HHWM | Chapter 6: The Godfather’s Sin

The sun was high, but the lecture hall remained clinical and cold. Rows of students hunched over glowing laptops, isolated in their digital cocoons, but Selene sat at the very back, her focus buried beneath her desk. She didn’t spare a glance for the lecturer; she was too busy haunting a chat window that refused to come to life.

No new messages. No typing indicator. Not even a “seen” receipt to prove she still existed in his world.

Her heart didn’t flutter with anxiety; it thudded with sharpening resentment. What is he doing? she wondered, her grip tightening on the phone. She knew he was busy, but Greg had always been her shadow—quick to reply even in the dead of night, tethered by a string he couldn’t cut. This silence was a ghost she had seen before, the first sign of his retreating conscience.

“Hey,” Era whispered, nudging her from the next seat. “Jane’s inviting us to her party tonight. You’re not skipping this one.”

Selene looked up, the light of the screen still burned into her retinas. She arched an eyebrow, her voice cool. “I can’t go.”

“Selene, come on,” Era rolled her eyes. “It’s her birthday. You’re one of her inner circle. Don’t be the one to kill the mood.”

Selene closed her eyes, weighing the obligation. Jane was loud and exhausting, but loyal—one of the few people who didn’t look at Selene with an agenda. She didn’t have the energy for a crowd, but she had even less energy for Jane’s inevitable pout.

After class, Selene retreated home to change. She didn’t try too hard—a simple black slip dress, loose waves, and kohl-heavy eyes that made her look effortlessly dangerous. Even when her mood was a ruin, she knew how to own a room.

The party was a sensory assault. “Oh my god, finally! I thought you were going to ghost me,” Jane squealed, pulling her into a suffocating hug.

Selene forced a rehearsed smile. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

But as the music throbbed and the drinks began to flow, her mind remained a locked room. She kept her phone in her palm like a weapon, glancing at it every few minutes. Still nothing. A toxic mixture of jealousy and dread began to simmer in her gut. IIs he with her? Playing the doting husband?

Her stomach tightened. he wanted Greg—not just for the thrill, but for all of him. She wanted the heavy palms that could squeeze the breath from her lungs, the way his eyes measured her soul, and the low, weighted timber of his voice. She wanted to own the very self-control he prized so highly. She wanted to be the reason he abandoned his principles and the catalyst for his ultimate undoing.

Greg was the only one who made her feel this visceral. There was a quiet dignity in him, a depth that the boys her own age couldn’t simulate. He was a man who wanted a family, and ironically, that was the hook. The more he resisted her and treated their affair like a mortal sin, the deeper she fell.

She lived for the moments he lost control—when the distance collapsed into a frantic, punishing kiss, and the denial turned into a desperate claim. That was when she felt the most intoxicating kind of spite: a desire so forbidden it had no intention of stopping. Every time he broke, she knew he was losing another piece of the ground he stood on.

She knew she wasn’t “enough”—yet. She couldn’t compete with his reputation or his years of experience. But she believed in the darkness they shared—a secret resonance that only they understood. Behind every “no” he uttered, she felt the gravity of his “yes.”

She would use everything in her arsenal—manipulation, tenderness, rage—to keep him. She was playing for keeps, convinced that in the end, he would choose her, not out of lust, but out of the sheer, unavoidable truth of what they were to each other.

“Selene! Come on!” Her friends’ laughter pulled her back to the present. They were dragging her toward the center of the room, toward the lights and the noise. She forced a grin and let herself be swept away, deciding that tonight, she would let the leash snap.

She was no stranger to these parties. These weren’t the innocent gatherings of teenagers with cake and soda; these were rooms filled with expensive liquor, haze, and eyes that were always hunting for something illicit. Something “Bawal.”

Usually, Selene was the master of her own perimeter. But tonight, the resentment made her reckless. She wanted to taste disobedience—not for the crowd, but to prove she still owned herself.

She didn’t count the drinks. They were sweet at first, then burning, until the room began to tilt on its axis. The lights blurred into neon streaks. Laughter. Shouting. The air felt thick with a sudden, frantic energy.

“Let’s go somewhere else!” someone screamed over the bass.

In a blurred, drunken exodus, they piled into a car. There was no plan, only the momentum of the night. They were laughing, shouting, dancing in their seats as the engine roared to life. Selene sat in the haze, her mind drifting, her body numb.

Then, the world shattered.

The screech of tires. A collective, jagged scream. The bone-jarring impact as the car slammed into concrete.

In the sudden, suffocating silence that followed the crash, the party died. Amidst the twisted metal and the smell of smoke, Selene lay broken, the darkness closing in around the edges of her vision.

As her consciousness flickered out, she didn’t think of her mother, or her friends, or the life she was supposed to lead. Only one image remained, burned into the back of her eyelids.

Greg.