I Am the Game

For our third wedding anniversary, my husband Dominic gave me an unforgettable gift: an admission letter to The Rosewood Institute. It was a place notorious among the citys elite, a glorified black site where high society sent disobedient women to be broken and tamed.

You have deeply disappointed me, Vivienne, Dominic said, pinching my chin, his eyes twisted with disgust. "For three years youve tried to copy Audrey, yet you still lack even a fraction of her grace."

Audrey was his soft, gentle ideal. I was the untamed one he was determined to break. He was sending me away to learn how to be a good girl.

"Go and be rehabilitated. Once you learn to act like her, I might consider bringing you back."

Two large bodyguards dragged me away in the dark. The instructors were brutal, using electric shocks, ice water cages, and solitary confinement to grind down my pride and mold me into a docile substitute.

Two weeks later, Dominic came to inspect my progress. I was covered in deep bruises, my eyes hollow. He looked thrilled.

"Have you learned your mistakes? Are you a good girl now?"

I looked at his handsome face and let out a dry, rasping laugh, tears streaming down my dirty cheeks.

"Dominic, you really do look just like him."

He froze, his smug smile faltering.

I tilted my head, locking eyes with him.

"Who do you think you are? You're nothing but a cheap stand-in I bought to replace Rowan."

1

For our third wedding anniversary, my husband Dominic gave me an unforgettable gift.

An admission letter to The Rosewood Institute.

The place was notorious among the city's elite. It was a glorified black site, a dumping ground used by high society to break and domesticate disobedient women.

"You have profoundly disappointed me, Vivienne."

Dominic pinched my chin between two fingers, applying enough pressure to bruise the bone. His face, so strikingly familiar to the man I actually loved, was twisted with undisguised disgust.

"You've been imitating Audrey for three years, and you haven't managed to learn a single ounce of her gentle grace."

He sneered, his eyes raking over me. "Look at yourself. You don't possess a shred of elegance. You act like an absolute lunatic."

His precious first love, Audrey, was currently tucked against his side.

She was wearing a custom haute couture gown I had ordered just last month. Her face was a perfect mask of delicate concern and manufactured pity.

"Dominic, please don't be so harsh with Vivienne. She's just going through a rough patch."

She turned her big, doe-like eyes to me, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness.

"Please don't be mad at him, Vivienne. He's doing this for your own good. The instructors at Rosewood are highly professional. Once they teach you proper etiquette, he'll bring you right back home."

"Exactly," Dominic agreed. The contempt in his voice felt like a serrated knife. "Go there and get thoroughly rehabilitated. Once you've learned to be as sweet and obedient as Audrey, I might consider letting you back into my house."

I watched the two of them perform their little duet. It felt like watching a terribly written soap opera.

Sweet and obedient?

When he pulled me out of the abyss three years ago, he was drawn to my wild, untamable nature. He liked me because my absolute refusal to bow to anyone reminded him of my dead fianc.

And now, he wanted to personally grind those sharp edges into dust.

"I'm not going."

I spat the words out, syllable by syllable.

A flash of triumphant glee sparked in Audrey's eyes, but she instantly buried it under a watery, trembling pout.

"Vivienne, how can you be so incredibly selfish? Dominic has poured so much time and energy into you. Can't you just be considerate for once?"

"Considerate?" I let out a dry, barking laugh. "You want me to be considerate of the fact that he turned our wedding anniversary into a farewell party for a concentration camp?"

"Vivienne!"

Dominic roared, his patience entirely exhausted.

"It seems you really won't shed a tear until you see the coffin."

He snapped his fingers. Two massive bodyguards dressed in black stepped out of the shadows, grabbing me roughly by both arms.

"Dominic, no!" Audrey made a pathetic, half-hearted gesture to stop them. "She's going to get hurt!"

Dominic pulled her securely into his chest. His movements were sickeningly gentle, a stark contrast to the violence he was inflicting on me.

"Audrey, you are simply too kindhearted. You can't show mercy to a woman who doesn't know her place."

He looked at me like I was a broken appliance waiting for the scrapyard.

"Take her inside. Tell the Headmistress to use the strictest methods available. I want her completely stripped down and rebuilt."

I didn't waste my energy struggling.

Because I knew something he didn't. The moment he made the decision to lock me in that hellhole, our three-year game of playing pretend was officially over.

It was time for the hunter and the prey to switch places.

