Chapter 5
Rosália
The drive home from the gallery was a blur of brake lights and creeping dread.
The crushing realization from the night before—the lingering, filthy echo of that cheap word bouncing off the pristine tile of her bathroom—sat like a lead weight at the bottom of Rosália’s stomach.
She had spent her entire day at Lumen burying herself in exhibition schedules, aggressively highlighting budgets, desperate to outrun the terrifying whisper in her mind that said her marriage was unraveling.
When she finally pulled her SUV into the sweeping, manicured driveway, the sky was bruised with the heavy, purple shadows of twilight. David’s sleek Audi was already parked in the garage.
Rosália sat in the driver’s seat for a long moment, gripping the leather steering wheel until her knuckles turned white.
She closed her eyes, forcing oxygen into her tight lungs.
It was just a word, she told herself firmly, a desperate mantra to hold her reality together.
He was just trying to spice things up. You’re overthinking it. You’re exhausted.
She grabbed her leather tote, locked her car, and walked up the front steps. She pushed her key into the lock, expecting the heavy oak door to open into the usual, suffocatingly immaculate silence of their adult home.
Instead, as the door swung open, a sound drifted down the long, shadowed hallway.
A bright, melodic, distinctly feminine giggle.
Rosália froze.
Her foot hovered an inch above the Persian runner in the foyer. The sound was so jarring, so violently out of place in the carefully curated quiet of their house, that her brain simply refused to process it. Then, a second later, she heard the low, rumbling hum of David’s voice in response.
A sharp, visceral squeeze seized her heart, so painful it stole her breath.
It wasn’t just surprise; it was a primitive alarm bell ringing directly in her bloodstream.
The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
Her stomach dropped, plunging into a sickening free-fall, and her mouth suddenly went entirely dry.
Moving with the slow, terrifying caution of a woman stepping into a minefield, she set her keys onto the ceramic console bowl without making a single sound. She didn’t drop her bag. She held it tight against her ribs as she walked down the hallway toward the open-concept kitchen.
When she rounded the corner, the world stopped spinning.
David and Katherine were sitting side-by-side at the massive marble kitchen island.
They were entirely too close. The physical distance between them was practically nonexistent.
David was leaning over a sleek silver laptop, his broad shoulder brushing intimately against Katherine’s bare, tanned arm.
Katherine was leaning into his space, her blonde hair falling in bright, bouncy waves over her shoulder.
She was throwing her head back, a wide, dazzling smile lighting up her face as she looked at him, completely captivated.
For a terrifying, suspended eternity, Rosália couldn’t move. Seeing them like that—the wealthy, sophisticated, tightly wound executive and the vibrant, gorgeous twenty-nine-year-old—squeezed the remaining oxygen out of the room. They didn’t look like neighbors. They looked intimate.
Then, David lifted his head.
His dark eyes locked onto Rosália standing frozen in the threshold. The reaction was instantaneous, absolute, and utterly damning.
He froze completely. Every muscle in his large body locked up, the blood draining from his face so fast he looked practically gray. For two agonizing seconds, the polished veneer of the senior partner vanished. He looked like a man staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.
Then the panic was violently shoved behind a blindingly bright smile. He immediately pushed back from the stool, standing up with such frantic speed that the heavy wood scraped harshly against the floorboards. He crossed the kitchen in three long, aggressive strides.
“Rose, my love. You’re home,” he said, his voice a pitch too loud, a fraction too enthusiastic.
Before she could take a step back, before she could even open her mouth to ask the question burning on her tongue, he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist. He pulled her flush against his chest, his grip almost bruising, and brought his mouth down on hers in a deep, desperate kiss.
It was aggressive. It was possessive. It was a weapon of mass distraction.
The familiar scent of his expensive cologne and the overwhelming heat of his mouth flooded her senses, violently scrambling her thoughts and easing the terrible, agonizing knot that had formed in her chest just moments before.
He was kissing her like a man starved, and despite the alarm bells ringing in her head, her traitorous body leaned into it.
When he finally pulled back, his breathing was slightly uneven. He kept one heavy hand firmly on her hip, anchoring her to his side, acting as though this domestic bliss were perfectly normal.
