Part One: The Woman She Built
The suit had been folded inside a hatbox at the back of a dead woman's estate sale in Tuscany. Janet remembered the moment her fingers touched it – how the material felt warm, impossibly soft, like touching the inside of a mouth. She'd been twenty-three. Broke. Plain. A tomboyish English girl with cropped mousy hair and a jaw too square for pretty, a body too flat for desire, and a desperate, aching need that leaked out of her like a wound she couldn't stitch shut.
She'd been the kind of lesbian other lesbians overlooked. Not butch enough to own it, not femme enough to weaponise it. Just… there. Hovering at the edges of bars, nursing warm gin and tonics, falling hopelessly for women who barely registered her existence. The kind of girl who texted first, who double-texted, who left voice notes that went unplayed. Pathetic. She knew it. She hated it.
But the suit…
God, the suit.
She'd unfolded it in the cramped bathroom of her Airbnb, and at first she'd thought it was a costume – some kind of elaborate theatrical piece. But it was too real. The skin was flawless olive, warm to the touch, with the fine invisible hairs you'd expect on a living woman's forearm. There were fingernails. Eyelashes. A vulva so anatomically perfect it made Janet blush and then – shamefully, immediately – wet.
And at the back, between the shoulder blades, a zipper so fine it was nearly invisible. A seam that whispered: put me on.
(She should have left it.)
(She should have folded it back up, placed it in the hatbox, and walked away.)
She didn't.
---
The transformation wasn't instant. It was a becoming – a slow, gorgeous, excruciating becoming.
Janet stepped into the legs first, pulling the skin up like stockings, and the fit was – wrong. Too tight. The suit was clearly made for someone taller, curvier, someone with actual hips. But as she tugged it higher, something shifted. The material didn't stretch to accommodate her body. Her body stretched to accommodate the material.
"Oh– oh fuck–"
Her calves lengthened. She felt the bones slide, painlessly, like someone pulling taffy, and suddenly she was standing on legs that went on for miles – toned, olive-skinned, ending in feet with arched insteps and perfectly painted toenails the colour of dried blood. She pulled the suit up over her hips and the sensation was pornographic – her nonexistent ass inflating, rounding, the skin tightening over glutes that could crack walnuts. Her hipbones widened with a series of low, deep clicks.
"Mmmmmh…"
The sound that escaped her wasn't Janet's sound. It was lower. Richer. A sound made for bedrooms and boardrooms and the back seats of expensive cars.
She pulled the torso up and the breasts arrived like a revelation. Her flat chest swelled outward, the suit filling with impossible volume – large, round, gravity-defying, tipped with dark nipples that stiffened immediately in the cooling air. She cupped them and the weight was intoxicating. Real. Heavy. The kind of tits that entered a room thirty seconds before the woman attached to them.
Then the arms. Long, elegant fingers – pianist's fingers – with nails that gleamed like wet lacquer. She reached behind and found the zipper, pulled it up her spine, and the suit sealed around her neck like a lover's hands.
The face was last. She pulled it over her head like a hood and the world went dark for three terrifying seconds—
And then.
And then.
She opened her eyes – green now, deep Mediterranean green – and stared at herself in the cracked bathroom mirror. Soft chestnut hair tumbled past her shoulders in loose, glossy waves. High cheekbones. Full lips. A face that was almost cruel in its beauty, the kind of face that made other women feel ugly simply by existing in the same postcode.
Valentina.
The name arrived fully formed, as if the suit had whispered it directly into her temporal lobe. She didn't choose it. It chose her. And with it came a feeling – a rush of power so total, so absolute, that Janet actually staggered.
She wasn't needy anymore.
She wasn't weak.
She was a goddess.
"Ciao, bella," Valentina murmured to her reflection, and her voice was honeyed poison – a low Italian purr that could make a woman's knees buckle at twenty paces. "Let's have some fun."
Part Two: A Decade of Divinity
Ten years.
