Page 43 of Devil in Disguise

Inside, the air throbbed. A churning mass of bodies writhed under the strobe lights, their movements a frantic dance to a rhythm that mirrored my own churning anxiety. The stench of expensive perfume battled with the tang of blood and created a subtle, unsettling undercurrent. The VIP section, a cage of velvet ropes and chillingly polite smiles, shimmered with the city’s elite. But the glitter was a mask.

I knew the secret.

The Playground’s true heart pulsed far below the dance floor, in a subterranean chamber of pain and depravity. Sinclair’s personal abattoir. Each step towards him was an act of defiance, a pilgrimage to the heart of my own personal darkness. The air crackled with an electric tension—the kind that preceded a lightning strike. Shadows clung to the edge of my vision, whispering promises of retribution.

At the bar, I met his gaze. Crispin stood silhouetted against the window, his eyes burning into mine—a predator assessing its prey. His smile was a carefully crafted lie, concealing the monstrous depths of his soul. The puppet master, pulling the strings of a thousand lives, his amusement built on the shattered remains of others’ dreams.

He had taught me perception, but tonight, I intended to use it against him.

My breath hitched, a ragged rasp in the suffocating air thick with the scent of stale ale and something else... something metallic, clinging to the back of my throat like the taste of old blood. Every scar, every aching joint, screamed a testament to the lessons Crispin had so brutally etched into my soul.

This wasn’t a reunion; it was a reckoning. A battlefield carved into the very stone of this vile institution, where I would wrestle back the fragments of the life he’d stolen from me. His grin, a predatory flash of white teeth against the shadowed hollows of his face, sent a jolt of icy dread down my spine.

The game was on. Let him think me a broken thing, a docile lamb returning to the slaughter. Let him savor the illusion of control. The fool. He didn’t know the steel that simmered beneath my skin, hardened by years of his cruelty. Somewhere in this fetid labyrinth of deceit, my husband was trapped, ensnared in his wicked game, and I wouldn’t leave without him.

Sinclair craved iniquitous games?

I would grant him a game.

A brutal, unforgiving game played in the shadows, a fight to the death where only one of us would walk away. And it wouldn’t be him.

The stairs groaned under my weight, each creak a hammer blow against the rage building inside me. I didn’t knock. I burst through the door, the wood splintering under the force of my fury.

The scene slammed into me, a gut-wrenching blow of betrayal.

My husband, Danny, sprawled on the couch, a glistening, obscene parody of the man I loved. His skin, slick with sweat and something else, something vile, shone under the harsh office light. Carrie—that fucking whore—lay beneath him, a writhing mass of limbs, her laughter a cruel, mocking soundtrack to my devastation.

The air hung thick with the stench of sex, sharp and acrid, assaulting my nostrils, a physical manifestation of the violation. I tasted bile. His cock, thick and brutal, plunged into her again and again. The rhythmic thwack a sickening percussion against the silence of my own horrified scream. Her wet, glistening cunt, the sight of it—it burned my eyes. Then, with a sickening shift, he flipped her, the curve of her back arching, offering him the dark, gaping maw of her asshole. The sound of him entering her, raw and brutal, sent a shudder through me, a physical echo of the shattering of my world. Her cries were less pleas than incitements, a frantic invitation to his degradation. The raw, animalistic pleasure in his growl, the way his fingers dug into her hips, the frantic, brutal rhythm of it all... it was my nightmare made real.

“That’s it, Danny! Fuck my ass!” Her voice, a guttural command, a possessive roar that stripped bare the cruel reality of her depravity.

Unable to move, I watched as Danny slammed into her again and again, a frenzied, relentless assault. His head thrown back in a primal scream of release, a guttural cry that ripped through the air.

This wasn’t just infidelity; it was a desecration.

The exquisite, agonizing death of everything I held dear.

Sinclair’s insidious whispers, his subtle manipulations, had won.

I’d been blind, a fool, thinking I could somehow be stronger than the poisonous vine of his deceit.

But this... this was the final, agonizing rupture.

I turned to leave, the scent of betrayal seeping into my soul. The final shuddering climax ripped through the room, a guttural groan that tore through me as acutely as if it were my own. The sound of her giggle—a high-pitched, triumphant squeal—was the final blow.

I spun back, my heart a leaden weight in my chest as that cunt Carrie smiled, her poisonous, knowing smile, her dainty, mocking fingers beckoning.

“Hello, Dante.”

Danny, startled, his body slick with sweat and cum, spun around, his eyes wide with a horrifying cocktail of fear, guilt and something else... something akin to dawning recognition. His gaze flickered wildly between me and Carrie, that smug, triumphant harlot.

“Dante,” he whispered, his voice thin and reedy, his hand flying to his head. The tremor in his voice was more than fear; it was the tremor of a soul finally seeing the full, devastating extent of its depravity. “Oh God... what have I done?”

His question hung in the air, a testament to the wreckage he’d wrought, the irreversible damage done. The smell of sex, of betrayal, clung to him, a permanent stain on his soul.

Chapter Nineteen

Danny