HIS FATHER'S WIFE

I woke up gasping.

My fingers clawed at my chest, digging into the skin, searching for the bullet hole that wasn’t there.

I expected blood. I expected the cold seep of death. But there were no stains on my white dress shirt. No pain lanced through me. Just... nothing.

“Fucking hell,” I croaked, sitting up in bed.

The room was familiar but somehow alien—a museum exhibit of my own past. The posters of bands I hadn’t listened to in a decade. The clutter on the desk.

I checked the date on my phone: October 14th, 2014.

Ten years ago today.

Ten fucking years.

The panic hit like a tidal wave. I was drowning in memories of that fateful night—Marcus’s bullet shredding through flesh and bone, his cruel laughter echoing in the empty warehouse as the life bled out of me.

But then, just as quickly as it came, the terror faded. The hyperventilating stopped. The fear gave way to an ice-cold clarity.

I knew what this was.

This wasn’t a dream. This was my shot at redemption.

“I’m a Cleaner,” I muttered, rolling out of bed. The words felt right on my tongue, heavy and metallic, like the name of an old friend.

I wasn’t the twenty-two-year-old stepson anymore. I was the man who had spent the last decade burying bodies and fixing mistakes for the city’s elite. And now, I had the biggest mess of all to clean up.

The first step was checking my bank account.

I logged in. $250,000.

A nice start for someone with no ties to this era. In my past life, I blew this money trying to buy Marcus’s love. In this life, I was going to use it to buy his grave.

“I’ll need a bit of leverage,” I murmured, cracking open my old laptop. The fan whirred to life, struggling against the dust.

I wasn’t in the tech industry anymore, but I could still play the game. I knew exactly what was happening at 9:30 AM this morning. AetherCorp. The tech giant was about to implode due to an embezzlement scandal that wouldn’t hit the news wires for another hour.

I opened a trading terminal. I didn’t hesitate. I leveraged the entire account.

A few clicks later, and AetherCorp was doomed, along with every other company in its sphere. The stocks would plummet as soon as I hit enter.

Short Position Confirmed.

Now came the easy part: monitoring Marcus’s texts.

My fingers flew across the keys. I needed eyes inside the house. I coded a simple script to install on his phone via the Wi-Fi—a “Spider,” as I called it. It would clone every text, every call, every deleted photo directly to my server.

Done.

I stood up and walked to the bathroom. The shower felt like heaven. The scalding hot water sluiced away ten years of grime and phantom pain, leaving me renewed and ready for what was next.

When I stepped out and wiped the mirror, I stopped.

My reflection was different now. Harder. Deadlier. The softness of youth was there in the skin, but the eyes... the eyes were ancient.

I dressed in a sharp black button-down, rolling the sleeves up to my elbows. I moved with the heavy, dangerous grace of a killer as I descended the stairs to the breakfast room.

The smell of burnt toast and silence hung in the air.

Marcus was there, sitting at the head of the table, reading a newspaper. He was ignoring his wife like the piece of furniture he believed her to be.

And then I saw her.

Elena.

She looked exhausted and neglected. Her blonde hair was pinned back loosely, and she wore a silk robe that clung to her frame. Her eyes were downcast, staring at an empty plate, but she glanced up when she heard me approach.

The air in the room shifted. It became heavier. Charged.

“Good morning,” I said, holding out my hand in greeting. “You must be Elena.”

I knew who she was. I knew everything about her. But I needed to play the game.

Her eyes widened slightly at my forwardness. She wasn’t used to being seen, let alone touched. She hesitated, then took my hand. Her skin was soft, warm, and trembling slightly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Julian.”

There was a slight waver in her voice that told me everything I needed to know about the state of their marriage. She was starving for attention.

I didn’t let go of her hand immediately. I held it for a second too long, letting my thumb graze her knuckle. She flushed, pulling back gently.

I flashed Marcus a polite, wolfish smile. “You too. Sorry I’m late down here—had some business to take care of.”

Marcus didn’t even look up from his paper. “No problem,” he said dismissively. “Just be ready by noon, okay? We have the gala.”

“Of course.”

Elena cleared her throat, the tension radiating off her in waves. She stood up, smoothing her robe. “Well then... I suppose we should get started on breakfast. The maid is ill today.”

She moved toward the stove, her movements stiff and self-conscious. She reached for a pan but paused when she noticed me still standing there, watching her.

I walked around the island. I stepped into her space.

“You don’t need to help,” I told her softly. My voice was low, a rumble meant only for her. “We can do it together if you want.”

Her eyes lit up at the offer. It was such a small thing, but to her, it was water in a desert.

“Are you sure?” she asked, breathless.

“Absolutely,” I said, leaning in until I could smell her perfume—jasmine and rain. “It’ll be fun.”

She smiled, a genuine, fragile thing, and I felt an unfamiliar warmth spreading through my chest.

Maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.

The breakfast room was filled with a tense silence as we began cooking together. I chopped vegetables with precision; she whisked eggs. It was domestic, intimate, and completely forbidden.

Marcus glanced at us occasionally, frowning as if trying to decipher a language he didn’t speak, but he didn’t say anything. He was too arrogant to see the threat standing in his own kitchen.

I caught Elena’s eye across the table as I handed her the salt.

I held her gaze for just a moment too long. Intense. Possessive.

She looked away first, blushing slightly, a dark stain of red creeping up her neck.

Bzzzt.

My phone vibrated in my pocket.

I checked it discreetly. AetherCorp had crashed. My account balance had just jumped from $250,000 to $5.2 Million.

I looked at Marcus, oblivious and weak. Then I looked at Elena, flushed and alive.

This could be interesting...