Ten years as Valentina, and Janet had built an empire of beauty, wealth, and absolute feminine power.
The suit never came off. Not once. Not to shower (the skin was waterproof, self-cleaning, as if it metabolised dirt like a living organ). Not to sleep. Not even in the deepest, loneliest hours of 3 AM when – very occasionally – Janet would surface like a diver coming up for air, blinking behind those green eyes, remembering who she used to be.
Those moments were becoming rarer.
Valentina's life was a monument to excess. A penthouse in Knightsbridge. A villa in Positano. A wardrobe that could fill a warehouse – Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, La Perla lingerie in every shade of sin. She drove a white Maserati and wore sunglasses that cost more than Janet's entire previous life.
But the real luxury – the thing that made Valentina purr – was the girls.
Oh, the girls.
She collected them like Birkin bags. Weak, needy little things – the exact kind of woman Janet used to be. She could smell their desperation like perfume. The ones who lingered too long at gallery openings, who blushed when Valentina's gaze swept over them, who texted first and double-texted and left voice notes that went unplayed.
Valentina would take them home. One at a time. Sometimes two.
She'd sit on the edge of her emperor-sized bed in nothing but a black lace bodysuit and watch them undress with trembling hands. She'd tell them they were beautiful – a lie, usually, but they were so starved for validation they'd believe anything from those perfect lips. Then she'd push them down, straddle their faces, grind against their eager mouths until she came with a sharp, commanding cry – a wet, hot squirt that drenched their cheeks, their hair, the six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
"Clean it up," she'd say. Not a request. Never a request.
And they would. God, they always would.
After, she'd bend them over the vanity, strap on a thick silicone cock – always black, always obscenely large (Valentina was nothing if not theatrical) – and fuck them until they screamed. Until they cried. Until they said thank you.
This was power. Real power. The power of being so beautiful, so commanding, so utterly devastating that other women would debase themselves for a crumb of your attention.
Janet had dreamed of this, once.
Now Valentina lived it.
---
But something was wrong.
It started small – a flutter in the chest during a particularly rough session, a moment where Valentina's hand paused mid-thrust and Janet thought: What would it feel like to be on the other side of this?
Not giving. Taking.
Not dominating. Being dominated.
The thought was so alien, so antithetical to everything Valentina was, that Janet shoved it down immediately. But it resurfaced. Again and again. Like a splinter working its way to the surface.
Late at night, alone, Valentina would lie in her silk sheets and Janet would close her (their) eyes and imagine. She'd imagine a version of herself – the old Janet, the weak one, the needy one – pinned beneath Valentina's weight. She'd imagine Valentina's hands on her throat. Valentina's voice in her ear: Good girl. That's it. You know where you belong.
She'd imagine being fucked. Not as Valentina, who fucked others with the casual authority of a woman signing a cheque. But as Janet. Small, plain, desperate Janet – bent over, spread open, filled completely by Valentina's strap while Valentina's perfect tits pressed against her back and Valentina's perfect lips whispered: You're nothing without me. You know that, don't you?
The fantasy made her come harder than anything she'd experienced in a decade of domination.
(This was a problem.)
Because Valentina didn't submit. Valentina didn't want. Valentina took. That was the whole point of the suit. That was the whole point of becoming someone else – someone better, someone powerful, someone who would never, ever be the girl nursing a warm gin and tonic at the back of a bar, invisible.
But Janet was still in there. Curled up behind Valentina's green eyes like a dormouse in a silk-lined pocket. And Janet wanted something Valentina couldn't give her.
Janet wanted to be ruined.
---
Part Three: The Widower
His name was David Harper.
Valentina met him at a charity auction – one of those insufferable Kensington events where people in evening wear pretended to care about conservation while bidding on weekends in the Cotswolds. He was standing alone by the bar, drinking sparkling water (not even champagne – sparkling water), wearing a suit that was slightly too large for his frame, as though he'd lost weight recently and hadn't bothered to have it tailored.
