Third Person
Annika had decided to reverse course in the eleventh hour, at the bottom of the ninth inning, backtracking on her initial stance and releasing all inhibitions to be with Leon. Unbeknownst to her, this decision would lead Annika to hit a home run, quite literally, and she was rewarded in unprecedented ways. She had finally experienced what it felt like to be genuinely taken care of by a man, and the seed of hope began putting down roots inside her heart. Annika knew what it felt like to be treated like a princess by her family, but it was her first time being worshipped like a queen by someone who recognized her worth.
After a passionate night filled with fiery hot lovemaking, Annika awoke from her deep slumber. She rubbed her eyes, only to find that she was all alone on the luxurious hotel bed. As if plunged into an ice water bath, Annika sat straight up in shock, wondering if the previous night and the events leading up to it were a figment of her imagination. But when she found herself covered with the duvet, Annika lifted it and saw that she was still, in fact, au naturel.
“Leon?” Annika called out, a touch of apprehension betraying her voice, but there was nothing except silence that followed. She straightened up even further onto her knees and scanned her surroundings to see whether his suitcases were still in the room. Annika tilted her head to the side in confusion upon realizing they were not. It’s not like he could just waltz out of here naked. She unconsciously reached over to the nightstand for her phone but found it wasn’t there before remembering she had left it in the living room of their penthouse suite.
Annika climbed out of bed with the duvet wrapped around her and went to retrieve her phone, all the while failing to realize that Leon was only a few feet away in the adjoining bathroom doing his morning business. Once Leon finished relieving himself, he returned to the room and was greeted by an unwelcome sight—Annika was gone, and the duvet was missing along with her.
“Doc?” Leon called out, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. He had been gone all of five minutes, and Annika was sound asleep before he went to the bathroom. “Doc?” he called out again, but there was only dead air. Out of nowhere, his phone started ringing, so Leon picked it up and was surprised to see that it was Annika calling him. “Hello?” he answered, but the sound of his voice echoing behind him caused Leon to turn around, and he saw Annika coming back into the room with her phone to her ear. They both made eye contact and were perplexed by their current situation. There stood Leon in the middle of the room, wearing nothing but a smile, while Annika was in the doorway, covered only by the duvet.
“What the?” Annika looked at her phone and then back at Leon. When the realization hit her, she rolled her eyes and hung up.
“Good morning,” Leon greeted her, disconnecting the call as he sauntered over to Annika. “And where did you run off to, so early in the morning?” Leon then gently grasped her shoulders and rubbed his hands down her arms.
“I could ask you the same thing. I woke up, but you weren’t in bed,” Annika replied.
“Oh. I needed to relieve myself, so I went to the restroom.”
“Oh!” Annika shook her head and laughed to herself.
“You didn’t actually think I could take off without waking you, did you?”
“I honestly didn’t know what to think. I knew that you had to start working today.”
“Be that as it may, I’m not due to arrive at the new site until about 10 AM. It’s barely 7:30 AM,” Leon told her before pulling her into a hug. Annika opened up the duvet, unwrapping herself like a present to allow their bodies to touch and creating a makeshift cocoon around them. “How about a shower?” Leon suggested.
“Sure. That sounds like a good idea.” Annika released him from her embrace, but just as she stepped away to head into the bathroom, Leon grabbed her upper arm and yanked her back into his arms. “What’s wrong?”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To take a shower …” Annika lifted an eyebrow at him, puzzled by Leon’s reaction since he was the one who suggested that she get cleaned up in the first place.
“I meant together,” Leon explained, lifting his own eyebrow in response as his mischievous smirk reappeared on his lips. Annika’s eyes went round and wide as Leon ripped away the duvet from her before he abruptly threw her over his shoulder.
“LEON!” Annika shrieked in utter surprise, but Leon didn’t miss the hint of excitement mixed in there. He responded with a slap to her asscheek, generating a squeal out of her mouth. Annika had never been spanked before, not even as punishment from her parents, but she had to admit it felt somewhat erotic when Leon did it. He strolled into the bathroom with her and turned on the shower for them before hastily lowering her down enough to pin her against the wall, wasting no time taking possession of her lips. Leon’s kiss added to the steam building up within the shower walls, igniting another round of steadfast lovemaking between the two as they wrecked sweet chaos on one another.
On the other side of the country, back home in New York, Sadie struggled immensely to adjust to her new reality after being released on house arrest, banished to a life of solitude and what she considered to be poverty. Despite everything that occurred at her birthday party and their most recent phone call, she made multiple attempts to contact Jeffrey, but her calls never reached him. Sadie foolishly believed that Jeffrey was actively ignoring her and sending her to voicemail, but she eventually realized that he had blocked her. Not only did he block her number, but he also blocked her email, her parents’ numbers, and her attorney’s. Jeffrey had diligently cut off Sadie’s access to him, pulling out all the stops to avoid her like she was the bubonic plague.
“UGH!!” Sadie grunted with unrestrained frustration and screamed into her pillow. “Jeffrey Hollands, I f*****g swear!” Borderline hyperventilating as she drowned in her madness, literally and figuratively, there was a knock on her door. “WHAT!?!?!” Sadie screamed at the top of her lungs.
“Honey, it’s me,” Mrs. Galloway announced as she opened the door.
“What do you want!?” Sadie bellowed at her with zero respect.
“Sadie, I get that you’re angry, but don’t take it out on me!”
“Then who am I supposed to take it out on?! Huh!? This is all your fault, Mom!”
“My fault!?” her mother exclaimed incredulously.
“YES! YOUR FAULT! You’re the one who told me to use Leon for his money! You’re the one who told me to hide the evidence of my affairs from him! You’re the one who told me to lie while under oath on the stand!”
“You didn’t have to listen to me!”
“Are you f*****g kidding me right now!?” Sadie ululated in disbelief.
“You’re a grown woman, Sadie! You’re old enough to make your own decisions in life! I certainly didn’t tell you to cheat on your husband, and when I told you to use him for his money, I meant that you should woo him into giving you half his assets! How was I supposed to know you’d twist my words and do something ridiculous?”
“You didn’t actually expect me to be loyal to him, did you, Mom!?”
“Of course I did! I had to stay faithful to your father when I married him because it was the only way to get what I wanted! I love your father, but I loved his money more, and now, even I don’t have anything because of you!”
“SERIOUSLY!? YOU’RE BLAMING ME!?”
“Who else do I have to blame!?” Mrs. Galloway snapped back. Sadie couldn’t believe her ears. Her mother, the woman who had convinced her to do everything she had done for the sake of money, was now shifting all of the blame on her. Sadie felt as if the entire world was no longer on her side, and she had never felt more alone. Not only did Jeffrey, the man she sincerely loved, cast her aside, but now her parents had turned their backs on her. How could the two people, who were supposed to love her no matter what, do this to her? Sadie screamed and grabbed her hair as the remnants of her sanity snapped at how unfair her life had become.
“GET OUT!!” Sadie lashed out at her mother. “GET OUT!! GET THE f**k OUT OF MY ROOM, YOU STUPID b***h!!!” Mrs. Galloway was livid, to the point where smoke was coming out of her ears, when she heard Sadie call her a b***h straight to her face. Though Sadie had her moments, she had never once disrespected her parents before, at least not until that very moment. Angered beyond belief, Mrs. Galloway stomped over to Sadie and slapped her so hard she fell sideways onto the bed.
“You listen to me, and you listen good, Sadie,” her mother snarled and grabbed Sadie by her hair. “Do not ever speak to me that way again. I don’t care if you’re pregnant. If you ever curse at me again, I will beat you into the next galaxy, you good-for-nothing little w***e. You will show me respect,” Mrs. Galloway sneered at her crotch demon and threw her back face first onto the bed. Refusing to endure any more of her daughter’s blatant disrespect, Mrs. Galloway left Sadie’s room and slammed the door behind her. Sadie lifted herself off the bed and stared murderously at the door.
“I’ll f*****g show you respect,” Sadie spat out under her breath as she lost all respect and love for her mother. “Everyone who’s anyone that’s f****d with me will be f*****g sorry they ever crossed me. I don’t give a f**k who they are,” she gritted her teeth, descending further and further into darkness.
In the midst of Sadie’s fallout with her family, Jeffrey, on the other hand, was busy in his hotel room, drinking away his sorrows. Although the cards were stacked against him, he could tolerate the circumstances thus far and was arrogant in his approach to crawling out of the hole he found himself in. But finding out that Annika was now in the arms of Leon Von Doren had his emotional state in a downward spiral, and his mind had become a slippery slope. Before everything had come to light, Jeffrey was confident he could break up with Sadie and spend his time winning back Annika’s affection and had truly believed that he was the only man she would ever love. After deluding himself for so long, he finally understood how wrong he was.
Not only had he unsuccessfully hidden his extramarital affairs, but his misdeeds were also plastered all over the internet, and he was dubbed “the ultimate scumbag of the Earth” by netizens across the globe. Being a scumbag was one thing, but knowing that his first love and high school sweetheart couldn’t wait to be rid of him was earth-shattering to Jeffrey. He was still optimistic when he saw Annika and Leon kissing outside Hunter’s office a few weeks ago. But discovering they were on vacation together while openly showing their affection to each other at JFK airport, a place with many prying eyes, just hit him differently. It crept into Jeffrey’s mind and infected his fractured soul, trampling over it until there was almost nothing left.
What Jeffrey found even more absurd was that he recalled confronting Annika about being with another man, more specifically with Leon, but she had wholeheartedly denied being with anyone. If that were true, then why would she be on vacation with him so soon after outing him and Sadie to the rest of the world? There’s no way that she didn’t sleep with him before all of this happened. There’s just no way. He had no idea how wrong he actually was, however. Unlike Jeffrey, Annika had remained 100% loyal during their marriage, other than the kiss he witnessed between her and Leon. But even then, they were already legally separated, so in reality, it wasn’t as if she had cheated.
As Jeffrey was engrossed in his scheming on how to tackle this newfound problem, he received a text message from an unknown number. He reached for his phone and furrowed his brows when he saw there were multiple attachments. When Jeffrey opened the text string, and the images started to load, little by little, the blood drained from his face and erased all of its color. He felt his broken heart disintegrate more and more, and there was nothing, even if it included the span of multiple lifetimes, to prepare Jeffrey to endure this moment.
The images sent to him were of Annika and Leon in bed together, naked and holding one another intimately. Jeffrey could tell it was taken from a selfie point of view, but he was shocked to his core once he saw that it wasn’t Leon’s arm that was extended; it was Annika’s. After the images finished loading, the ping of a text message that followed
Now I know what it feels to actually be pleasured in bed.
After reading the message, Jeffrey hurled his phone at the wall and swept the lamp off the table before releasing an indignant roar, venting all of his outrage, grief, and betrayal with reckless abandon. Annika had single-handedly destroyed every last bit of restraint he had.