The heavy iron gates of The Rosewood Institute slammed shut behind me, completely cutting off the afternoon sun.

Waiting for me in the dim corridor was a middle-aged woman with a face carved from stone. She was the senior disciplinarian. Everyone just called her The Matron.

"Number 037. Welcome to your rebirth."

In this place, names did not exist. You were nothing but a barcode.

My rehabilitation started the very second my boots touched the floor.

Lesson one. Walking.

A rigid wooden crossboard was strapped tightly against my spine. The side pressing into my skin was lined with sharp, rusted tacks. If I slouched even a fraction of an inch, the metal bit deep into my flesh.

The Matron's voice hovered right by my ear.

"Rule number one. A lady's spine is always perfectly straight."

My heel caught on the uneven floorboards and I stumbled.

A sharp, agonizing sting ripped across my shoulder blades as the tacks dug in.

Lesson two. Dining.

A bowl of gray, unidentifiable sludge was tossed onto the concrete floor. Right next to it sat a rusted metal dog bowl.

"Rule number two. A lady's appetite is always under absolute control."

The Matron tapped the toe of her sensible leather shoe against the dog bowl.

"Eat it from the floor. Or starve."

I hadn't eaten a single thing in three days. My stomach was a twisting knot of pure acid, but I just knelt there, locking eyes with her in dead silence.

My defiance seemed to flick a switch in her brain.

"It appears you need a session in the Isolation Tank to reflect on your attitude."

The Isolation Tank was a pitch-black, freezing water cell barely the size of a closet.

The filthy, ice-cold water reached right up to my collarbones. Unknown things brushed against my legs in the darkness, biting at my raw skin.

I was locked in that freezing void for twelve straight hours.

At first, the violent shivering tore my muscles apart. By the end, there was nothing but a cold, heavy numbness.

They wanted to grind down my pride. They wanted to shatter my psychology until I was nothing but an empty, obedient puppet.

Sensory deprivation, starvation, calculated humiliation.

The kind of psychological torture you only ever read about in classified military dossiers became my daily routine.

Fifteen days.

I honestly don't know how I survived it.

When they finally dragged me out of solitary confinement to prepare for Dominic's grand inspection, I caught a glimpse of myself in a cracked mirror. My skin was sallow, my cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, and my body was painted in a tapestry of deep purple bruises. I barely recognized the ghost staring back at me.

The Matron looked at my hollow eyes and nodded in deep satisfaction.

"Number 037, remember your place in the world. You are nothing but a shadow of Miss Audrey. A cheap replacement. Your only value on this earth is to mirror her perfection."

She grabbed my chin. "When Mr. Dominic arrives, do you know exactly how to behave?"

I forced the corners of my cracked lips upward into a stiff, dead smile.

"I know."

I was going to give him exactly what he came to see.

And then I was going to make him pay the most catastrophic price imaginable for his blinding arrogance.

When Dominic walked into the room, I was on my hands and knees, scrubbing the filthy floorboards with a ragged piece of cloth.

He stood directly in front of me, looking down from his ivory tower.

He was wearing a bespoke charcoal suit, his Italian leather oxfords polished to a mirror shine. He looked utterly alien standing in this dungeon of filth and despair.

I hadn't seen him in two weeks. He looked a little thinner, a faint trace of exhaustion resting between his eyebrows.

But the second he saw me kneeling at his feet like a broken dog, that exhaustion melted into a sickening wave of pure euphoria.

"Have you finally realized your mistakes?"

His voice was dripping with the fake mercy of a benevolent god.

"Have you learned how to be a good girl?"

I stopped scrubbing. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I raised my head.

I looked at his face. That perfectly structured face I had spent three years and millions of dollars polishing into the masterpiece it was today.

And then, I smiled.

I smiled until tears spilled over my eyelashes. I smiled until my bruised ribs shook.

"Dominic."

My voice was a dry, rasping whisper, yet it rang through the silent room with terrifying clarity.

"You really do look just like him."

Dominic's eyebrows pulled together. He completely missed the context of my words.

"What kind of lunatic nonsense are you talking about?"

"Nonsense?" I pressed my raw palms against the wet floor and pushed myself up, swaying slightly before locking my knees. I took a slow, deliberate step toward him.

I was dressed in filthy rags. I was covered in wounds. Yet the sheer, suffocating gravity rolling off my body forced him to take an involuntary step backward.

I leaned in, my lips hovering mere inches from his ear, and whispered.

