The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 703

Across the city, Alex sat at the small table in his flat. His tea had gone cold. A magic book lay open in front of him.

All morning, he had been thinking about his decision. And every way he looked at it, the answer seemed right: he should leave her.

The engagement was only on paper. It was never real love.

And every day he stayed, he hurt her more. Or hurt himself for lying to her.

He had secretly paid 50 million dollars and arranged everything so she would be accepted and protected.

She didn't know. Last night on the tram, she almost guessed it. He lied to her face, with a smile — and she believed him.

That scared him. He was becoming a good liar. He didn't want to become that kind of person.

So he made his list of reasons: She was safe now. She was rich. The contracts he wrote protected her. She didn't need him anymore. They were just strangers — a kind woman helped a stranger once, the stranger paid her back, and now everything was even.

He repeated this to himself, again and again, alone in the flat — while her spare hairpin still sat on the windowsill, and the smell of her terrible cooking still hung in the walls.

By noon, he had almost stopped noticing how many times he needed to repeat it.

Tonight, he decided. He would cook dinner for her, for once. Then he would tell her he was leaving. Or maybe he wouldn't tell her at all — maybe he would just disappear after this last night together.

Everything was paid. Everything was done. It was time to go. After that, he would learn magic. It seemed interesting.

***

The tram was half-empty when Febyella boarded it, which she would remember later as the first wrong thing.

The 11:40 to the east district was never half-empty. It was always shoulders and someone's shopping bag against her knee.

Now there was room to sit, and she sat, and she was tired enough to be grateful instead of suspicious.

The second wrong thing was the smell. Sweet, faintly, like a florist's shop. She thought: someone's perfume.

She thought: I'll be home in twenty minutes.

She thought nothing after that, because the sleeping magic took her between one lamppost and the next, gentle as a hand closing a book.

She woke to rope.

That was the whole of it at first — rope at her wrists, rope at her ankles, the particular ache of arms drawn back too long.

Then the room assembled itself around the rope: bare boards, one lantern on a crate, shutters nailed over the windows. And the people.

She counted them the way you count stairs in the dark, needing the number to be smaller than it was. Ten. Standing in a loose ring, unhurried, the way people stand when they have done a thing many times before.

"Simple day for everyone," said the one by the lantern. Flat voice. Gloved hands. "Fifty million dollars. An account, a box number, a name at a bank. You say it, we check it, you go home to your supper."

"I returned it." Her voice came out smaller than she ordered it to. "This morning. To the Reagent Group. Ask anyone in that tower — the clerks saw me—"

The slap came without anger, which made it worse. A workman's stroke. Her head snapped sideways and copper arrived in her mouth like a bill.

"Wrong answer," the flat voice said, patiently. "The man paying for this room says you have it. Men paying for rooms are rarely wrong. So we'll go again. We've got all day and night, and this house has no neighbors, miss. Fifty million. Where."

Feby breathed against the cord.

"I don't have it," she said again, and set her jaw.

---

Alex had cooked.

Badly — the flat smelled of ambition and scorched onions — but the table was set for two, and folded under his own cup, where he could reach it when the moment came, was everything he'd rehearsed since Beatrix's call that morning, down to the first sentence.

Feby. Sit down. Beatrix tells me fifty million dollars walked back into the tower today, and it had your handwriting on it. Tell me why.

He had told Beatrix to hold the money. I'll speak with her first, he'd said, as if it were a small thing, as if his hands hadn't been cold on the tile.

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