Chapter 4

The weeks following the “maintenance inspection” were a strange dream. Our apartment, once a sanctuary from the world, had become the stage for our own private, depraved theater. The memory of what had happened in our bedroom—the sounds I had heard, the story she had told—was a ghost that haunted every room, a constant, thrilling presence. Our sex life was no longer just loving; it was ravenous. Every night was an exploration, a reenactment. I became addicted to the way Chloe’s eyes would darken when I’d whisper, “Tell me again what his fingers felt like,” her body arching into mine as she fed me the humiliating details that fueled my desire.

We had found a dangerous, intoxicating equilibrium. We were partners in this shared transgression.

The calm, of course, couldn’t last. The knock on the door, when it came, felt less like a surprise and more like an inevitability. It was Henderson. He didn’t even bother with a pretext this time. He just stood there in the hallway, a smug look on his face, and handed me a crisp, white envelope.

My hands felt numb as I opened it. The words were cold, formal, and utterly devastating. Eviction Notice. The reason was a transparent lie, something about “unapproved commercial activity” from my freelance work. It was a joke. A cruel, pathetic power play from a man who had already taken so much.

I felt the floor drop out from under me. All of it—the degradation, the shared secrets, the white-hot passion—it had all been a game to him, and this was his checkmate. He was going to take our home away.

I spent the rest of the day in a fog of impotent rage, the notice sitting on our kitchen table like a tombstone. When Chloe came home, she took one look at my face, then at the letter. She read it without a word, her expression unreadable. I expected her to crumble, to finally unleash the anger and fear that had to be churning inside her.

But she just folded the letter neatly and placed it on the counter.

“I’ll handle it,” she said, her voice a blade of ice.

Before I could even process what she meant, she was gone, her footsteps light and determined as she headed upstairs. I was left alone in the sudden, crushing silence of our apartment, a prisoner waiting for his sentence. The ten minutes she was gone felt like a decade. I paced the floor, my mind a chaotic slideshow of horrific possibilities. I pictured her pleading with him, begging. I pictured his triumphant, leering face as he lorded his power over her.

When she returned, she walked to the center of the room and stood before me. Her face was pale, but her eyes ... her eyes were on fire.

“He was waiting for me,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of emotion. “He knew I’d come.”

She told me he had laughed when she mentioned the notice. He’d told her it was just a formality, a piece of paper that could easily disappear. For a price.

“He has new terms, Mark,” she said, and her gaze pinned me in place. The world seemed to narrow to the space between us, the air growing thick and heavy.

“He wants us to have dinner with him,” she said, letting the absurd words hang in the air. “Friday night. In his apartment. A ‘neighborly meal,’ he called it.”

I stared at her, my mind unable to process the sheer audacity of it. Dinner? With him?

She took a step closer, her voice dropping to a low, intimate whisper that was meant only for me, a secret shared between conspirators. “And after dinner ... he said I’m the dessert.”

A wave of nausea and white-hot, electric lust crashed over me in the same instant. My stomach churned, but my cock, that wretched, honest part of me, gave a hard, painful throb. This was it. The absolute, unfiltered, most humiliating expression of the fantasy. It wasn’t just a secret I was watching from the shadows anymore. He was inviting me, commanding me, to the main event.

Chloe’s eyes never left mine. She saw everything. She saw the horror, the shame, and the dark, undeniable hunger that was rising in me.

“And you, Mark,” she whispered, her voice a silken thread pulling me deeper into the abyss. “He wants you to be there. He wants you to sit in his armchair and watch the whole thing. He wants to see your face while he does it.”

I couldn’t breathe. The room was spinning. This was a nightmare. This was a dream come true. He wanted to break me, to utterly and completely humiliate me, to make me a spectator at my own execution.

I looked at Chloe, at her beautiful, resolute face. She wasn’t asking for my permission. She was waiting for my answer, for my acknowledgment that we were in this together, all the way to the bitter, thrilling end.

I couldn’t speak. The words were trapped in my throat, choked by a toxic mix of rage and desire. All I could do was give a single, sharp, almost imperceptible nod.

The deal was made. The invitation accepted. And I knew, with a terrifying, soul-shaking certainty, that I was going to watch.

The walk up the single flight of stairs to Henderson’s apartment felt like an ascent to the gallows. Chloe’s hand was a cool, steady anchor in my sweaty palm, the only thing keeping me grounded as my mind spiraled. She was a vision in the dim hallway light, the black silk of her dress a slash of elegant darkness against the building’s grimy, water-stained walls. She was armor-plated with a quiet, terrifying resolve. I was just a wreck.

He opened the door before we even knocked, as if he’d been standing there, waiting, listening for our footsteps. The smell hit me first—a thick, cloying miasma of stale cigarette smoke, old grease, and the sickly-sweet scent of cheap plug-in air freshener. It was the smell of decay.

“Right on time,” he grunted, his eyes immediately sliding past me to fix on Chloe. He was wearing a faded, mustard-yellow polo shirt that was at least one size too small, the fabric straining across the soft swell of his belly. A fresh stain, dark and oily, marred the front. “Come on in. Don’t be shy.”

He ushered us into his small, cluttered living room. The furniture was a collection of worn-out, mismatched pieces, the kind you see left on the curb for trash pickup. A massive, old-fashioned television blared a mindless game show, casting a flickering, sickly yellow light over everything. This was his lair. The throne room of the troll.

“Made us some dinner,” he announced proudly, gesturing toward the small, wobbly dining table where three greasy-looking cartons of Chinese takeout sat on paper plates. It was the most pathetic, insulting gesture I could imagine, and it was perfect.

We sat. I felt like a prisoner being led to his last meal. The entire dinner was a slow, agonizing exercise in psychological torture, and I was his sole target.

“So, Mark,” he began, shoveling a heap of greasy lo mein into his mouth. “Still doing that ... writing thing? Your little hobby?”

“It’s my career, Henderson,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Right, right. Your ‘career’,” he chuckled, a wet, wheezing sound. “Must be tough, trying to make ends meet with arts and crafts. Good thing you’ve got such a resourceful wife, eh? Always finding ways to ... settle up.” His piggy eyes flicked to Chloe, a slimy, knowing glint in them.

Chloe just took a delicate bite of an egg roll, her expression unreadable. I wanted to scream. I wanted to flip the table and smash that smug, disgusting look off his face. But I just sat there, my hands clenched into fists in my lap, and took it.

While he directed his verbal poison at me, his physical attention was entirely on Chloe. I watched, my vision narrowing, as his hand disappeared under the table. I saw Chloe’s body go rigid for just a fraction of a second, a barely perceptible tightening of her shoulders. That was it. That was the only sign. But I knew. I knew his soft, clammy hand was on her bare thigh, resting just inches from the hem of her silk dress. The image burned in my mind: his grimy, intrusive touch on her smooth, perfect skin, hidden from view but overwhelmingly, suffocatingly present.