The Villainess Chose the Incubus novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: The Signatures
For three years, Dionisio Salvatierra and I were husband and wife in name only.
A contract signed before a notary, two separate wings of a huge house in La Calera, and breakfasts served in silence at opposite ends of the same table.
He was the CEO of Salvatierra & Sons, the most powerful investment firm in Bogotá.
And he was also an incubus, though the world only half-knew it.
I was Irene Valdivieso, twenty-eight years old, the daughter of a bankrupt textile manufacturer who had sold his only daughter to save a factory.
The morning of the divorce arrived with sunshine and cold coffee.
Dionisio was waiting for me in his office, seated behind the walnut desk, hands folded over a document.
Black suit, gray shirt, hair combed back.
He looked thirty-two.
He was two hundred and fourteen.
"Sit down," he said, without looking up.
I sat.
In front of me, on the green leather of the desk, lay the petition for dissolution of the marriage.
I had drafted it myself the week before.
Three clauses.
One signature from him, one from me.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
It wasn't a real question.
It was the tone you use to ask what time it is.
"Yes."
"Then sign."
He picked up the pen, wrote his name with a dry stroke, and handed it to me.
He didn't even look at me.
I felt something tighten in my chest, an old ache, so familiar it was almost an ally by now.
Three years of silence.
Three years in which I had made sure to be an insufferable wife, so he wouldn't come near me, and so I wouldn't come near him.
And he, who never came near.
I brought the pen to the paper.
Then, above his head, something appeared.
At first I thought it was a reflection of the sun.
A line of white letters, floating in the air, at the height of his forehead.
I blinked.
It was still there.
"Obsessive bastard. He already had the chains and the basement toys custom-made to Irene Valdivieso's measurements. Who is he trying to fool with those gentlemanly manners?"
My hand went cold.
I looked at Dionisio.
He was still staring at his papers, expressionless.
He didn't seem to have seen anything.
Another line unfolded beside the first.
"Irene, the moment you sign, you're going to end up locked away. When you wake up, there will be no distance left between you and Dionisio."
And another one.
"The confinement is finally coming! That hate-fueled sex is going to be amazing. They say his true form has spikes. After everything Irene did, she deserves to end up with a lost look in her eyes…"
The white letters kept piling up, timid, floating above his black hair.
Each one signed with a different name.
NightReader.
Pale_Countess.
TheGuardian.
A chorus of strangers, invisible to everyone but me.
I read it all with a dry mouth.
One last line appeared, slower than the rest.
"Oh, Irene, you clumsy thing. If you had treated him well even once during these years, that lovesick madman would have knelt down to become your most faithful dog. He wouldn't have ended up twisting his love into hate…"
The pen trembled so much it left a dot of ink on the paper.
Dionisio looked up.
"Is something wrong?"
I looked at him.
His dark eyes held no expression.
Behind that marble gaze, there was, perhaps, something more.
A hairline crack.
Three years of silent breakfasts suddenly took on another meaning.
I remembered the times I saw him stop in front of my door without knocking.
The flowers that appeared in my study and that I had thrown away.
The hand that clenched into a fist every time I answered him back.
I set the pen down on the table.
"I think it's better if we don't get divorced," I said.
There was a silence.
He didn't move.
But the comments above his head filled with exclamation marks, and I, the only one who could see them, felt like laughing and crying at the same time.
"There's no grounds to void a petition already signed by one party," he said, very low.
"There are grounds. I changed my mind."
"Why."
"Because I felt like it."
His fingers closed over the edge of the desk.
For the first time in three years, I saw him lean forward.
He studied me with an attention that made my skin prickle.
"Very well," he said, slowly. "Then we'll have to renegotiate."
He opened a drawer, took out a paper, and slid it across the desk.
A single clause, typed.
A six-month extension of the contract, with a condition underneath, underlined in black ink.
I read it twice.
"You sleep in my bed, every night, starting today."
I raised my head.
Dionisio held my gaze, his lips barely twisted.
"If you accept it," he said, "there will be no divorce."
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