Obsessed With The Wrong Brother
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Shailyn Belmar has a list of things she has given her husband.
Her genius. The AI model she built from her father's dying research — H-GPT — which Dante presented to his family as his own creation and used to become CEO of one of the most powerful tech companies in Kington.
Her loyalty. Five years of looking the other way while he came home smelling of other women, while his mistresses passed her in hallways and smiled.
Her silence. Because she had learned, slowly and completely, that speaking cost more than it was worth.
She gave him all of it. And when she finally had nothing left to give — when she gathered every last piece of herself and whispered the word divorce — he put his hands around her throat and reminded her of the rules.
"You are my wife. You will do as I say."
So Shailyn disappears for one night. Behind a mask in a dark, loud club. She lets herself be anonymous. She lets herself be touched by someone whose hands know how to be gentle. She lets herself feel, for the first time in years, like a woman instead of a mistake.
She does not plan to end up in his bed. Does not plan to fall asleep with her face against the chest of a man covered in tattoos and quiet, devastating patience.
She definitely does not plan for him to be Dwayne, her husband's older brother. The man Dante spent five years teaching her to resent. The rightful heir to the empire she unknowingly built. And the only person in the world who knows who really murdered her father — and why.
"I’m back to take back what's mine," Dwayne had promised.
Shailyn thought he meant the company.
She was wrong.
Her genius. The AI model she built from her father's dying research — H-GPT — which Dante presented to his family as his own creation and used to become CEO of one of the most powerful tech companies in Kington.
Her loyalty. Five years of looking the other way while he came home smelling of other women, while his mistresses passed her in hallways and smiled.
Her silence. Because she had learned, slowly and completely, that speaking cost more than it was worth.
She gave him all of it. And when she finally had nothing left to give — when she gathered every last piece of herself and whispered the word divorce — he put his hands around her throat and reminded her of the rules.
"You are my wife. You will do as I say."
So Shailyn disappears for one night. Behind a mask in a dark, loud club. She lets herself be anonymous. She lets herself be touched by someone whose hands know how to be gentle. She lets herself feel, for the first time in years, like a woman instead of a mistake.
She does not plan to end up in his bed. Does not plan to fall asleep with her face against the chest of a man covered in tattoos and quiet, devastating patience.
She definitely does not plan for him to be Dwayne, her husband's older brother. The man Dante spent five years teaching her to resent. The rightful heir to the empire she unknowingly built. And the only person in the world who knows who really murdered her father — and why.
"I’m back to take back what's mine," Dwayne had promised.
Shailyn thought he meant the company.
She was wrong.
