Midnight With The CEO

Lina Hart had received plenty of messages like this before, but this one still made her pause. The photo showed a naked couple tangled up on a large hotel bed, completely unbothered.

The man was her husband - Julian Kane - who hadn't so much as touched her in the six months they'd been married, yet somehow always had a woman on the side.

'Miss Hart, Julian asked me to send this to you. He says he's not coming home tonight. He prefers my company.'

Lina's face stayed calm. Is she trying to get a reaction out of me?

She typed back without blinking. 'Tell Julian to use a condom. I'd rather not deal with the mess if he catches something from hopping between women every night.'

She hit send and almost smiled. She could picture the woman's face when she read that.

Julian Kane might have been a catch to some people. To Lina, he was just a man she happened to be married to. Whenever she thought about their life together, her stomach turned.

She'd barely set her phone down when the front door slammed and her mother-in-law's voice cut through the apartment like a knife.

"Why are you in that bedroom again? I asked you to cook - it's not that hard! Half a year married and still no baby. I put food on your plate and a roof over your head. Even a chicken lays eggs! What exactly do you do around here? Do you want me to starve?"

Lina opened the bedroom door and looked at Margaret Kane without saying a word.

That look was enough. Margaret took a few steps back, the anger draining from her face. She turned toward the living room, muttering under her breath, "No wonder Julian goes elsewhere. Useless girl."

She grabbed her bag and walked out of the apartment, slamming the front door behind her.

Lina almost laughed. Right. My fault. Never mind that your son is never home.

Lina stood in the middle of the room, the silence pressing in on her. Her phone was still on the bed - that photo still in the chat. She glanced at it, then looked away.

She was not staying here tonight.

She grabbed her jacket, stepped out, and didn't look back.

The city was loud and bright in all the right ways - bars lining the streets, music bleeding through walls, strangers moving under neon lights without a care in the world. Lina walked without a destination, just needing the noise and the movement.

A year of this. A year of sleeping alone, being screamed at, and being cheated on with zero shame. Tonight, she just wanted to forget all of it - even for a little while.

She stopped outside a bar and leaned against the wall, letting out a slow breath. Something reckless stirred in her chest.

That's when she noticed him.

He was walking down the street - tall, dressed in a dark fitted suit, moving like a man who owned whatever room he walked into. His face was hard to make out in the low light, but something about him made her look twice.

Before she could think it through, her feet were already moving.

"Hey." Her voice came out softer than she meant it to. "You here alone?"

Damian Cross heard her before he saw her. His first instinct was to brush her off - he had no interest in women stumbling out of bars. He reached out to do exactly that.

Then a passing car's headlights caught her face.

She was beautiful. Even like this - a little unsteady, eyes glassy - she was striking. Full lips, dark hair falling loose, eyes that pulled you in even when she wasn't trying.

Her. A slow smile crossed his face.

He dropped his hand and slid his arm around her waist instead. "Not anymore." His voice was quiet and warm.

A flicker of nerves ran through Lina. But then she thought of the photo on her phone, and she leaned into him.

"Good," she said. "Keep me company then."

Later, in a dim hotel suite, Damian looked down at her. Her cheeks were wet.

He kissed the corner of her eye. "Any regrets?" he asked quietly.

Lina shook her head. None. What would she even regret - marrying a man who treated her like furniture? Spending a year invisible in her own home?

She'd made her choices. This was just one more.

Her hands found his waist - a shy touch, barely there, but certain. Damian caught them gently and shifted his weight.

At the very end, only one thing stayed with her.

"Be still." Low and quiet, like a promise.

How does that feel?

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.

"I've told you this a hundred times - I don't know what you're talking about." Lina kept her voice even. "And I've also told you we can just get a divorce. There's no reason for us to keep doing this to each other."

She meant it. She'd even mapped it out in her head - how they could both walk away cleanly, live separate lives, be better off. Simple.

Julian laughed. Not a warm laugh.

"Your father came to me on his knees, Lina. Begged me to marry you and wipe out every debt your family owed." He let go of her wrist and stepped back, looking her over like she was something he'd bought at a discount. "Nobody told me what I was getting. Now the debt's paid and you want out? Keep dreaming." He turned toward the closet, done with the conversation. "I'll divorce you when I feel like it. Not a day sooner."

About half an hour later, a dress landed on the bed beside her.

"Wear that tonight. We have a business dinner." He didn't look at her when he said it. "Look the part. My dear wife."

---

He didn't tell her where they were going or who they were meeting. They rode in silence the whole way there, and that was fine with Lina. In public, Julian transformed - charming, polished, the picture of a successful man with a happy marriage. She'd learned to match his energy without thinking twice about it. It cost her nothing, and it kept the peace.

Besides, on the nights he was in a good mood playing the devoted husband, he usually didn't come home afterward. And that suited her just fine.

It had been different once - briefly. Before the wedding, Julian had been attentive, even sweet. Then they'd gone in for a routine medical checkup, and something in the results had shifted everything. He'd never been the same after that. And he'd never let her forget it.

"We're meeting Damian Cross tonight," Julian said as they pulled up to the restaurant. His voice went flat and businesslike. "He runs Cross Conglomerate. I'm trying to lock in a subcontract. You know what to do."

"Of course." Lina straightened her dress. "Smile, look happy, make you look good."

The blankness in her tone clearly annoyed him. He said nothing.

---

They arrived at Illuminate Restaurant just before seven and were shown to a private dining room. Their guest hadn't arrived yet, and Lina felt a headache coming on, so she slipped out to the restroom.

When she came back twenty minutes later and pushed open the door, there was a man already seated at the head of the table.

Julian was talking - or trying to. The man across from him wasn't giving much back.

Lina took him in quickly. Dark suit, relaxed posture, the kind of stillness that came not from having nothing to say but from not feeling the need to say it. He was turning a lighter over slowly in his fingers, not quite paying attention - until she walked in.

Then he looked up.

"Lina, come sit down." Julian shifted smoothly into his public persona. "This is Damian Cross. Damian, my wife - Lina Hart."

Something moved across Damian's face. Quiet. Controlled. His eyes stayed on her for just a second longer than necessary, and then the corner of his mouth lifted.

He set the lighter down.

"Mrs. Kane." His voice was low, unhurried, with just enough warmth in it to be dangerous. "Small world."

Lina blinked. *Small world?* She'd never met this man before in her life - had she?

She covered the moment smoothly, picked up her glass and drank as an apology for being late. Then, sensing the tension sitting thick between the two men, she reached for the bottle and turned to Damian.

"Let me pour you one."

He tilted his head slightly, watching her. "You're doing that yourself, Mrs. Kane?"

"Do you mind?"

A beat of silence. Then Damian picked up his glass and drank - unhurried, easy, like he had all the time in the world.

By the end of the meal, the deal was done.

---

Julian excused himself to find the server and handle the bill, leaving Lina and Damian alone in the private room.

The quiet that settled between them was a different kind - heavier, more deliberate. Damian leaned back in his chair, completely at ease, watching her with that calm, unreadable expression.

"You really don't recognize me?" he said finally. His voice was low. Almost amused.

Lina frowned. "Should I?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead he stood - unhurried - and closed the distance between them and hugged her from behind. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to just above a whisper.

"Think harder."