The phone's blue glow carved shadows into Adrian's face, each pixel of the video burning deeper than the last. Thirty-seven seconds. That's how long it took to demolish a marriage built over three careful years. The timestamp mocked him: 2:47 AM—while he'd been reviewing merger documents, securing their future, his spouse had been grinding against Ethan in some neon-lit hellscape.

Ethan. His cousin's name curdled in his mouth like spoiled milk. The golden predator with his leather jacket and reckless smile, who'd swept into their home like a hurricane and left devastation in his wake. Even the video quality was deliberate—grainy enough for plausible deniability, clear enough to shatter lives.

Adrian set the phone down with surgical precision. His hands didn't shake anymore. That weakness had died somewhere between the fifteenth and twentieth viewing, replaced by something crystalline and sharp.

Footsteps on gravel announced their return. Adrian moved to the living room, settling into his leather chair with the morning paper spread before him like a shield. The familiar creak of the front door. Hesitation in the hallway. The sound of someone gathering courage they didn't deserve.

"Adrian?" The crack in their voice was a symphony to his newly awakened senses.

He turned a page with deliberate slowness. The stock market had gained forty points. Fascinating.

"I know you've seen it." The words fell like stones into deep water.

Adrian's jaw tightened—the only outward sign of the inferno consuming him from within. When he finally looked up, his eyes had transformed. No longer the warm brown that had gazed at them with devotion, but something arctic. Predatory.

"Pack your things." His voice carried the authority he'd cultivated in boardrooms. "Car arrives in an hour."

They swayed, reaching toward him with hands that had touched another. The gesture triggered something primal in Adrian's chest—not jealousy, but revulsion.

But they remained rooted, swaying like a tree in a hurricane. Tears tracked down their cheeks, carving channels through last night's makeup. Their mouth opened and closed, desperate words dying before they could take shape.

And then they did something that surprised him. They knelt.

Right there on the Persian rug where they'd made love last winter, they collapsed to their knees, hands pressed to the floor in supplication. Their shoulders shook with silent sobs, but their eyes—their eyes burned with the same manic intensity that had once drawn him to them.

They weren't leaving. Despite everything, despite the video, despite his cold dismissal—they were choosing to stay. To fight for something that might already be dead.

The realization hit Adrian like ice water in his veins. They loved him. Still. Even now. The knowledge should have softened something in his chest, should have rekindled the gentle man who'd blushed at their flirtations.

Instead, it sharpened his hunger for their suffering.

"Get up." His voice was silk over steel. "If you're staying, there are rules."

They rose on trembling legs, hope and terror warring across their features. Adrian studied them with clinical interest, already calculating. Already planning.

"You want to repent? You want to earn back what you threw away?" He circled them slowly, a predator sizing up prey. "Then you'll learn what real consequences feel like."