His Dirty Little Secret
“Stealing my woman,” he snarled, “and you think you deserve a suit that costs more than a car?”
He ripped my shirt, the fine fabric tearing with a sound that seemed impossibly loud. A grotesque smile twisted his face as he brandished a bottle, splashing its contents at me. The acrid smell of chemicals hit me before the liquid did.
Acid.
The cold steel was already buried in my gut. Pain, white-hot and absolute, forced me to my knees. He grabbed a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back. “Ava is my wife, you understand? So what the hell are you? You’re nothing. Just a dirty little secret she keeps on the side.”
Blood, warm and slick, dripped through my fingers. And in that moment, I understood.
Ava. My fiancée of seven years. The woman I was about to marry was keeping another man. And I wasn't the husband; I was the affair.
“What are you looking at?” he spat, his face flush with manic pride. “Even if I kill you right here, with my wife’s power, no one will touch me. No one.”
Staring at his arrogant face, I used my blood-slicked hand to pull out my phone. I found my sister’s number.
“Sloane,” I said, my voice terrifyingly calm. “Come get me. The tailor’s shop in SoHo.”
A pause. Then, “And let the Monroe family know—the engagement is off.”
1
I ended the call. The suit, a bespoke masterpiece worth a fortune, was now a ruin of blackened, smoldering holes. My exposed skin screamed in protest as the high-concentration acid seared it, a foul yellow ooze mixing with the red of my blood. I glared at the man, the rage in my eyes hot enough to incinerate him.
But the boutique staff and the few other clients, drawn by the commotion, only laughed.
“Hah, can you believe it? He messed with Ava Monroe’s husband. He’s so screwed.”
The man, Caleb, jabbed a finger at my face. “You piece of shit! Still trying to act tough? You think calling someone is going to make me back off? What a joke. The ‘Sterlings’? Never heard of them. I’m calling the cops to have you arrested for stealing this suit, you pathetic homewrecker!”
I pressed my hand to the weeping wound in my side, hot blood pulsing between my fingers. The world was beginning to blur at the edges from the blood loss. I glanced at the thugs standing behind Caleb, regretting my decision to come out today without my security detail.
My eyes scanned the crowd, a silent plea for help.
They just stared back, whispering amongst themselves, their faces a mixture of morbid curiosity and scorn. No one moved to help. No one dared.
Gritting my teeth against a wave of pain, I locked my gaze on Caleb, my eyes red-rimmed and murderous. “I don’t care who you are, but you need to understand something. My name is Sterling. Leo Sterling, of the New York Sterlings. Now, get the hell out of my sight before I change my mind about letting you live.”
My stare only seemed to enrage him further. He kicked me, hard, right in the stomach. “The hell do I care about some ‘Sterlings’? You think I’m scared of you?”
The impact tore the gash in my abdomen wider. A fresh surge of blood and fluid soaked through my ruined clothes. But in that moment, I barely registered the pain.
His words echoed in my ears. Ava Monroe’s husband.
Then who was I?
A bitter laugh escaped my lips. It was all horribly clear.
Ava… she was cheating on me. The woman chosen by our families, my high-school sweetheart, the love I’d built my life around for seven years… had a secret husband.
Knowing this wasn't the time to fall apart, I forced the rage down. “Caleb, is it?” I said, my voice a low growl. “You’re going to get me to a hospital, right now. And then you’re going to tell Ava to get her ass over there.”
He looked at me with genuine surprise. I shot him a look of pure venom.
“Because if anything happens to me today, the first person my family will destroy is you,” I whispered. “And Ava… she’ll be buried right alongside me.”
For a second, there was silence. Then Caleb burst out laughing. He grabbed my hair again, slamming my head against the floor. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, ordering my wife around! Even if I kill you, the Monroes have plenty of money. I can afford to pay for a life like yours.”
My head rang, my vision swimming in a red haze. He ground his heel into the stab wound, and a tide of pure agony and despair washed over me.
Just then, the screech of tires cut through the air.
A familiar Maybach sedan pulled up to the curb. The breath I didn’t know I was holding finally left my body.
