The estate didn't feel like a home at three in the morning. It felt like a hollowed-out skull, vast and cold, preserving the memories of people who were already dead.
I sat on the edge of my bed, the dark room sliced in half by a silver blade of moonlight. My tuxedo jacket lay on the floor, a discarded skin. I pressed my palm against my bare sternum. No scar. No hole. Just the phantom throb of a bullet that hadn't been fired yet. Time was a borrowed currency, and tonight, the interest was high.
The air was stagnant. It tasted of expensive cigar smoke and the kind of fake conversations that leave a greasy film on your teeth. Marcus was likely unconscious in the master wing, drowned in twenty-year-old scotch and the bloated satisfaction of his own ego. He slept with the arrogance of a god, unaware that I was already sharpening the blade for his throat.
But I couldn't sleep. My blood felt like liquid lightning. My mind kept looping back to the Gala. To the way Elena's pulse had jumped under my thumb when I dabbed that wine from her collarbone.
I stood up. My bare feet were silent on the hardwood. I needed to move. I needed to see the board while the pieces were still settling.
I stepped into the hallway. The mansion was a mausoleum. I walked past the portraits of "ancestors" Marcus had bought at an auction—staring eyes and painted lies. As I reached the second-floor landing, a sound stopped me.
It was a jagged, rhythmic friction. A wet, staccato hitch in the air that didn't belong in a house this quiet.
I froze. My heart hammered a slow, heavy rhythm against my ribs. The sound was coming from the library—Marcus's two-story vault of mahogany and leather-bound books he never read. It smelled of old paper, floor wax, and the heavy, intoxicating scent of jasmine that had followed Elena all night.
The double doors were cracked open just an inch. A sliver of amber light spilled out onto the dark carpet.
I didn't breathe. I moved toward the gap, my footsteps swallowed by the shadows. I told myself this was tactical. I told myself I was gathering intel. But the heat in my gut was a different story.
I looked through the crack.
Elena was there.
She hadn't changed out of the emerald-green gown, but the porcelain mask she wore at the Gala had been pulverized. She was sprawled on the dark leather Chesterfield sofa, her head thrown back against the armrest so hard the tendons in her neck were taut. The silk of her dress was unzipped, the zipper teeth glinting where it had been pulled down to her lower back. The fabric pooled around her hips like a dark, shimmering oil spill.
Her skin was translucent in the low light. Her chest heaved, the emerald silk straining against the swell of her breasts with every jagged, uneven breath. She looked like she was drowning.
She wasn't crying. This was the raw, ugly sound of someone who had been starving for a decade and had finally found a single drop of water.
I watched her hand. It wasn't graceful. It was frantic. Her nails dug into her own shoulder—right where I had touched her earlier—leaving angry red crescents in her pale skin. Her other hand was buried deep beneath the emerald silk of her skirt.
The friction of her palm against the cold leather was the only sound in the room.
The tension I had planted on the ballroom floor hadn't just grown; it had turned into a wildfire. I had touched her collarbone for three seconds, and now she was here, in the dark, trying to burn the memory of that touch into her nervous system. She was trying to recreate the heat of my hand with her own, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough.
"Julian..."
The name was a broken, wet whisper. It barely escaped her lips, sounding like a confession and a curse at the same time.
My stomach flipped. The cold logic I used to hack bank accounts and short stocks flickered, replaced by a visceral roar in my ears. This was the human beneath the target. She wasn't just a figure on a board. She was a dying flame I had breathed on, and now she was burning herself alive.
I watched her arch her back. Her spine was a perfect, trembling curve against the dark leather. Her face was contorted in a mask of desperate, focused concentration. She was trying to find the release Marcus had denied her for years. She was trying to erase the image of her husband laughing with investors while she stood invisible in the corner. She was trying to fill the void with the image of the boy who had looked at her like she was the only thing in the room that mattered.
Her movements grew more jagged. The silk rustled loudly, a frantic, rhythmic hiss. Her breathing turned into sharp, shallow hitches that echoed off the mahogany bookshelves. She bit down hard on the back of her own hand to muffle a cry that wanted to tear through the house.
I felt a surge of something primal. It wasn't just lust. It was the absolute, terrifying realization of my own power. I had done this. With one look and a piece of cotton, I had stripped the wife of a billionaire down to this raw, shaking state. I held her strings, and I hadn't even stepped into the room.
I could see the flush spreading across her chest, a deep, feverish crimson that clashed with the emerald silk. She was shaking now, her heels digging into the sofa cushions, the leather groaning under the strain of her thighs.
She hit the edge.
Her body went rigid. Her toes curled. A long, shuddering exhale left her lungs—a sound of total, devastating defeat. She collapsed back into the sofa, her limbs heavy and uncoordinated. The emerald dress hung off her like a discarded skin, her chest rising and falling in slow, deep rhythms.
She lay there for a long time, her eyes closed, her forehead slick with sweat. The scent of jasmine seemed to thicken in the air, mixing with the sharp, metallic tang of her arousal.
The scene was the discovery I needed.
I finally understood that this wasn't just about taking Marcus's money or his company. That was the easy part. That was just math. The real victory was here. It was taking the one thing he thought he owned—the one thing he took for granted as a piece of the estate's furniture—and making her soul beg for my name in the dark.
I watched her hand fall limp to the floor, her fingers brushing the carpet. She looked small. She looked breakable. I felt a flicker of something that might have been pity, but I crushed it. Pity didn't build empires.
I pulled back from the door.
I didn't make a sound. I retreated into the shadows of the hallway, my mind already calculating the next move. Elena wasn't just sad; she was a starving animal. And I was the only one with the key to her cage.
I walked back to my room, the cold floor no longer bothering me. The phantom pain in my chest had vanished, replaced by a low, humming heat.
I knew then that this wasn't temporary. There was no going back for either of us.
I sat back down on the edge of my bed. I didn't feel like a student anymore. I didn't even feel like a regressor. I felt like an architect.
Tomorrow, at the breakfast table, the "Morning After" would begin. I would sit across from her. I would smell the coffee and the jasmine. I would watch her try to put that porcelain mask back on. And then, I would drop the comment. I would let her know I was there without saying a single direct word. I would let the shame and the heat eat her alive until she couldn't stand the weight of the secret.
And then, I would watch the last of her walls crumble.
I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. For the first time since I died, the darkness was welcome.
Author's Note:
Julian didn't just watch a woman in the dark; he found the ultimate kill-switch for Marcus's empire. The "Morning After" at the breakfast table is going to be a bloodbath of psychological tension. How long do you think Elena can keep her mask on before she breaks?