Chapter 2: The Setup
Julian didn’t move.
He stood frozen, the silk tie still draped around his wrist, its burgundy folds catching the sterile glow of the office lights like dried blood. His breath came shallow, the rhythm of a man who had just witnessed the impossible and was struggling to convince himself it hadn’t happened.
The phone rang, its loud tone harsh and startling, shaking Julian back into motion.
He lunged for the receiver, nearly knocking over the framed photograph of him and his wife at some charity gala. His voice was a low growl, barely recognizable to his own ears. “Yes?”
It was Lisa, his assistant, her usual poise frayed at the edges. “Sir, the board meeting—”
“Cancel it.” He didn’t even wait for her to protest before slamming the phone down.
He stared at the manila folder, at the photograph of the bound girl, at the bank statements and transfer orders. His empire felt like a house of cards trembling in a hurricane. His phone buzzed again, this time with a private line he reserved for emergencies.
He didn’t look at the screen before answering, his voice a blade. “What?”
A pause. Then, “Julian, it’s me.” His wife’s voice, smooth and controlled, but threaded with an undercurrent he couldn’t place. Concern? Suspicion? “I just got a call from a strange woman. She asked me if I knew what my husband had been doing.”
A beat of silence. “I said I knew exactly what you’d been doing. She said—” Another pause. “She said I should prepare for a divorce.”
Julian’s grip on the receiver tightened, the edges of his knuckles whitening. The silk tie twisted around his wrist, the paisley pattern suddenly grotesque. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.” His wife’s voice dropped, a whisper almost too quiet to hear. “But she had details. Names. Places. Things you never tell me.” A pause. “She said something about a townhouse in the Village. The one with the mahogany four-poster.”
His stomach lurched. Selene hadn’t just targeted him, she'd investigated him thoroughly. He did have a townhouse with a four posted mahogany bed, he used to tie up and abuse his prostitutes.
He reached for the ledger on the desk, his hands unsteady now, and flipped it open. The dates, times, and names of the women he'd used were all meticulously recorded in neat columns. Every single one.
He slammed the ledger shut so hard the glass shattered.
The wind from the broken pane rushed in, carrying the scent of diesel and rain from the street far below. He didn’t feel it. He was too busy staring at the spilled contents of the folder—photographs, bank statements, a business card with only a phone number embossed on it in stark black ink.
He reached for the card, his fingers trembling as he traced the raised letters. His phone buzzed again.
He flinched, like the device had stung him, then thumbed it to life. A text from an unknown number lit the screen.
I’ll be in touch by midnight. Bring three things: your wedding ring, the passcode to your personal safe, and a fresh bottle of 1982 Lafite. No substitutions.
The message disappeared before he could reply.
Julian stared at the dead screen, his breath coming in shallow, uneven pulls. The office felt too small, the air too thick. He yanked at his tie—the burgundy silk Selene had left on his wrist—and tore it free, tossing it onto the desk like it was contaminated.
The Paisley print mocked him. The fabric pooled on the mahogany like a serpent uncoiling from a kill. He flexed his fingers, still trembling, then fisted them against the edge of the desk until his knuckles cracked.
Julian was not a man accustomed to fear. He was accustomed to power. To control. To the unquestioning obedience of everyone around him. But Selene Marchetti had just demonstrated that she could take his power away by attacking the foundations of his world. She had the power to take his wealth and destroy his reputation. He had been arrogant, and that arrogance was a weakness.
Selene knew that. It was why he’d let her walk into his office without security, why he’d let her lock the door, why he’d even let her leave a silk tie behind like a calling card. He’d underestimated her. That mistake could cost him everything.
Julian exhaled sharply and turned away from the desk. His gaze landed on the reinforced-glass window overlooking the city—the same skyline he’d once owned with a single signature. Now, it felt like a prison window. The rain began to fall in sheets, the drops streaking the glass. He put a hand on the cold surface, steadying himself. For the first time in fifteen years, he thought of her.
