What Burns Beneath

Claire barely slept that night. Veronica's sheets still smelled of wine and something darker, richer—like crushed petals after a storm. Her body ached in the best and worst ways: between her thighs, on the tender side of her neck where Veronica had pressed her teeth… and in her chest, where guilt stirred like a sleeping viper.

But she wasn't done. Not with Veronica. Not with the hunger.

"You can go back to Nina whenever you want," Veronica had whispered, curled against her bare back like smoke. "But every time she touches you, you'll feel me inside you."

Claire had bitten her own lip to keep from moaning.

And she hated how true it felt.

—

At Nina's house, the morning arrived with quiet tension. Gloria sat at the kitchen table, watching Margot sip tea with trembling hands. Her lips were cracked, her cheekbones sharp. She looked like a ghost trapped in the wrong decade.

Nina hovered nearby, protective. Soft.

"How long were you with her?" Gloria finally asked.

Margot didn't meet her eyes. "On and off? Twenty years."

Gloria blinked. "That long?"

"She never hit me," Margot said. "Not the way people imagine. No bruises. Just rules. Surveillance. Gaslight. Her love was a cage made of compliments and cages made of praise. And by the time I noticed, the lock was already inside me."

Gloria's voice cracked. "I should've seen it."

"You did," Margot replied gently. "You just weren't allowed to say it."

Silence again.

Until Nina broke it. "Evelyn has files. On all of us."

Gloria looked up sharply. "You've seen them?"

Nina nodded. "She collects people. Their weaknesses. Their triggers. Claire's... fear of abandonment. Mine... my guilt. Yours... your need to protect."

"She's building something," Gloria muttered. "And she needs control to do it."

"She's already lost it," Margot whispered. "She just doesn't know it yet."

—

At Evelyn's estate, the mood was different. Daniel stood at her desk, posture stiff, jaw tight. His face was raw from his mother's confrontation days earlier—her disappointment, her judgment.

He was tired of women sneaking around.

He was tired of not knowing.

"I want you to teach me how to see what you see," he said.

Evelyn leaned back in her chair, folding her hands. "What is it you think I see?"

Daniel hesitated. "The real them. Under the perfume and charity events. Under the lesbian affairs and hidden journals."

She smiled coldly. "You want to learn control."

He nodded.

Evelyn rose, walked slowly toward him. "Then you must first give up the illusion of love."

Daniel flinched. "Even if it's my mother?"

"Especially her," Evelyn purred.

She handed him a file: CLAIRE — Supplement C.

"Study her. Know how to make her bend."

"And Nina?"

"Break her."

—

Claire stood in the shower, letting water scald her skin as if it could wash Veronica's presence away. But it wouldn't. Veronica had always known which strings to pull — not just between Claire's legs, but inside her psyche. She played Claire like a cello in a burning chapel.

Still, it was Nina's name that escaped Claire's lips when her fingers slid down her stomach… and deeper.

And that made everything worse.

—

At twilight, the women finally met again—Claire, Nina, Gloria, and Margot—gathered in Nina's living room like survivors of a shipwreck.

Margot spoke first. "Evelyn won't stop. Not until someone makes her."

"We need proof," Nina said. "Evidence. Files. Statements. If we go public—"

"No one will believe it," Claire interrupted. "Not without something visceral. Something that rattles the community."

"Then we rattle it," Gloria said. "With sex, scandal, and secrets."

Claire raised a brow. "You want to weaponize our own sins?"

Margot's voice was steady. "Why not? She already has."

—

Meanwhile, Evelyn made her final call of the evening. "Veronica," she said smoothly. "How's Claire?"

There was a long pause.

Then: "Sore," Veronica replied. "And conflicted."

"She'll come back."

"She never really left," Veronica said. "But she will betray you. Just like I will. Eventually."

Evelyn chuckled. "That's the problem with desire. You can't domesticate it. But you can set it on fire."

—

And fire was exactly what roared through Nina's backyard that night.

A letter, nailed to her fence in red ribbon:

"You've taken what was mine. Now I'll take what's yours. Starting with the truth."

It wasn't signed.

But everyone knew who wrote it.

And what it meant.

The war had begun.