The Ex-Wife's Burning Elegance

Harry's eyes fluttered open.

The first thing he saw was the darkness-he was in some kind of warehouse, dim and shadowy, the air thick and stale.

He rubbed his aching head, voice low and hoarse as he muttered to himself, "Where am I? How did I end up here?"

The last few days had been a blur-drinking himself numb, stumbling from one hangover to the next, every waking moment haunted by pain. Stella's betrayal had gutted him, left him raw and seething. The humiliation she'd rained down on him replayed over and over in his mind, each time stoking his anger and regret until he thought he'd choke on it.

He couldn't get over it. The wound ran too deep.

Desperate, Harry had even started contacting hitmen, hoping that if Stella were gone, maybe just maybe-his agony would go with her.

Yesterday, finally, someone had taken the job. The plan was simple: they'd meet him in Novaris and work out the rest.

He'd celebrated by drinking himself senseless again, clinging to the idea that once Stella was dead, everything would go back to the way it was.

Now, he snapped upright, a jolt of hope running through him. "You're the guys I hired, right?" he called out.

man was young, strikingly handsome, barely in his twenties and nothing like the cold-blooded killers he'd imagined. With his boyish good looks, he looked more like someone you'd meet at a college party

in Harry's eyes, something poisonous and serpentine. "I want you to ruin that woman," he hissed. "Make her suffer-hurt her, disfigure her, break her

smiled, just a hint of amusement on his lips. "Mr.

was already racing with images of revenge. For days, he'd obsessed over a thousand gruesome ways to make Stella

with excitement. "After she's dead, I

online. I'll

forever. He wanted the world to forget her talent with the violin

name

made his

you have any other ways to make

worse,

young man looked down

know, I used

think I'd

seen cruelty," he mused.

you put the rest