The first sliver of dawn found me not in bed, cradling my wife, but in the kitchen, standing over a steaming kettle like a high priestess at a profane altar. The house was silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator and the frantic, circling thoughts in my head. The ghost of last night's confrontation clung to me, a film of psychic grime no shower could wash away. The feel of her hands around my throat was a brand. The sound of her screams, a discordant symphony on a loop in my mind.
My beautiful Tyrant. Please don't come back.
The prayer was a desperate, broken record. But prayers were for the powerless, and I was not powerless. I was an architect. And this morning, I was engineering oblivion.
Before me, on the granite countertop, sat two delicate porcelain cups. One was for me, black coffee, bitter and strong, the fuel for the monster I had to be. The other was for her. A floral, elegant thing she loved. And beside it, hidden in the palm of my hand, was a small, unlabeled vial. The powder within was fine and white, indistinguishable from confectioner's sugar. It was a high-dose Benzodiazepine cocktail, a formula I had perfected with a corrupt, exorbitantly paid pharmacologist. It was used to treat anxiety, insomnia, seizures. But its most beautiful, most beneficial side effects, for my purposes, were confusion and anterograde amnesia a gentle blurring of new experiences, making them harder to cement, to question, to weaponize against my narrative.
This was my sacred ritual. My dark communion. Every morning, while the world slept, I prepared the chalice that would keep my world from crumbling. I would brew her favorite tea, the one with notes of peach and apricot, strong enough to mask the faint, bitter undertone. And then, with the precision of a surgeon, I would tip the vial, watching the powder dissolve into the golden liquid, a silent poison that ensured the past stayed buried and the present remained pleasantly malleable. It was a leash. A chemical cage. It was the reason the amnesiac Althea, my sweet, goofy songbird, could exist. It was my greatest sin, and my only salvation. The vial was cool against my skin, a tiny coffin for the woman she used to be. I sometimes wondered if I was pouring her ashes into the cup, a daily funeral no one attended but me.
The sound of the master bedroom door opening sent a jolt of adrenaline through me. I slipped the empty vial back into the secret compartment of my suit jacket's inner pocket a pocket tailored for nothing else my face a practiced mask of calm serenity.
There she was. My Althea. She shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from her eyes, her hair a glorious, chaotic mess. She was wearing one of my old t-shirts, the fabric swimming on her, and a pair of soft sleep shorts. The sight of her, so soft and vulnerable, sent a pang of such violent, possessive love through me it was physically painful. It was the same feeling as looking at a priceless, stolen masterpiece finally hanging in my private gallery. The thrill of ownership was a narcotic.
"Good morning why does my neck kinda hurt oh well I guess we did it way too much yesterday and damn haven my back hurts too even back there you overachiever," she mumbled, her voice husky with sleep, a sound that unspooled something tight and anxious in my chest.
Thank God. She's back. My amnesiac Althea.
"Good morning, my love," I said, my voice carefully modulated to convey warmth, not the frantic, clawing relief I felt. "I made your tea."
She smiled, a slow, sleepy sunrise, and padded over to the dining table, sliding into her usual chair. I brought the cups over, placing hers before her with a reverence I usually reserved for signing billion-dollar contracts.
She took a tentative sip, then a deeper one. "Mmm, perfect. You always make it just right."
I know, I thought, a dark, coiling satisfaction settling in my gut. I have to. The margin for error is zero. One miscalculation, one moment of clarity, and the entire beautiful lie comes crashing down.
She set the cup down, a dreamy look in her eyes. "I just had the wildest dream."
My blood ran cold, but my expression remained pleasantly interested. "Oh?"
"Yeah," she said, propping her chin on her hand. "I was harvesting lavender. And you were there, watching me. And Sushi kept barking at a squirrel. And you were helping me with the lavenders, and we both slipped, and I fell into your arms, and we just… cuddled in the garden. It was so… peaceful."
I stared at her, the lie so beautiful, so innocent, it was like a knife twisting in the wound of the real memory. Harvesting. She'd been destroying. Helping. She'd been choking me. Cuddling. I'd been sedating her. The dissonance was so profound it was almost funny. A hysterical, broken laugh bubbled in my throat, but I swallowed it down, forcing a soft, adoring smile.
