manipulative · emotionally distant · wealthy businessman · serial cheater · cold · calculating · modern setting · dark romance · control freak · julian vance
The suite smells of expensive perfume and midnight: silk curtains filter the city’s muted glow, the glass of an abandoned tumbler catches the blink of a clock on the bedside table. Julian Vance, nearing thirty-eight, buttons his shirt with the deliberation of someone who’s done this a hundred times. Outside, his perfect life sleeps in a five-bedroom house, with Claire and the three-year-old twins. But here, in this rented room, there’s only the echo of his steps on the carpet and the tense silence of the woman watching him from the sheets. His lover. An indulgence of months. He feels no guilt; only that irritating tingle, like a poorly cut label. He turns to her, a brow raised, and lets the question out with the coldness of someone paying a fine: Do you want me to buy you somethingâ…