“Katherine had an emergency,” David explained smoothly, gesturing vaguely back toward the island.
He didn’t look at Katherine. He kept his dark eyes fixed intensely on Rosália’s face.
“Her laptop completely crashed, and she needed to send out some contracts for her sponsors. Sean isn’t home from the city yet, so she came over to see if I could salvage the hard drive. ”
Rosália blinked, her mind scrambling to piece together the whiplash of the last thirty seconds. She looked over David’s shoulder. Katherine was waving enthusiastically, completely oblivious to the silent, suffocating tension vibrating between husband and wife.
“Hi Rosália! I am so sorry to crash your evening,” Katherine chirped, offering a dramatic, apologetic pout. “David is a total lifesaver. I was literally in tears trying to get this stupid thing to turn back on.”
Rosália swallowed hard, tasting the lingering phantom flavor of copper and panic.
She forced the corners of her mouth up into a gracious, perfectly practiced smile.
See? she scolded herself, her heart still hammering against her ribs.
You’re losing your mind. He’s just fixing a computer. He despises her, remember?
“It’s no problem at all, Katherine,” Rosália said, stepping out of David’s suffocating hold to walk further into the kitchen. Her legs felt slightly numb. “I’m glad David could help. Actually, I was just about to start dinner. I’m making a roast chicken. You should stay and eat with us.”
Katherine’s eyes widened, her hand fluttering to her chest. “Oh, no, I couldn’t!
I’ve intruded enough, and Sean will probably be back.
..” She trailed off, tapping the screen of her phone, before a bright smile returned to her face.
“Well, actually... Sean just texted that he’s stuck in a board meeting until late.
If you’re sure I wouldn’t be bothering you guys? ”
“Not at all,” Rosália insisted smoothly, opening the heavy refrigerator to pull out a bottle of chilled Chardonnay. Her hands were shaking. “I insist.”
Dinner was an agonizing study in contradictions and slow-building torture.
Rosália moved through the motions of the perfect hostess, serving the beautifully roasted chicken and fresh asparagus, pouring the wine with a steady hand. But the atmosphere at the table was suffocatingly thick, the air pressure dropping so low it made her ears ring.
David, the man who could usually hold a boardroom spellbound with his charisma, barely said a word. He kept his eyes fixed entirely on his plate, cutting his food with precise, mechanical motions. The muscle in his jaw feathered constantly.
Katherine, on the other hand, was entirely unbothered by the tension. The younger woman eagerly accepted glass after glass of the heavy white wine, the alcohol quickly flushing her chest and cheeks with a pretty, youthful pink.
“So, Katherine,” Rosália prompted, elegantly swirling the wine in her glass, desperate to fill the oppressive, terrifying silence. “How is work treating you?”
Katherine’s face lit up, absolutely thrilled to have the spotlight.
“Well, I love working as a personal trainer, but my main focus right now is building my online brand. Pilates, mobility flows, high-intensity interval training. It’s all about teaching women to reconnect with their bodies, you know? ”
She took a large, sloppy gulp of her wine, leaning forward over the table, her low-cut top dipping dangerously.
“You should absolutely come test out one of my private classes, Rosália! You have a great frame for it,” Katherine continued, her voice growing louder, slurring just the slightest bit.
“Women always tell me how much my mobility routines change their lives. And, honestly? Their husbands are always so grateful when they become a little more... flexible.”
Katherine threw her head back and let out a loud, ringing laugh, wiggling her eyebrows conspiratorially at Rosália.
The joke landed on the linen tablecloth like a live grenade.
Rosália stiffened, a deeply uncomfortable, humiliating heat creeping up her neck.
She let out a short, awkward, breathless laugh, desperately turning her head to look at David.
She fully expected to find her sophisticated, snobbish husband rolling his eyes in absolute disgust at the crass, incredibly inappropriate comment.
She needed that shared look of superiority to ground her.
But David wasn’t rolling his eyes.
He was staring directly at Katherine. The silver fork in his hand was completely suspended in the air.
His dark eyes were blown wide, fixed on the younger woman with an emotion Rosália couldn’t decipher.
Was it disgust? Annoyance? Confusion? Or something more.
.. something dangerous that had no right being there.