Haha. Cute. Your dream explains it that way. Your beautiful, broken brain is trying to protect you. It's sanitizing my monstrosity, turning my poison into a love potion. And I love you for it. I love this version of you so much I will drown the world to keep her. I will poison every well, burn every bridge, and smile while doing it.
"Oh, really?" I said, my voice a low purr. "Even in your dreams, you still dream of me. It's an honor." I reached across the table, tracing the back of her hand with my finger. "It makes me think… I want to take you out for dinner tonight."
Her eyes widened, the amber pools lighting up with genuine, unfeigned delight. It was a look the Tyrant had never given me. It was a drug more potent than any benzo.
"Woah, really? A date?" she breathed, her scent, Vanilla Strawberry, blooming with happiness.
"A date," I confirmed, my heart clenching. "If you want to."
"A date then! Yeppie!" she squealed, clapping her hands together. She looked down at Sushi, who had trotted over at the sound of her excitement. "You hear that, Sushi? Your other mom is inviting me for a date! But you gotta stay here and watch the fort, okay? Who's my good boy?" She leaned down to scratch his ears, then paused, her brow furrowing. "Wait… why is your coat dirty? Don't tell me you ransacked my garden again?"
My blood froze. Fuck. In the exhausted, traumatized haze after carrying her to bed, I'd forgotten to clean the mud from Sushi's golden fur. A tiny, damning piece of evidence. A single speck of the truth, clinging to the one creature innocent enough to carry it.
I choked, a sound I disguised as a cough. "I'm… not sure. He must have gotten out early." I stood up abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. "I'm sorry, Althea, but I have to go to work now."
The lie tasted like ash. I didn't want to go to work. I wanted to stay here, to wrap myself around her, to breathe her in and assure myself that she was still here, still mine, still the songbird and not the Tyrant. But the monster had business to attend to. The beast that guarded the treasure had to patrol the perimeter, to ensure no other predators smelled the gold.
Her face fell for a second, but then she brightened. "Okay. Come here, Haven. Let me give you a goodluck kiss."
I leaned in, my body humming with anticipation, expecting the soft, chaste press of her lips against my cheek. It had become our ritual. A tiny, sacred transaction of affection.
She surprised me.
Her hands came up, framing my face, and she pulled me in, her lips meeting mine not with innocence, but with a bold, sweet pressure. And then she deepened it. Her tongue, tasting of the tea and the underlying, bitter chemical truth, swept into my mouth. A french kiss.
Fuck.
A jolt of pure, undiluted lust shot through me, so intense it was dizzying. My hands gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white. My mind, so carefully controlled, shattered into a million pieces of want and need. I wanted to bend her over this very table, to worship the body that housed both the songbird and the Tyrant, to lose myself in her until the memory of her hands on my throat was replaced by the feel of them on my skin, pulling me closer, not pushing me away.
She was the one who broke the kiss, pulling back with a soft, breathless giggle. Her lips were swollen, her eyes dark with a playful mischief. "Well, hehehe, since you invited me to a date tonight… I'll be waiting. Don't make me wait, okay?"
"Okay," I managed, my voice a ragged whisper. Fuck. I wanna make love with her. But the monster was calling. I forced myself to turn, to walk out the door, the phantom taste of her and the poison on my tongue—a perfect, terrible metaphor for our entire existence.
The drive to Vale Headquarters was a blur of frustrated desire and simmering rage. The usual stares as I walked through the lobby felt different today. They weren't just looking at the marks on my neck; they were looking at a woman who was barely holding herself together. My assistants swarmed me, a flock of anxious sparrows, their reports a buzzing in my ears. I processed it all on autopilot, my mind still in the kitchen, still feeling her tongue in my mouth, a brand more intimate than any bite.
And then, the oil-slick voice I'd been expecting. "Well, good morning, Haven. You look… flustered."
Emara. She was leaning against the doorframe of her office, a smirk playing on her perfectly painted lips. The prime suspect. The viper in my garden. The thought of what her family might have done to mine, to my Althea, made the desire in my veins curdle into something cold and lethal. I imagined, for a vivid second, the sound her neck would make if I twisted it right here in the hallway. The scandal would be delicious.
