go from the charming, well-dressed man she thought she knew - to this. Drinking every night, picking fights over nothing, calling her every ugly name he could think of. She'd stopped reacting a long time ago, and that only seemed to make him angrier.

The shower turned on in the bedroom. Then off.

Julian came out a few minutes later, a towel around his waist, still damp. He wasn't looking at her - until he was as she stood there in the sun, it was as though she was a consummate seductress. If it weren't for that matter... she'd be the ideal wife.

Lina was in the living room, folding laundry in the morning light coming through the window. She looked effortlessly put together even now, and something shifted in his expression. He crossed the room and stopped in front of her.

"Tell me his name." His voice dropped, jaw tight. "The man before me. "Tell me who he is."

Lina kept folding. She didn't look up.

"I'm talking to you." He grabbed her wrist - not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make her stop. "I want a name, Lina."

All that anger. All those months of drinking and cruelty and other women.

It all came from this one thing he couldn't let go of.

Lina set down the shirt in her hands. She looked up at him and said absolutely nothing.

A crisp slap echoed. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, "Are you still unwilling to tell me the name of the man who bedded you before we got married?" It was as though he'd lost all sanity, the urge to just strangle her to death holding him in its grip.