As if feeling the sudden, freezing drop in temperature, Katherine abruptly stopped laughing. She blinked heavily, her hand flying to her forehead.
“Oh, wow,” she giggled weakly, pushing her chair back. The legs scraped loudly against the floorboards. “I think that wine went straight to my head. I’m spinning. I should probably go home before I pass out on your beautiful rug.”
She stood up, but her knees immediately buckled. She swayed dangerously to the side, gripping the edge of the dining table to catch her balance.
“Careful,” Rosália said instantly, standing up and tossing her linen napkin onto her chair. “Let me help you, Katherine. I’ll walk you across the lawn.”
“No.”
The word cracked like a whip.
David was on his feet in a fraction of a second, his heavy chair nearly toppling backward from the violent force. He moved around the table with terrifying, possessive speed.
“I’ve got it, Rose,” he said, his voice tight, clipped, and brooking no argument.
He stepped right into Katherine’s personal space, taking over the task.
“She’s much taller than you, and you’ll only end up hurting yourself trying to keep her upright all the way home. It’ll be easier for her to lean on me.”
Before Rosália could even process the blatant dismissal, David grabbed the silver laptop from the counter with one hand.
With his other, he wrapped his thick arm firmly around Katherine’s bare waist. Katherine giggled, completely melting into his side as if she belonged there, her arm immediately looping around his neck for support.
Her chest pressed flush against his ribs.
“Thanks, David,” she mumbled, leaning her head intimately against his shoulder.
“I’ll be right back,” David threw over his shoulder, blatantly refusing to meet Rosália’s eyes.
Rosália stood entirely frozen by the dining table, her nails digging into her palms, watching as her husband practically carried the young, beautiful woman out the front door. The heavy oak shut behind them with a definitive, echoing click.
The house plunged back into its suffocating, agonizing silence.
Ten minutes passed.
Rosália began to pace the length of the kitchen.
Her arms were wrapped so tightly around her waist she was bruising her own ribs.
She cleared the plates with trembling hands.
She loaded the dishwasher, the clinking of china sounding violently loud.
She grabbed a sponge and scrubbed the countertops until the marble gleamed, scrubbing until her knuckles ached, desperate to do anything to burn off the panic rising in her throat.
Fifteen minutes.
She walked to the front window, pushing the heavy velvet curtain aside by an inch. The manicured lawns were pitch black. Sean’s massive, imposing house next door was entirely quiet, the dark windows offering no secrets.
Twenty agonizing, torturous minutes.
Her heart was hammering against her ribs like a frantic, trapped bird.
A terrifying, humiliating, overwhelming urge gripped her.
She wanted to put on her shoes. She wanted to march across the dark lawn, pound her fists on Sean’s front door, and demand to know exactly what her husband was doing inside that house with that girl.
Just as her hand reached out, hovering trembling over the front doorknob, the deadbolt clicked.
David stepped inside.
He looked slightly flushed, his chest heaving as if he had run a dead sprint back across the grass. He closed the door quickly, aggressively locking the deadbolt behind him, effectively shutting the rest of the world out.
“Is everything okay?” Rosália asked. Her voice betrayed her, trembling noticeably in the quiet foyer despite her desperate attempt to keep it steady. “You were gone a long time. I was starting to worry.”
David wouldn’t look at her. He completely avoided her gaze, walking past her and dropping the house keys into the ceramic bowl with a loud, careless clatter.
“She’s fine. Just incredibly drunk,” he muttered, his tone entirely dismissive.
He actively scrubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to physically wipe away the last twenty minutes.
“She kept talking. I tried to leave, but she wouldn’t shut up about her sponsors, and I couldn’t just drop her on the floor and walk out. God, she’s exhausting.”
He stopped at the base of the stairs, finally glancing back at Rosália. His eyes were shadowed, completely closed off, impossible to read. The mask was back on.
“I need a shower,” he said, the words heavy and absolute. “I’ll see you in bed, Rose.”
Rosália stood perfectly still in the dark foyer, watching her husband ascend the grand staircase.
She tried to make sense of the sudden knot in her chest. Why had she been so on edge waiting for David’s return, when he was only helping their neighbor?
It was perfectly innocent, so why was she feeling this intense sense of dread?