I looked at Caleb and managed a cold, bloody smile.
“I told you,” I rasped. “My name is Sterling. Sloane is here. Are you ready to die?”
“Leo!”
My sister, Sloane, took in the scene, and a storm of fury erupted in her eyes. She rushed to my side, shrugging off her designer coat and wrapping it around my shredded, half-naked body. She pulled me into an embrace, her fierce protectiveness a tangible thing.
“Are you okay, Leo? Don’t worry, I’m here now.”
A hard knot of emotion clogged my throat, and tears I hadn’t realized were there finally fell. She gently wiped the blood and grime from my face before turning her wrath on Caleb.
“You’re the one who did this to my brother?” Her voice was dangerously low. “You have a death wish.”
Caleb looked at her as if she were a joke, laughing so hard he doubled over. When he finally caught his breath, he shot Sloane a dismissive glare. “Big words. Let’s see if you’re still talking so tough in a few minutes. Boys! Show her that I, Caleb, am not someone you mess with.”
His thugs charged forward.
Sloane’s security detail moved instantly, forming a protective barrier around us while efficiently taking down the first wave of attackers. But more men poured out from behind Caleb, and our guards were quickly outnumbered.
“Sloane,” I asked, my voice weak with worry, “is this everyone you brought?”
Her face was grim. She squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry. Dad’s on his way with the main team. Let’s see who has the nerve to touch Sloane Sterling’s brother.”
Caleb was growing anxious as he watched his men get systematically dismantled. He shot us a venomous look and pulled out his phone. “You just wait! I’m calling my wife to come and destroy you!”
He put the call on speaker, and as soon as it connected, he started wailing. “Honey! This woman, some psycho named Sloane Sterling, is attacking me! She says I hurt her brother and she’s going to kill me! You have to come, now!”
The voice on the other end, Ava’s voice, was suddenly sharp with alarm. “Sloane? Which Sloane?… Where the hell are you?! Don’t you move a muscle!”
Even after seven years, I would know that voice anywhere. And I could hear the tremor of pure panic in every syllable.
Good, I thought. Let her come.
Caleb hung up, a triumphant, piercing laugh echoing in the room. “Hah! My wife is on her way to end you! She said she doesn’t know any Sloane! She’ll just pay for the damages after you’re dead!” He pointed at his remaining men. “Listen up! A million dollars to whoever takes these two out first!”
Greed lit up their eyes. One of them snatched a fruit knife from a nearby refreshment tray and lunged at us.
“Leo, close your eyes!”
Sloane spun around, shielding me with her body. I felt a warm, strong hand cover my face.
A choked gasp from Sloane. The coppery scent of fresh blood filled the air.
A terrible premonition seized me. I clawed at her hand, my voice cracking. “Sloane! What happened? Are you okay?”
When I pulled her hand away, my vision cleared to the sight of a deep, grotesque gash on her forearm, blood dripping onto the pristine floor. Then came a brutal kick, and she collapsed on top of me with a thud.
She coughed, a spray of red misting the air.
“Sloane!” I screamed, my heart shattering. I was untouched, but my sister’s white dress was rapidly turning crimson.
Hate, pure and undiluted, consumed me.
My face, streaked with blood and tears, twisted into a mask of rage. I scrambled for the heavy, cast-iron tailor’s shears on a nearby worktable and launched myself at Caleb’s smug face.
Shhhnk.
The blades sank deep into his abdomen.
“Aaaargh!” he shrieked. I held onto the handles, twisting them savagely in his flesh.
“You piece of trash! You dare to touch me!” He gripped the shears, kicked me away, and roared in fury.
I landed hard on the floor, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth.
Caleb, now completely unhinged, screamed at his men, “Kill him! Kill him now!”
They swarmed me. The next thing I saw was a wooden chair swinging down toward my head.
“Don’t you touch my brother!” a hoarse voice cried out.
Through my horrified, widening eyes, I saw Sloane stumble to her feet and throw herself in front of me. The chair crashed down on her head with a sickening crack.
“SLOANE!”
Her body went limp, falling heavily against mine. She twitched once, twice, and then was still.
