Up the marble stairs, their footsteps echoing.
Past silk-lined corridors hung with art worth more than houses.
Through the master suite doors, heavy wood carved with dragons and phoenixes, symbols of power and rebirth.
He shut them with one clean motion.
Lock.
Click.
Silence swallowed them whole.
"You embarrassed me tonight," he said calmly, his voice level despite everything.
She laughed bitterly, the sound sharp and ugly. "You kissed me in public."
"And you made a spectacle of my wife."
Her pulse skipped; that word again hit her differently.
"My wife."
The words hit differently here.
In the dark.
In the room that already belonged to both of them, that smelled of his cologne and her jasmine, their scents mingling in the air.
He stepped closer, each footfall deliberate.
"No matter how much freedom you think you have," he said quietly, but with steel underneath, "the moment I decide otherwise…I only need to lock the doors."