"Who exactly do you think you are?"

"Dominic, you are nothing but a prop. A fake, pathetic counterfeit I bought to stand in for Rowan."

Boom.

I watched the blood drain from his face in a single, violent rush.

His untouchable composure, his arrogant control, completely vaporized in the span of a heartbeat.

"What... what did you just say?"

I ignored his stuttering shock, letting my mind drift back to the beginning.

Three years ago, I found him bleeding out in a filthy alleyway.

He had been beaten half to death by loan sharks, curled up next to a dumpster like a stray mutt.

And I chose him. Right there on the spot.

Not because he had some hidden genius. Not because he was special.

I chose him because when he turned his bruised face to drink from a dirty puddle, the stubborn line of his jaw looked exactly like my Rowan.

I dragged him out of the gutter. I paid off his debts. I funneled endless resources and capital into his hands, bought him a company, and crowned him as the glittering CEO everyone worshiped today.

I dressed him in Rowan's favorite suits. I made him wear Rowan's cologne. I bought him Rowan's dream sports car.

I practically held his hand in the boardroom, teaching him how to be as ruthless as Rowan, how to smile over a glass of whiskey with Rowan's exact effortless charm.

He was a fast learner. And a greedy one.

He genuinely believed I was just a desperate, lovesick woman who worshipped the ground he walked on. He thought he was the shining sun of my universe.

It was hilariously pathetic.

He was just a tool I used to look at a dead man's ghost.

He was a low-budget knockoff.

"Impossible!"

Dominic snapped out of his shock, letting out a raw, cornered roar.

"Vivienne, you have lost your damn mind! You're just spinning these psychotic lies to get back at me!"

He reached out, trying to grab my collarbone, but I casually stepped out of his reach.

"Lies?"

I tilted my head, my smile turning sharp and vicious.

"Then tell me, Dominic. Three years ago, who dragged your bleeding carcass away from the cartel's debt collectors?"

"Who handed you your first ten million in startup capital when your own family kicked you out onto the street with absolutely nothing?"

"And who fed you every corporate playbook, destroyed your rivals, and physically placed you on that CEO throne?"

With every question I fired at him, his face grew a shade paler.

Those were the darkest, most humiliating secrets of his past. The dirty stains he could never wash off his tailored suits.

He always convinced himself I did all of that because I was blinded by devotion.

"You did it because you loved me!" he barked, desperately trying to glue his shattered ego back together.

"Love?"

The word tasted like ash in my mouth.

"Dominic, do you honestly think you're worthy of that word?"

"I was just feeding a stray dog. A dog that happened to share a passing resemblance to someone I actually cared about."

"But now, the dog has forgotten its place and is trying to bite the hand that holds the leash."

My words were dipped in venom, slicing his fragile masculinity into ribbons.

"Shut your mouth!"

He completely lost his mind, raising his hand to strike me across the face.

But his wrist was caught mid-air.

Not by me. By Audrey, who had just hurried into the room.

She was dressed immaculately, as always. The second she saw the tension, she threw herself against Dominic's chest, her eyes brimming with fresh tears.

"Dominic, stop! Please calm down! Can't you see her mind is completely broken from the stress? Don't sink to her level!"

She turned to me, playing the heartbroken saint perfectly.

"Vivienne, how could you say such vile things? Dominic has given you the world, and you repay him with these toxic delusions?"

"Look at that. The dog got backed into a corner and called its little lapdog for backup."

I completely ignored Audrey's theatrical performance. My eyes stayed dead locked on Dominic.

I reached into the pocket of my ragged uniform and pulled out the crumpled admission letter to The Rosewood Institute.

While Dominic and Audrey stared at me in absolute bewilderment, I slowly, methodically tore the heavy parchment into tiny, jagged pieces.

"Dominic, let me make this official."

"Our little game of dress-up is over."

I reached into the hidden lining of my bra and pulled out a microscopic burner phone I had smuggled in on day one. Right in front of his face, I dialed a number.

The line connected almost instantly.

"Uncle Robert."

My voice shed the hoarse weakness of a victim and returned to its natural, commanding absolute zero.

"It's time to put the stray down."

"Freeze every single asset under Dominic's name. Liquidate his accounts and forcefully recall all executive shares of Zenith Corporation."

"You have exactly thirty minutes."

"Drag him out of the clouds and throw him right back into the filthy sewer where I found him."