Inside the car, the silence of the early morning was filled only by the hum of the engine, but my mind was elsewhere. The images of the bathroom — Vanessa’s warmth, the contrast of the blue dress against her pale skin, and her absolute surrender — replayed like a slow-motion film. Even though the blood had cooled, the adrenaline still left a trail of electricity in my body. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard: almost midnight. Time with Vanessa had the strange ability to bend; hours felt like minutes.
I sped up, taking advantage of the deserted avenues. The whiskey was still in my system, and although I felt sober, I knew a breathalyzer wouldn’t share that opinion. Luckily, I crossed the city without spotting a single siren, parking at the building with the feeling of someone who had escaped a minefield unscathed.
Before going up, I stopped to talk to the doorman, an old man who had been the pillar of stability in that place since my father was still alive. We exchanged a few casual words and quick laughs, a small ritual that anchored me to reality before facing whatever was waiting for me upstairs. I said goodbye and stepped into the elevator, feeling the weight of the day on my shoulders.
When I unlocked the door, I expected complete darkness, but the living room light sliced through the hallway like a blade. I already knew that scene; it was etched into my subconscious. Bianca was sprawled on the couch, wearing nothing but an oversized shirt and panties. On the floor, a cemetery of beer cans showed that her night had been long and bitter. Her face, flushed with alcohol, turned toward me with latent aggression.
“You’re back, loser,” she snapped, her words slurred. “Where have you been?”
“Why are you drinking like this again, Bianca?” I ignored the question, sitting on the opposite couch.
The coffee table stood between us like a demilitarized zone. I counted quickly: seventeen cans. An absurd number, even by her standards. Something had happened at the company, or inside her head, for her to seek that level of oblivion.
“I asked where you’ve been!” she repeated, her voice rising an octave, thick with liquid resentment.
“Hmmm?” I tilted my head, holding her gaze. “Since when do you care what I do?”
A genuine fury twisted her features. She straightened up on the couch, spreading her legs carelessly and pointing at her own intimacy.
“Since you fucked my pussy, you bastard! You should be thanking me… that’s what.”
“Thanking you?” I felt the first spark of real anger crack in my chest. The aura of peace Vanessa had left in me began to evaporate, replaced by Bianca’s acidity.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She took a long swig of beer, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “You should be grateful I still live with you… grateful that I let you have me.”
I remained silent, watching the deplorable spectacle. They say alcohol is the solvent that strips away masks, revealing the truths sobriety tries to hide.
“You fuck me and disappear for two days?” She let out a mocking laugh that echoed through the empty walls. “Let me guess… I bet you were with one of those whores, weren’t you?”
A vein throbbed in my temple. I wasn’t going to let her insult Vanessa, Margaret, or any other woman in my life, but she didn’t give me space to intervene.
“You’re unbelievable,” she went on relentlessly. “You have a beautiful woman like me at your disposal and you go chasing those sluts…”
“I never asked to have you in my life.”
My voice came out so cold and sharp that the room seemed to drop a few degrees. Bianca froze. The laugh died on her lips, and her eyes, clouded by alcohol, tried to focus on mine, lost between confusion and shock.
“What… what did you say?” she stammered, breaking the heavy silence.
“You heard me.”
I rubbed my temple, massaging the headache that was starting to form. The barrier had fallen. The thought I had kept locked away finally escaped, and there was no way to pull it back.
“Do you know why I put up with you, Bianca?” I decided truth would be my only weapon. “Because of your mother. She was the only woman who truly took care of me.”
My memories of my biological mother were like photographs bleached by the sun; I could barely recall her smell or her touch. My father had become a shadow after her death, and it was Bianca’s mother who brought him back to life. Many people said she was with him for the money, but I saw the truth in the details: in the way she calmed me after a nightmare, in how she pushed me at school, in the genuine love she gave me, filling a void I thought would never be healed.
She gave me the love of a mother I never had. But with her came the whole package: Bianca. I always tried to find in her some trace of her mother’s kindness, but I never could. She was difficult, volatile, and cruel. When they both died, the emptiness was immense, and all that remained was the memory of that goodness… and the bitter woman now staring at me with hatred from across the room.
This scene was the breaking point, the moment when the house of cards Bianca had built on Luke’s patience finally collapsed. I let the words carry the weight of years of silence.
“Luke, you…” she started to snarl, her face twisting with indignation.
“Shut up.” My voice wasn’t a shout; it was a whip. The sound cut through the air with such authority that she shrank back against the couch, the words dying in her throat. “Now you’re going to listen. Quiet.”
Bianca stayed still. For the first time in years, I saw her mocking mask crack. The smug shine in her eyes was replaced by wavering uncertainty. The alcohol seemed to have been drained from her system by the shock, leaving her in a forced, painful sobriety.
“You’ve always been an asshole to me,” I continued, letting years of accumulated venom flow. “A bitch with a pathological need to insult me just to feel superior. You treated me with contempt from the very first day our parents got together, and I never understood why. But I put up with it. I put up with it because you decided being difficult was your shield, and that life would be easier if you just stepped on whoever was close. And it has been easy, hasn’t it, Bianca?”
She stared at me without blinking. A single tear — maybe rage, maybe frustration — traced a path down her flushed face, but she didn’t move to wipe it away.
“I endured every insult, every humiliation, because I felt indebted. Deep down, I thought: if your mother took such good care of me, the least I can do is put up with her daughter. I saw it as a mission, a twisted form of gratitude. Giving you an easy life, a roof, support… I thought I was repaying her through you.”
I paused, letting the weight of that revelation hang between us like a dense fog. Bianca crushed the empty beer can in her trembling hand, the metal crunching under the pressure.
“But I let things go too far. I let you think you could treat me like your toy, like someone you could use to satisfy your desires and then discard or insult depending on your mood.”