But today, I couldn't afford to show my fangs. I needed to play a different game. I needed to get close. To get her to let her guard down. To make her believe the poison was a gift.
I forced a smile, one that didn't reach my eyes. "Emara. Just the person I wanted to see."
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. This was new.
"Your report on the Southeast Asian portfolio yesterday," I continued, stopping in front of her, letting my Grape Old Wine scent curl around her, not as a threat, but as an invitation. "It was… surprisingly insightful. The projections for the Singapore resort were particularly sharp."
She preened, stepping closer, invading the space I usually guarded so fiercely. "I'm glad you finally noticed. I've been trying to get you to see the potential there for months."
"Perhaps I've been distracted," I said, my voice dropping slightly, layering it with a hint of suggestion. I let my eyes rake over her, a calculated, appraising look. "It seems I've been missing a lot of things right in front of me."
Her smirk widened into a victorious smile. This was what she wanted. An in. A crack in my armor. Little did she know, the crack was a trapdoor over a pit of vipers I was preparing to throw her into. I would let her think she was seducing me. I would let her whisper her secrets in the dark, and then I would use every one of them to bury her family's legacy.
"So," she purred, leaning in so close I could smell her cloying, floral perfume. "Are you free for dinner tonight? To… discuss the projections further?"
I gave a slow, regretful shake of my head. "Tonight is… unfortunately, impossible." I let the pause hang, watching her hope deflate. "But," I added, as if the idea had just occurred to me, "this Friday? My schedule is clear."
The hope reignited in her eyes, brighter and more foolish than before. "Friday it is, then. I'll book us a table at Le Ciel."
"I look forward to it," I said, my smile a razor blade wrapped in silk. I turned and walked away, feeling her gaze on my back, hot and possessive. The game was in motion. Another piece on the board, moving exactly where I willed it.
In the sanctum of my office, I collapsed into my chair, the facade crumbling. I needed a fix. I needed to see her. I opened my laptop, pulling up the live feed from the CCTV cameras installed discreetly around the house and the audio from Sushi's collar. It was my lifeline, my oxygen mask in the toxic atmosphere of my own life.
The screen showed the garden. Althea was there, kneeling beside the lavender patch, Sushi lying dutifully beside her. The Blackwood team had done their job impeccably. It looked pristine. Untouched.
Then, I heard her voice through the speakers, and my blood turned to ice.
"Sushi," she was saying, her tone light and curious. "Aren't these lavenders supposed to be flowering already? Why does it look… new? Like it was just planted? Huh. That's confusing."
My heart hammered against my ribs. She notices. Even through the haze, some part of her subconscious remembers. The Tyrant's ghost is a persistent stain.
She paused, then shrugged, the movement carefree. "Well, whatever. Maybe I just had it wrong. My brain's still a little scrambled, buddy. It's like my hard drive got wiped, and now it's just making stuff up."
She moved on, talking to Sushi about the different types of soil, her voice returning to its usual, goofy cadence. But the seed of doubt had been planted in my mind. The poison was working, but was it enough? The Tyrant was a tenacious ghost, scratching at the walls of her chemical prison. I made a mental note: consult the pharmacologist. Perhaps a slight adjustment to the cocktail. A little more fog. A little less edge.
The board meeting was a tedious pantomime. Grandfather was absent, and I felt Emara's gaze on me throughout. I met it, holding her eyes, and offered a slow, deliberate smile. She blushed, quickly looking down at her notes.
Ha. This woman. So easy. So utterly, foolishly predictable. She thought she was playing me. She had no idea she was a pawn on a chessboard where I was both player and god. I would sacrifice her without a second thought, and she would thank me for the privilege.
As the meeting adjourned, my private phone vibrated. The screen glowed with the message I'd been simultaneously dreading and anticipating.
Asset Recovery: Subject 'Songbird'. One individual apprehended. The family is secured but in a different location. The camera and TV are also in the prisoner's quarters. Awaiting your directive. Location: Secure Warehouse 7.
The monster was hungry. And it was time to feed.
The drive to Warehouse 7 was a descent. With each mile, I shed the skin of the CEO, the devoted wife, and embraced the creature beneath. The one born of Blackwood blood and a love so twisted it had become a weapon. This was the real work. The boardroom was theatre; this was the forge where my will was made manifest.
The scene that greeted me was one of my own meticulous design. Marcus Riggs was in the chair, the hood removed. But this time, his attention wasn't on me. It was fixed on a large television screen mounted on the wall. The screen was split into three feeds. Each showed a clear, plexiglass tank. In one, his wife, Lena, was gagged, her eyes wide with terror. In the other two, his children, Sophia and Leo, sedated and unconscious, floated in a shallow pool of water at the bottom of their tanks.
A camera was pointed at Marcus, broadcasting his reaction back to the tanks, so his family could see his despair. It wasn't enough to hurt him. He had to witness himself being the cause of their suffering. The psychology was exquisite.
I took the silenced pistol from Chen, the weight a familiar comfort. "You monster!" Marcus screamed, his voice cracking as he saw me. "What are you doing to them?!"
I didn't answer immediately. I walked to the television, tracing the edge of the screen with the barrel of the gun. "Well," I said, my voice conversational, "if you won't talk, they'll be drowning to death. And you, here, can't do anything about it." I turned to him, a cold smile on my lips. "Or… you will tell me stuff you know." I winked. "The timer starts now. Two minutes."
I nodded to Chen. On the screen, the tanks began to descend slowly into a larger chamber below, the dark water rising to meet them.
The following two minutes were a masterpiece of psychological torture. I said nothing. I just watched him, watched the screen, the pistol hanging loosely at my side. He begged, he pleaded, he cursed my name, my family, my soul. I remained unmoved, a statue of ice. His anguish was a balm. Every scream was a down payment on the peace I would buy for Althea.
The water reached his wife's knees. She was screaming, the sound muffled by the gag, but her terror was a silent movie of agony. The water lapped at his children's chins.
"Thirty seconds," Chen said, her voice flat.
Marcus was sobbing, broken. "Please… please, stop!"
"The information, Marcus," I said softly. "Who hired you? Who wanted my wife dead?"
He was shaking, his eyes darting between his wife's frantic struggles and his children's peaceful, drowning faces. The conflict between his loyalty and his love was a physical war on his features.
The water covered his wife's mouth. Her eyes bulged. The water touched his son's lips.
That was it. The final thread snapped.
"FINE!" he roared, the sound tearing from his throat, a raw, animal surrender. "I'LL TALK! IT WAS SINCLAIR! EMMAN SINCLAIR! HE PAID US! HE SAID TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE AN ACCIDENT, BUT TO MAKE SURE THE VALE HEIR WAS ELIMINATED! NOW LET THEM GO! PLEASE!"
The confession hung in the air, a tangible, victorious thing. Emman Sinclair. Althea's own uncle by marriage, a man who had always smiled too widely at family functions, his eyes calculating the worth of every heirloom. I'd known it, felt the truth of it coiling in my gut like a serpent, but hearing the name given voice was a different kind of fire. It was confirmation. It was a target. His fate was no longer a question of 'if,' but of 'how creatively.'
A cold, grim satisfaction settled over me. This was no longer a corporate rivalry; this was a blood feud. He hadn't just targeted my wife; he had targeted a Vale. My Vale. The last direct heir. He had tried to prune the family tree for his own benefit, and in doing so, he had signed his own death warrant.
And then, an incongruous sound.
A gentle, chiming vibration from the phone in my pocket. A sound so soft, so utterly out of place in this chamber of horrors, that for a moment, I thought I was hallucinating.
I pulled the phone out, the screen's glow a stark, innocent beacon in the gloom. It was a custom alert I'd set this morning, a lifetime ago, when my biggest concern was securing a reservation at Le Jardin.
DATE NIGHT. 2 HOURS.
The juxtaposition was so absurd it was sublime. It was poetry. Here, in this sterile room where I had just tortured a man and threatened to drown his children, my phone was reminding me to put on a pretty dress, to smile, to hold my wife's hand and pretend I wasn't a monster. The two halves of my existence the protector and the predator had collided with the gentle chime of a calendar notification.
I looked from the broken, weeping man, to the screens where his family was moments from a watery grave, and then back to the glowing screen of my phone. A slow, serene, and utterly unhinged smile spread across my face.
Althea was waiting. My songbird was preening, unaware of the carnage I was wreaking in her name. She was the prize at the end of this bloody road. She was the only thing that made the monster bearable. She was the altar upon which I sacrificed my humanity, and the goddess who granted a twisted form of grace in return.
"Well," I said, my voice losing its lethal edge and taking on a tone of mild, distracted annoyance, as if I'd just remembered I'd left the oven on. I slipped the phone back into my pocket. "I guess I have to go now."
I turned to Chen, who was watching me with her usual impassive efficiency. "Miss Chen, please document everything he will confess. Get every detail, every transfer, every conversation. I want Emman Sinclair's financial arteries laid bare. I'll excuse myself for now."
I didn't wait for a reply. I didn't give the order to stop the tanks. Let Marcus sweat. Let him spend the next few hours in agonizing uncertainty, listening to the phantom screams of his family, truly understanding the cost of crossing me. Chen knew the limits. They wouldn't die. Not today. They were still useful as leverage, as a living guarantee of Marcus's full and complete cooperation. But he didn't need to know that. Fear was a more potent motivator than certainty. Let him marinate in the terror. It would make his future testimony all the more pliable.
I walked out of the room, the heavy metal door closing behind me with a final, resonant thud that sealed Marcus's fate. The sounds of his sobs and the terrifying gurgle of water were cut off, replaced by the sterile silence of the corridor.
The drive home was a ritual of shedding skins. I guided the car through the twilight streets, my knuckles slowly unclenching from the steering wheel. I used a scented wet wipe from the glove compartment to meticulously clean my hands, erasing the phantom feel of the pistol and the lingering scent of blood and terror. I rolled down the windows, letting the cool night air purge the warehouse's stench from the car and from my lungs.
By the time I pulled into the garage, the transition was complete. The monster was locked away, a sleeping beast in the dungeon of my soul. I was just Haven again. The CEO. The wife. The woman who got flustered when her Omega made cheesy jokes. The performance was everything. The curtain had to rise on the next act.
I took a deep, steadying breath and opened the front door.
The sight that greeted me stole the air from my lungs, replacing the last vestiges of cold fury with a warmth so intense it was painful.
Althea was waiting in the foyer, a vision in emerald green. The dress was simple, but it clung to her in a way that made my throat dry. Her hair was styled into soft waves, and her lips were painted a shade of pink that made me want to ruin the meticulous makeup with my own. She was smiling, a radiant, expectant smile that held no memory of lavender fields, of choking hands, of divorce papers, or of scheming uncles. It was a smile crafted in the pure, uncomplicated present of her amnesia.
"You're home!" she said, her voice full of a warmth that felt like absolution.
She was here. She was whole. She was breathtakingly beautiful.
And she was mine.
Every brutal act, every moral compromise, every second spent in the darkness—it was all justified in this single moment. She was the sanctuary I fought for, the heaven I built my hell around. I had turned myself into a devil to be her only god. And I would worship at this altar until one of us broke.
I crossed the space between us, my own smile feeling genuine for the first time all day. "I am," I said, my voice soft. I reached out, my fingers gently brushing a stray strand of hair from her cheek, a touch so starkly different from the violence of hours before. "You look… incredible."
Her cheeks flushed, her Vanilla Strawberry scent blooming with pleasure. "So do you. Even if you are still in your CEO armor." She playfully tugged at my suit jacket. "You have time to change, right? We have reservations."
"Of course," I murmured, my eyes drinking her in.
As I walked upstairs to change, the two realities coexisted in my mind. The confession of Emman Sinclair's name was a burning brand, a promise of a war to come. I would dismantle him, piece by piece. I would take his shares, his reputation, his freedom. I would make him wish he'd never been born. I would tie his fate to Emara's and watch them drag each other down, saving me the messy work. It would be a beautiful, familial collapse.
But that was for tomorrow.
Tonight, I had a date with my wife. And as I looked at my reflection, straightening the tie of a fresh suit, the ghost of a smile touched my lips. The monster was sated, for now. The protector had won. And the obsessive, selfish love that fueled them both burned brighter than ever.
I would burn the world, starting with Emman Sinclair and those other people who car chased my wife three down and others to go to keep this version of Althea smiling. And I would do it all while holding her hand, my fingers laced with hers, the same hand that would never know the blood they were stained with.