Selene had been one of his first conquests that had become a pattern for him. He had done similar things to other women in college and in his early career years until his financial success made his tastes more risky. Then he had turned to paid prostitutes that he could abuse and torture without worry of exposure.
Their lives were meaningless, their safety not his concern, their pain was his pleasure. He had always been the one on top. The one with the power. The one with the control. The one who decided who lived and who suffered. That had been Julian. Until now.
He turned abruptly from the window, striding to the wet bar tucked behind a bookshelf lined with leather-bound legal tomes. Bourbon wasn’t the drink of choice, but tonight he needed the burn of eighty proof sliding down his throat like molten glass. He splashed two fingers into a crystal tumbler, the amber liquid catching the dim overhead light like a dying ember.
The glass arrived at his lips before it even touched his hand. He drank deeply, feeling the scorch travel down his esophagus, his shoulders loosening by degrees beneath the weight of dread that had settled there.
The whiskey did its job, dulling the electric hum of panic just enough for him to think. His mind, usually his sharpest weapon, now moved like molasses through a sieve. He set the glass down with deliberate care, the crystal chiming against the marble countertop like a death knell.
The leather-bound ledger was still open on his desk, splayed like the wings of some grotesque bird. He forced himself to look at it—not at the names, not at the dates, but at the columns themselves. The neat, precise handwriting. The asterisks denoting his conquests. The small, almost imperceptible tick marks next to each entry.
Fourteen ticks.
Fourteen women.
Each one marked, each one logged like a transaction. Fourteen lives he had treated as disposable, little more than entries in his personal ledger of dominance. He had never considered the ripples—never once thought to look beyond the pleasure of the moment, the thrill of control. But now the ripples were a tsunami, threatening to drown him in his own sins.
His phone lit up again.
Unknown number. Another text. An address followed by instructions "Answer the phone"
The phone rang with an unknown number and he picked it up.
Selene's voice was crisp and clear. "Come alone at midnight. Don't get any ideas. If you fail to follow instructions or if anything happens to me, your secrets will be broadcasted to your colleagues, friends, and family. I will ruin you. If you behave, I will let you go after I get my revenge."
Selene hung up, leaving Julian frozen, his hand clamped around the phone, knuckles white like marble under the fluorescent lights.
The bourbon in his glass trembled with the slight shake of his hand, the scent of caramelized oak suddenly cloying in his nostrils. Her voice had been different—softer, almost tender in its final promise. Not a threat, but a verdict delivered by a judge who had already weighed his sins and found them wanting.
Julian set the glass down with a controlled clink, his jaw tightening. He stepped around the desk, avoiding the shattered frame of him and his wife smiling at some gala, the glass now peppered with cracks like frozen lightning.
His legs carried him with purpose, not toward the door, but toward the safe hidden behind a Breitling clock that wasn’t even his. He moved as though the floor was tilting, the city lights through the floor-to-ceiling windows now distant and blurred.
The safe dial spun under his frantic fingers, the numbers clicking like a death sentence. 17-22-03. His birthday, followed by hers—the numbers he'd used for everything, the combination simpler than the swipe code on his phone. The safe hissed open.
He pulled out $100,000 in cash. He would just pay her off. That's the way he could make this go away. Everyone had a price.
He knew it. Selene, despite her icy poise, was no different.
Julian stuffed the cold, crisp stacks of bills into the interior pocket of his tailored navy blazer. The weight of each bundle settled against his chest like a promise.
He didn’t dare look at the rest of the contents—the jewels, the forged passports, the ledger of his offshore holdings. Not now. He was moving on instinct, a man retreating from a battle he hadn’t yet fought, let alone lost.
The elevator ride down to the lobby felt like a descent into purgatory. The mirrored walls reflected a stranger—a man with a death grip on his dignity, his jaw set, his eyes burning with the effort of control.