He Humiliated Me in Public, So His Regret Pays by the Tear novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Ring in the Cake
Dominik thanks his mistress for the dessert menu Halina wrote, tells the room to get his wife a car, and Halina pushes her ring into the cake and walks out to a deposit labeled REGRET SETTLEMENT.
Dominik tapped his glass with a dessert fork at eight-forty on opening night.
I was standing at the pass with forty-two plum babka tarts on the rack behind me.
I had been in the kitchen since five that morning.
My whites were stuck to my back, and I had a tray of poppy seed cake waiting on the counter for the toast.
"Friends," Dominik said.
The room went quiet.
Kral Table was full to the walls.
Investors, food writers, a man from the bank, and everybody who matters in River North had come.
My husband stood in the middle of it in a black jacket I had ironed that afternoon.
"Seven years ago I had one stove and a loan," he said. "Tonight I have this."
People clapped.
I clapped too, with a pastry bag still in my hand.
"None of it happens without one person," Dominik said.
I looked at him.
He was looking at me.
My throat did something stupid, because for one second I believed he was going to say my name.
"Lena Baran," he said. "Who built this room, and who wrote every dessert on this menu."
He turned and held out his glass to her.
Lena stood at his shoulder in a green dress, with her auburn hair cut sharp at the jaw.
She put her hand flat on the small of his back and left it there.
People saw it, and nobody thought anything of it.
A server in the doorway lifted a tray and said, to the room, "Lena's babka tart, everyone. Please enjoy."
It was my grandmother's babka dough.
It was my plums, pitted by me at two o'clock that morning.
I put the pastry bag down on the pass.
"Dominik," I said.
He did not turn around.
"That's mine," I said, louder. "I made the tart. I made the whole dessert menu."
The room noticed me then.
Forty heads turned to the woman in the whites by the kitchen door.
Dominik finally looked, and his face did the thing it does in front of money, which is go gentle.
"Hal," he said. "Hey. You're tired."
"I'm not tired."
"You've been on your feet since five. We all love you for it." He smiled at the room.
"Somebody get my wife a car."
Somebody laughed.
It was a kind laugh, the sort people give a drunk aunt at a wedding.
The man from the bank looked at his shoes.
Lena tilted her head at me with real sympathy, and that was the worst of it.
"Of course she's tired," she said. "Hal, honey, go home."
I looked at her hand on his back.
I looked at the lipstick smear on his collar that I had taken for sauce an hour ago.
Fourteen months of late nights and inventory weekends turned over in my head and landed face up.
I took off my wedding ring.
It was a plain gold band that had cost him two hundred dollars when he had two hundred dollars.
The poppy seed cake sat on the counter at my elbow, round and glazed and ready to be cut for the toast.
I pushed the ring into the center of it, down to the knuckle of gold.
"Cut it," I said. "It's the only thing in this building I'm sure is mine."
Nobody moved.
Dominik's smile went flat.
"Hal," he said, and his hand went to the back of his neck.
I untied my apron and laid it over the rack of tarts.
I walked the length of that dining room with every eye on me.
I went past the man from the bank and past Lena, and I did not run.
The door was heavy glass.
I pushed it open and stepped out into cold air and the smell of the river.
My hands were shaking.
I stood under the awning with my back against the brick, breathing like I had just come up from underwater.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I wanted to throw it in the street.
I took it out anyway.
A bank notification sat on the lock screen.
REGRET SETTLEMENT. Deposit: $850.00.
I read it three times.
I had never heard of anything called that.
Then a line of type came up across my vision, thin and white, over the traffic lights and the wet street.
[Regret detected. Source: Dominik Kral. Cause: the ring. Payout: $850.00.]
I looked back through the glass.
Inside, my husband was staring at the cake.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend