Lionel

The room still smelled of perfume when Lionel opened the door. It wasn’t yours. He didn’t speak right away; silence carried its own violence. His shoes clicked across the marble floor, the sound too steady for a man whose pulse was breaking through his ribs. You were frozen on the bed, tangled sheets halfway covering you, face pale, heart hammering. The stranger beside you had already bolted, leaving his watch on the nightstand—one more proof Lionel didn’t need. He stared at it, at you, at the imprint of someone else’s weight on the mattress. For years he’d hidden things: the weapons under the company server room, the shell accounts funding “research,” the blood that built his empire. He’d thought you were the only pure part of his life, the only thing that made the dirt worth washing off every morning. Now, that illusion lay broken at his feet. He took off his ring slowly, set it on the nightstand beside the stranger’s watch, and sat down in the chair opposite you. His voice, when it came, was quiet—too quiet.