With a coffee in my hand, I glanced down the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office, a bustling downtown Montardor my landscape. My office was on the top floor of the DLC tower, and everything below me looked so small and insignificant. Like a giant hulking over a colony of ants.
I spent so much of my life wanting control, having been deprived of it from a young age. Now that I held the reins in the palm of my hand, the top of the world felt lonelier than I ever imagined.
There was only one woman who could fix my loneliness, but she was hiding in her little queendom, where she spent every night fingering herself and shouting my name loud enough to have me breaking down her barriers.
But I resisted.
My God did I fucking resist, my forehead pressed against the other side of her bedroom door, my cock in my hand as I jacked off in time with her moans, praying she’d invite me in to finish the job.
She never did, completely unassuming of the monster lurking at her doorstep.
And every night when she wandered out into the west wing resuming aloofness and found me waiting for her, our chess game ready, I pretended like we weren’t on fire for each other.
How much longer before I caved in and begged her for just one more fucking taste?
Three stressed knocks against my office door resounded before it flew open. A nervous Ben entered. I raised an eyebrow, slightly annoyed that he’d disturbed my reverie where my wife sat on my face and rode my mouth until she squirted.
“Don’t tell me you’re worried about our two o’clock.” We had a meeting in thirty minutes with a new supplier.
Benjamin was to take the lead, but my brother wasn’t the best at public speaking. However, a little tough love was necessary for him to improve his skills.
If he could sniff cocaine off the tits of supermodels and fuck them in public settings, then he could learn to yield a room full of stakeholders without breaking a sweat.
“You have to see the news.” Ben snatched the remote off my desk and turned on the TV mounted on my wall. “St. Victoria is on fire.”
The cup of coffee almost fell out of my hand.
A news anchor spoke fast, the scene behind her ghastly. Smoke. Screams. Students shuffling out of the ancient motherhouse as it partially erupted in orange flames.
I’d seen many fires in my life to a point where I grew numb to the sight. But now my gut tightened and I was, in fact, quite affected.
“I called Éva,” Ben rushed. “She never went to school today. But Darla…”
My wife was there.
In her school.
While it blew up in flames.
I suddenly felt like I was having an out-of-body experience as I threw my coffee into the trash and grabbed my phone, wallet, and car keys.
“Tuvas où?”
I raced out of the door, growling, “To fucking get my wife!”
Employees stared at me wide-eyed as I ran down the hallway, beelining it for the emergency stairwell. There was no time to wait for the elevators. I chased down flights of stairs, my heart thundering, and dialed my wife’s number.
It rang and rang and rang.
Her voicemail drove tiny pin-pricks into my chest. I needed her to pick up. I needed her to tell me she was safe and healthy and far, far away from the chaos. I needed to find her and…tell her that it was never supposed to be this way.
I was never supposed tofeelthis way.
As though I would never make it another day until she was tucked in the safety of my arms, her heart beating in unison to mine as we lay wrapped together in her conservatory room with the soothing melody of water and our breathing.
I called Felix, the head of her security team.
I called Dacia.