I went insane, scrambling to lift her, but two of the thugs pinned me to the floor, grinding my face into the cold marble. Pinned and helpless, I thrashed and screamed, my cries choked with blood and tears.
Caleb just smiled. He brought the pointed heel of his designer shoe down on my fingers, grinding it slowly.
“Is this too much for you?”
Pain exploded through my hand. I curled into a ball, my body trembling, cold sweat drenching my skin. My vision began to fade, the world dissolving into the sound of Caleb’s maniacal laughter.
“Don’t you worry,” he cooed. “I have one more special gift for both of you.”
A final blow landed, and the world went black.
When I came to, we were in a glass-walled walk-in freezer. The skin touching the metal floor burned with a piercing cold. I was shivering violently. Sloane’s face was already tinged with blue, a delicate frost forming on her eyelashes.
I rubbed my hands together, trying to generate some warmth, and pressed them to her cheek. My tears fell, hot against her icy skin.
“Sloane, stay with me. Don’t fall asleep. Dad’s coming, he’s almost here. Please, just hold on…”
I felt her breathing grow shallow, and my heart sank into a black pit of despair. I looked out at Caleb, my eyes so red they felt like they were bleeding.
“Caleb! If my sister dies, I will kill you with my bare hands!”
He just chuckled, pulling his cashmere coat tighter as he stepped into the freezer. “You talk way too much.”
He shoved a rag into my mouth, then kicked me hard in the chest. “Feeling a little hot-headed? Let’s cool you off.”
With that, he kicked over a large bucket of water. The icy liquid spread quickly beneath me, and in the sub-zero temperature of the freezer, it began to turn to ice, freezing my tattered clothes and bleeding skin to the floor.
The cold was a physical thing, a deep, gnawing pain that shot straight to my bones.
“So? How do you like my gift?” Caleb sneered, admiring his handiwork before turning and leaving us to freeze.
I looked at Sloane’s still form, a wave of crushing regret washing over me. I hated myself for being too weak to just get up and kill him.
And then, a vibration.
My phone, somehow still in my pocket, was ringing. My pupils contracted. The caller ID read: Ava.
Ignoring the searing pain of tearing my own skin, I dragged my body across the icy floor until I could reach the phone and answer it.
“Leo! Where are you?” Ava’s voice was frantic. “I can explain about Caleb later! Just let him go! Or else…” She hesitated. “Or else I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”
The blood-tinged ice steamed faintly beneath me. My heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vise. My face contorted with a mixture of insane hatred and utter despair.
Hate me?
From the day we made our relationship official, Sloane had been secretly helping me build Ava up so that my father would finally accept her. In just three years, Sloane’s guidance had turned Monroe Industries into a market leader. And this was how she repaid us? By taking my money to support her secret husband, and then letting him do this to us?
That monster. It was Caleb trying to kill us.
The rag in my mouth turned my furious screams into muffled sobs.
Just then, Caleb returned. Hearing Ava’s voice on the phone, he froze, then snatched it from my hand.
“Hello? Honey? Why are you calling him?”
Ava, hearing only silence from my end, sounded panicked. “Where’s Leo?”
“So his name really is Leo,” Caleb said dismissively. “I’m just teaching this little homewrecker a lesson. Showing him that you don’t mess with the Monroe family.”
There was a dead silence from the other end. Then, Ava’s furious scream tore through the speaker, so loud it was distorted.
“CALEB! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO LEO? HE’S LEO STERLING!”
A pause, filled with her ragged breathing.
“YOU’RE TRYING TO GET ME KILLED!”
Clatter.
Caleb’s body went rigid. The phone slipped from his grasp and hit the floor. His eyes were wide with a dawning, horrified disbelief.
After a few seconds of stunned silence, his head snapped around to look at me.
His expression was one of pure terror. He ripped the gag from my mouth. “Are you… are you really Leo Sterling?” he stammered, his voice an octave higher than before.
Blood trickled from the corner of my mouth. I gave him a weak, cold smile. “Starting to believe me? Now go get my sister to a…”
SMACK.