I stood up slowly. The movement felt enormous in the silent room. Bianca followed me with her eyes, her expression now pure shock, a deep incomprehension, as if the ground were vanishing beneath her feet. The woman who had always held absolute control was now completely disarmed.
“I’m fucking done, Bianca,” I said, looking down at her with a soul-deep exhaustion. “Either you radically change the way you treat me and the way you live, or you pack your things and leave this house. The gratitude is over. The patience is over.”
The verdict was delivered. Bianca’s face went pale, and she opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She looked small on that couch, surrounded by empty cans that now seemed like monuments to her own emptiness.
I turned my back without waiting for an answer. There was nothing left to say. I climbed the stairs with slow, heavy steps, each one feeling like a mile. I could feel her gaze burning into my back — a mix of fear and helplessness I never thought I’d see in her. When I entered my bedroom and closed the door, the silence was finally mine, but it felt like I had just blown up a bridge that would never be rebuilt.
…
(POV Bianca)
Luke didn’t come home. At first, the empty apartment was a relief, but it soon became a stage for my own ghosts. I still didn’t know how to process what had happened in his room; the memory of the night we had sex still burned on my skin with disturbing clarity. The weight of his body, the rhythm he dictated, and that overwhelming desire to feel everything again made my body tingle in a way I hated. My plan with the black lingerie had been a humiliating failure, and I meant to act as if nothing had happened, but the truth was I was obsessed with coming up with another strategy to bring him back under my control.
But my subconscious betrayed me with a dream.
I was in a magnificent cathedral, the air saturated with the scent of white flowers. I was wearing a wedding dress that looked sculpted from clouds, a luxurious piece that made me feel like the most powerful woman in the world. Soft music played, white birds crossed the high ceiling… a happiness I had never experienced in real life filled my chest, a fullness that almost made me float. I walked to the altar, and there he was.
Beside me stood a tall man in a suit. We exchanged vows: to love in sickness and in health… and then the priest authorized the kiss. When my veil was lifted, his face was revealed: Luke. He looked at me with a tender smile, a glow of devotion I had never seen in reality. His lips moved and he clearly said, “I love you.” He leaned toward me, and a feeling of absolute peace flooded me.
At the exact moment our lips were about to touch, the alarm on my phone cut through the silence like a blade.
I woke up with a jolt, my heart hammering against my ribs and my face burning with violent heat. I stared at the ceiling, unable to believe that fucking dream.
“What the fuck was that?” I yelled at the empty walls.
Me, marrying Luke? No. No. No. Impossible. But why had I felt so happy? What the hell was happening to me? I took a deep breath, trying to regain control of my sanity.
“Impossible. Me and that lose—”
The word got stuck. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t call him a loser. The image of him at the altar, telling me he loved me, worked like a physical block in my throat.
“Ah, fuck it. It was just a stupid dream,” I muttered, getting out of bed with renewed irritation.
I walked through the apartment, and the emptiness confirmed that he really hadn’t slept there. I felt a physical discomfort in my chest, a suffocating tightness that deeply irritated me. I spent the day at the company dealing with commitments, but the damn dream haunted me like a curse. The scenes returned automatically, tormenting me, turning every thought about Luke into a battle between the contempt I had cultivated and that strange happiness I had felt while asleep.
I left work later than usual, and on the way back, anxiety got the better of me. I stopped at a convenience store and bought 29 cans of beer. I needed an anesthetic to erase the image of Luke at the altar. When I got home and noticed his car in the garage, my blood ran cold.
“What the fuck is happening to me?” I asked my exhausted reflection in the mirror.
I took a long shower, but when I stepped into the hallway, the scent of his cologne hit me full force. He had already left again. Probably to meet some woman, one of those cheap whores. Again, that awful feeling in my chest, a corrosive jealousy that made me seriously wonder if I was getting sick. I opened the first can. Then the second, the third… I lost count as frustration turned into bitter drunkenness.
When the door finally opened and he appeared, I was already steeped in poison. The idea that he had gone to fuck another woman drove me insane. Was sex with me not good enough? That bastard irritates me. He goes out there even though he has a woman like me at home; he should be grateful that I opened my legs and let him have me.
“You’re back, loser. Where have you been?” I snapped, trying to reclaim my armor of arrogance, but my voice came out slurred by alcohol.
“Why are you drinking like this again?” he asked, sitting across from me with that tired look that hurt more than any shout.
“I asked where you’ve been!” I screamed, fury boiling over.
“Hmmm? Since when do you care?” he tilted his head, treating me like an insignificant nuisance.
I wanted to explode. Anger was the only thing hiding the terror that dream had caused me.
“Since you fucked my pussy, you bastard! You should be thanking me,” I spread my legs on the couch, pointing at my sex in a desperate gesture of self-affirmation. “You should be grateful I live with you… grateful that I let you have sex with me!”
I kept screaming, throwing it in his face that I was beautiful, that he was lucky, while he just looked at me with a contempt that began to freeze my soul. But nothing prepared me for the truth that came out of his mouth. When he said he never asked to have me in his life and only put up with me because of my mother, the ground vanished beneath my feet.
“Do you know why I put up with you, Bianca? Because of your mother. She was a very good woman in my life,” he said, and every word was a nail in the coffin of my importance.
He threw everything in my face. The love he felt for my mother and how he saw enduring me as nothing more than a “debt of gratitude.” The final blow came with a coldness that paralyzed me:
“Either you radically change the way you treat me and the way you live, or you pack your things and leave this house. The gratitude is over. The patience is over.”
He stood up and went upstairs without looking back. I stayed there, sprawled on the couch among empty cans, feeling the echo of the “I love you” from the dream being crushed by the reality that, to Luke, I was nothing more than a burden he could no longer carry.
