AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I agreed to keep our time together private, and a part of me had even thought it was almost… sexy. It seemed fun, exciting. I even managed to convince myself that our clandestine rendezvous wereromantic.
And when I became aware that there were others he was sleeping with, he insisted it meant nothing, that it wasmethat he cared about. It wasmethat he came back to repeatedly. He’d made promises that when he was done with his studies and had graduated we’d get to be together, officially.
Whenever I would get frustrated, which happened increasingly over the two years we were secretly together, he would wrap me in his arms, kiss me sweetly and tell me all about how wonderful our life would be together, if only I could just give him time to complete his degree. I just needed to give him time. That I wasitfor him. He’d never told me he loved me, but that had been enough. I crumpled like soggy paper every single time.
It was just the contradiction of him. The way he could be so sweet and caring, promising me the world. He was the first person to ever pay me attention, and I’d revelled in it. I’d never seen how shallow it was. How fickle. It was never outright cruelty, just small things I hadn’t seen, like sand in an hourglass until it had all built up.
If I’d ordered us dinner to be delivered, the restaurant or meal was never correct. The clothes I wore were neverquiteupto standard. Despite being, well,me, quite literally a genius, he would find the need to correct what I said or how I did things.
Tiny little things, one by one, until he eroded my confidence. I was second guessing myself at every turn, even my academic studies, questioning whether or not Darius would agree, or Darius would approve.
Despite mygift,I found myself checking in with Darius before pursuing an idea. Sometimes sitting in increasing anxiety, my power growing and pulsing inside like a volcano until he gave his approval.
I’d even started using my money to pay for things for him. Again, it had started out small, he ordered us dinner and had casually mentioned that it left him short of funds for the month. Darius had come from an upper-middle class family, and his parents were still supporting his studies at University.
Even without my extravagant bank account just sitting there, I had very few living expenses with my University housing and my rooms back with my parents, so I’d obviously been more than happy to pay for dinner.
But that dinner had led to the next. And then I was buying our meals every time. It hadn’t really made a dent in my finances, and I’d enjoyed spoiling him with the fancy meals he’d started requesting.
But then he’d come to me saying that his parents were experiencing financial hardships and reduced his monthly allowance, and he was short for his books that semester. So, I paid for them. Then some new clothes and the latest fancy gadgets he simply had to have. That was the beginning of the slippery slope of me becoming his silent benefactor and secret lover.
None of it had bothered me.
Until it had.
I’d been so wrapped up in him, the little crumbs of love and affection he dropped for me, that I hadn’t seen the forest for the trees.
It all blew up in the weeks leading up to my capture by Marieth. I’d probably already been under her thrall, since the first letters between us had been exchanged. Maybe that was what broke the intense hold he had over me? Maybe that was what had ignited the sudden urge for independence from the life that had me so constrained.
Or maybe it was because he gotengaged.
Yes, engaged.
To a woman.
A woman I grew up with, Mathilde Vernilart. She was the daughter of one of my father’s cronies and an heiress to an eye-watering fortune. Not as much as mine, but what she lacked in grotesque, historical money hoarding, she made up for by being a truly horrible being.
We had been running in the same social circles our whole lives, and she never missed an opportunity to go out of her way to torment me. Once she finally made her way tomyUniversity, she’d had to control her natural impulse to be truly heinous—I was faculty after all. But she’d never quite managed to hide her disdainful loathing of me. And then she took the one good thing I’d had.
I’d been in the University’s cafeteria when I found out. He was there with a group of his friends, chatting over their lunch. I’d studiously tried to avoid looking at him, but his friends were being loud, shouting about something I hadn’t really been able to hear. Thenshesauntered into the cafeteria with her best friends, all loud and excessively beautiful just like her.
Darius caught Mathilde as she ran and leapt into his waiting arms, swinging her about. She squealed with glee, her waist length jet black hair fanning around her like a cape. Then she’dflashed the ring to everybody suddenly crowded around the still lovingly embraced couple.
I’d seen it glinting in the sunlight from across the cafeteria. It felt like the world underneath me had simply… disappeared. My stomach dropped to somewhere near the basement, and my knees felt weak, like the weight of gravity was suddenly impossible to bear.
The people in the line around me tried to talk to me, asking if I was okay, but the world had turned to static, the truth of Darius’s betrayal, of who he was and what I was to him, had turned me inside out. I fled the cafeteria to the toilets where I vomited up the contents of my stomach until I’d almost passed out.
I called and texted Darius repeatedly, taking the afternoon from my work to lock myself in my office to stare at my phone until he responded.
It took himtwo days.
He’d seen me in the cafeteria, and it had takentwo daysto respond. He finally agreed to meet me at my apartment, where I’d angrily confronted him.
It was then that he’d spat the truth at me. That what was between us wasn’t real. That he’d been biding his time until he could secure something greater for his future. I was a back-up plan. A last resort. A means to an end. A place to get off in the meantime. An idiot with a large bank account he was willing to sponge off of while he set his social climbing sights higher.
I’d been absolutely gutted by his tirade, staggering to collapse on the hard, ugly couch supplied by University faculty housing, crying loud, heart-wrenching sobs.
Darius at least had the good grace to look mildly shocked by his outburst. I still don’t think he meant to unleash so much honesty on me—it had just spewed forth like he was compelled to do it. He’d stammered stupidly for a moment before fleeing my apartment.
