Chapter 377: Burning Overdues

Adriana blinked. Once. Slow.

"Since our men are about as useful as

chocolate teapots

when it comes to actually satisfying us. Since they’re too busy conquering boardrooms, continents, and—" Melissa

cocked

her head, let the word drop like surgical steel

"—

mistresses

they think we’re too stupid or too polite to notice. Every city. Every conference. Every

’working dinner’

that magically stretches until 2 a.m. with lipstick on the collar and perfume that isn’t ours. We’re not idiots, Adriana. We’ve never been idiots. We just got tired of saying it out loud because saying it hurt worse than swallowing it."

Each syllable was aimed—not at Adriana.

Melissa had long since cauterised whatever private bitterness she once carried about Harold, about the years she’d played Perfect Wife while her body starved and her bed stayed cold and empty that she had to masturbate every four night a week, until Phei.

That particular wound had been healed—

forcefully, gloriously

—by a seventeen-year-old boy whose dragon blood ran hot enough to melt steel and whose hands knew exactly where to press, where to tease, where to

claim

until she forgot what neglect even felt like.

And Melissa’s wounds had been going on since she uncovred some truths, some of which she thinks were part of why her brother was killed.

But tonight wasn’t about her history.

Tonight was about giving voice to the scream

Adriana

had been choking on for years—at wine nights, at galas, at those

soul-crushing

brunches where someone always cracked a joke about their husband’s "stamina" and everyone laughed like good little wives while the laughter tasted like battery acid.

Adriana didn’t flinch. Didn’t gasp. Didn’t pull out the performative scandalised

hand-to-mouth

routine she usually deployed for the benefit of women who were all thinking the exact same thing and were too exquisitely bred to ever admit it.

She just looked at Melissa.

And her face did something it almost never allowed in public.

It

softened

.

Raw gratitude—no polish, no social armour, just the stripped-bare look of a woman who’d been treading water for years and had finally felt a hand close around her wrist.

Not dragging her out yet. Just holding. Letting her know the current wasn’t going to win today.

Adriana stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Melissa.

Tight

.

Not the

air-kiss-and-pretend

variety.

This was

need

—full-body, desperate, the embrace of someone who’d forgotten what it felt like to be held without agenda. Adriana’s face pressed into the curve of Melissa’s neck; Melissa felt the fine tremor in her shoulders—not sobs, not yet, but close enough that the refusal to cry became its own quiet grief.

Melissa held her.

Stroked

her hair—slow, gentle, the way you touch something precious that’s spent too long pretending it’s unbreakable.

And behind Adriana’s back, over the elegant line of her shoulder, Melissa’s eyes lifted to the mirror.

Met her own reflection.

What lived in those eyes wasn’t comfort.

It was

calculation.

Tonight

.

Every piece was in place.

Adriana—starved, cracked open,

sex-deprived

and vibrating with years of unmet need. Phei—somewhere in the glittering dark of Paradise, dragon fire simmering in his veins, that

insatiable

hunger rolling off him in waves women could smell before they understood what they were scenting.

And Melissa—

the architect, the bridge, the willing conspirator

—ready to guide her oldest friend from the

cage

of neglect straight into the

arms

(and

bed)

of a boy whose cock could shatter marriages and whose touch could reprogram a woman’s entire nervous system.

Her

first true

offering.

Not to a deity.

To her

dragon

.

Adriana pulled back, swiping at her eyes with quick, embarrassed motions—like vulnerability was a wardrobe malfunction she needed to correct immediately.

"Right. Okay. You’re right." A shaky breath. "We deserve a night."

"We deserve a

hundred

nights. We’re starting with one. Baby steps."

A laugh—shaky, surprised, bright. "You’re terrible."

"I’m

honest

. There’s a difference, and every good wife knows exactly what it is."

Melissa released her, smoothed the dark green silk of her own dress—less overt than Adriana’s black bandage but cut to hint at everything while revealing nothing—and picked up her clutch from the marble counter.

"We should move before the upstairs bitches

descend."

The words were tossed casually over her shoulder, but the intent was laser-precise. The other Legacy wives—had their own suites on the higher floors. If they came down and caught sight of Melissa and Adriana dressed like this, dressed like they were going

out-out

, there would be questions.

Suggestions to join.

The night would

bloat

into a polite group outing with too many eyes, too many inhibitions, and zero chance of getting Adriana

where she truly

needed to be.

Which was

underneath Phei

.

Adriana glanced toward the window—the one that opened onto the second-floor terrace, which led to the garden wall, which dropped into the shadowed service lane behind the Orchid House.

"Are we really going out the

window

?"

Melissa grinned. Shrugged. The shrug of a woman who’d rehearsed this exit in her head three hours ago and was now savouring the pretence of spontaneity.

"Scared?"

Something flickered across Adriana’s face.

Something from before the ring, before the mansion, before the children, before the slow, elegant suffocation of everything she’d once been. Before Ricardo Castellano had slipped a fortune on her finger, a palace over her head, and then proceeded to ignore the wildfire he’d married.

Adriana Castellano had once been a

party girl

.

Not the curated,

two-glasses-and-a-tasteful-exit

kind.

The kind who climbed out of windows at sixteen because the front door felt boring. Who flashed

fake IDs

at underground clubs in São Paulo, Ibiza, Mykonos—arriving with nothing but youth, beauty, and the unshakable certainty that her family’s money could bail her out of anything and her face could get her into everything.

Who danced until her feet bled, her voice gave out, the sun rose, and she was still moving, still burning, still

alive

in a way that felt eternal.

Then came marriage.

Motherhood.

Paradise.

And that glorious, reckless fire had been smothered—not by malice, but by everything else. Expectation. Duty. The gradual, acid understanding that she was no longer

Adriana-who-set-rooms-on-fire.

She was

Mrs. Castellano

, and Mrs. Castellano sat still, smiled prettily, poured wine for guests, and never,

ever

climbed out of windows.

Until tonight.

Adriana kicked off her heels. Picked them up in one hand. Walked to the window barefoot, a look on her face Melissa hadn’t seen in fifteen years—wild, alive,

hungry

.

"I haven’t done this since

Ibiza,"

she said.

"Then you’re overdue."

"I ruined a Valentino that night."

"Wear the memory better than the dress."

Adriana laughed—sudden, bright, startled out of her like a bird breaking cover—and swung one long leg over the sill.

The black bandage dress rode up her thighs, exposing golden skin and the shadowed promise of everything beneath. Wind caught her hair. Eyes sparkled.

She looked back at Melissa—feral, exhilarated, twenty-five again in every line of her body.

"Coming?"

"Right behind you."

Adriana dropped to the terrace with the fluid grace of a woman whose muscles still remembered how to be reckless.

Melissa followed—more careful, because forty-three and gravity had opinions now—and then they were both standing in the garden under a sky thick with stars, barefoot in dresses that cost more than most people’s cars, grinning at each other like teenagers who’d just burned every rulebook that ever mattered.

The night opened before them—warm, dark, electric with the kind of possibility that only ignites when you finally stop being who everyone expects.

Adriana had no idea what

waited.

No idea that somewhere in this glittering city a young dragon was already pacing, blood running molten, hunger coiling tight in his veins.

No idea that her oldest friend—the woman holding her hand right now—had already charted the route from this garden wall to the bed where Adriana’s neglected, starving body would finally be claimed, worshipped,

ruined

in the best possible way.

That tonight a boy would set fire to every part of her she’d buried.

And she would burn so fucking beautifully.

And she would never—

never

—be the same.