Page 23 of Freed By Wrath

Most of all, she wanted to work at a restaurant as a hobby, curious about what happens behind the walls that protect the kitchen.

Ideas seemed to spill out of her faster than she could catch them, and I remember sitting there thinking… Where the hell has she been hiding all this time? Because none of us had ever seen this version of her, and I had the immediate impression that no one else did.

The woman everyone thought they knew had somehow become the most interesting person at the party the second nobody was paying attention.

Then morning came, Daniel woke up, and she slipped back to his side as naturally as breathing.

Her shoulders drew in, her voice softened, and the spark we all watched burn for hours folded itself away so neatly that, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would’ve believed I’d imagined it.

But when she looked at him… I saw it. There was love. Appreciation. Trust. The kind that doesn’t question itself because it has no reason to. And that was enough for me.

I made it enough for me.

Enough to bury whatever strange pull I’d felt toward a woman who was never mine to want.

I told myself she’d found happiness and that my only job was to hope she kept it.

I tried to convince both my best friends of the same thing.

Serena kept being part of our lives for some time after that, and god, she had always been difficult, manipulative, calculating.

Slash knew that better than anyone, but their relationship had never been built on love. It had been convenience wrapped in physical attraction, and when that stopped being enough, they’d walked away from each other without much damage.

At least… That’s what I’d thought. But the truth is that after that Halloween, something changed not only in me, but mostly in Slash. He started noticing Valerie everywhere.

Every family event Serena invited him to, every charity gala… and always, he’d come home irritated, convinced something wasn’t right.

“She smiles less.”

“Did you notice how quiet she was?”

“Daniel answers for her all the fucking time.”

At first, Fabien and I humored him.

Then we started arguing with him.

Eventually, we spent months trying to convince him he was reading too much into things.

She looked fine. She was happy. She was planning a wedding.

What else were we supposed to believe?

I thought he’d let it go.

He never did.

“Are you alright?” Fabien asks, now back in the office, putting a cardboard box full of pictures and some other stuff on top of my working table.

He’s taken the man bun down. Hair loose now, pushed back from his face, mask hanging from his belt loop like an afterthought. Dark waves curl loose around a jaw shadowed with stubble, tan skin catching orange light from the decor.

He looks tired.

We’re all tired.

“Do I seem alright?”

“No.”