His open palm connected with my cheek. “You shut your mouth! I’m Ava’s husband! What are you?!” His terror was morphing back into a desperate, defensive rage. “So what if you’re Leo Sterling? That doesn’t change the fact that you’re the other man!”
He fumbled for his own phone, unlocked it, and shoved the screen in my face.
It was a photo of a marriage certificate. Ava Monroe and Caleb Vance. And when my eyes focused on the date, a loud ringing started in my ears.
I started to laugh. A wild, unhinged sound.
I finally understood why, starting five years ago, Ava was always so “busy with work.”
She had married Caleb then.
And I, like a fool, had felt sorry for her, begging Sloane to send some of her best people to help ease her workload. All those nights she claimed to be pulling all-nighters at the office, she was with him.
Of our seven-year relationship, Caleb had been a part of five.
It turned out I really was the homewrecker he’d called me.
I laughed until tears streamed down my face, my body convulsing so hard I coughed up a mouthful of dark, clotted blood.
“My wife loves me too much to ever yell at me like that! It was you, wasn’t it? You seduced her!” Caleb grabbed me by the throat, his face a mask of frantic denial. “Talk! Say something!”
I sank my teeth into his wrist. The coppery taste of his blood filled my mouth, so sickening I wanted to vomit. I spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the floor and looked at him with pure contempt.
He didn't even flinch, his eyes wild with a crazed idea.
“You should just die! If you’re dead, then Ava will be all mine again!”
He scrambled out of the freezer. When he returned, he was carrying a large canister. He tipped it over, and a cold, pungent liquid splashed all over me.
The acrid smell hit me instantly.
Gasoline.
He was going to burn me alive.
Primal survival instincts kicked in. I started dragging Sloane’s unconscious body toward the door, but it was too late.
He flicked a lighter and tossed it onto my soaked clothes.
The world erupted in flames.
The smell of burning flesh filled the small space. I rolled on the ground, screaming in agony, but the fire clung to me, feeding on the gasoline. The pain was beyond anything I had ever imagined.
Perhaps my screams were loud enough to pierce through her unconsciousness, because Sloane’s eyes slowly fluttered open.
“Leo!”
Her eyes widened in horror. A surge of desperate, adrenaline-fueled strength allowed her to break the thin ropes binding her wrists. She stumbled towards me, her movements clumsy.
Through the searing pain, I shook my head, my voice a shredded wreck. “No! Don’t save me! Sloane, you’ll die too! Stay back!”
But she ignored me, slapping at the flames on my body with her bare hands. “Leo, I’m not going to let anything happen to you!” she choked out, trying to comfort me even then.
The moment her hands touched the fire, her skin blackened and peeled back, revealing raw, pink flesh underneath. Her face contorted in pain, a sight that shattered what was left of my heart. Tears welled in my eyes, only to be instantly evaporated by the heat.
Sloane didn’t stop, forcing a pained smile onto her face. “Don’t cry, Leo. It doesn’t hurt.”
I had never seen my sister, always so poised and powerful, look so broken. And it was all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, she would never be in this position.
Regret was a poison, eating me alive.
I pounded my fists against my chest, glaring at Caleb with all the hatred in my soul. It was all my fault! I had ruined everything because I was blind enough to fall for a monster like Ava!
“Caleb!” I roared through the flames. “When my father gets here, you are a dead man!”
He just laughed, his face a terrifying rictus of glee. He began splashing the rest of the gasoline all around the glass-walled freezer, then played with the lighter in his hand. “Still talking tough? I’m about to send you two on a little trip to hell together!”
Just as the flames were about to consume us completely, two roars echoed through the building, arriving at the exact same time.
“STOP!” It was Ava, her face as white as a sheet.
And another, deeper voice, laced with absolute authority and earth-shattering fury.
“Who dares to touch my children?”
My father, Arthur Sterling, flanked by a small army of his elite security team, strode into the room. The moment his eyes fell on Sloane and me, his expression transformed into something apocalyptic.
Ava’s legs gave out, and she collapsed to her knees. Caleb just stood there, frozen, his face a perfect picture of idiocy.
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