He was… nothing. Mid-forties. Sandy hair going grey at the temples. Kind eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses. Average height. Average build. The sort of man you'd forget the moment he left your line of sight.
But Valentina noticed the ring finger. The tan line where a wedding band used to be, still visible. Recent removal.
"You look like you'd rather be anywhere else," she said, sliding next to him at the bar. Even in flats she would have towered over him. In her Louboutins, she was six inches taller. He had to tilt his head back to meet her eyes.
"Is it that obvious?" He smiled. A shy, self-deprecating smile. "My wife – my late wife – she used to drag me to these things. Sarah. She… she passed eight months ago. Cancer. I suppose I came because it felt like something she'd want."
Weak, Valentina thought.
Perfect, Janet whispered.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Valentina said, and it was the right thing to say, delivered in exactly the right tone – warm but not cloying, sympathetic but not pitying. Ten years of social weaponry had made her fluent in emotional manipulation.
They talked. David was a semi-retired architect. Two daughters – Olivia, nineteen, and Phoebe, seventeen – both at a day school in Hampstead. He missed his wife terribly. He didn't know what to do with himself. He was lonely. He was lost.
He was exactly what she needed.
---
Over the following weeks, Valentina drew David into her orbit with calculated precision. Dinners. Theatre. Long walks through Regent's Park where she let him talk about Sarah and nodded in all the right places. She touched his arm when he spoke. Laughed at his mediocre jokes. Made him feel seen.
It wasn't attraction. David was about as sexually interesting to Valentina as a filing cabinet. But Janet was watching from behind those green eyes, studying him with a different kind of hunger.
He's malleable, Janet thought. Kind. Trusting. He'd do anything you asked.
He'd do anything I asked, Valentina corrected.
Same thing, Janet replied, and for the first time in years, the two of them agreed.
It was a Tuesday evening in early December when Valentina finally made her move. David was at the penthouse, sitting on the cream sofa with a glass of wine he'd barely touched, telling a story about Olivia's gap year plans that he clearly thought was more interesting than it was.
Valentina sat opposite him, legs crossed, watching him with those devastating green eyes. And inside – deep inside, where Janet lived – a decision crystallised.
"David."
He stopped mid-sentence. The tone in her voice was different. Sharper. Like a blade being unsheathed.
"What I'm about to show you is going to be… difficult to understand. But I need you to trust me. Can you do that?"
He blinked. Nodded. Of course he could. David Harper was constitutionally incapable of refusing a direct request from a beautiful woman. It was his most useful quality.
Valentina stood. Turned her back to him. Reached behind her neck and found the zipper – that gossamer-thin seam between the shoulder blades – and pulled.
The sound it made was soft. Intimate. Like a whispered secret.
Zzzzzip.
---
David watched, frozen, as Valentina – peeled.
There was no other word for it. The beautiful olive skin split along her spine and a different woman stepped out. Shorter. Paler. Mousy brown hair, cropped close to her skull. A square jaw. Flat chest. Wide, frightened eyes the colour of dishwater.
She was naked. Shivering. Holding the empty skin of the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and she looked like she might cry.
"My name is Janet," she said. Her voice was thin. Reedy. Nothing like Valentina's honeyed purr. "And this–" she held up the suit, which hung limp and glistening in the penthouse lights like a shed chrysalis, "–this is how I've been living for the last ten years."
She told him everything. The estate sale in Tuscany. The hatbox. The transformation. The power. The wealth. The women. And finally – haltingly, blushing furiously – the fantasy.
"I want to know what it feels like," she whispered. "To be… beneath her. Beneath me. I want to be dominated by Valentina. But I can't be both people at once. So I need–"
"Me," David said.
"You."
He stared at the suit. Then at Janet. Then at the suit again.
"I don't understand. You want me to… wear it?"
"Yes."
"And I'll become… her?"
"Her." Janet's voice cracked. "You'll become Valentina. You'll look like her. Sound like her. Feel like her. The suit – it gives you everything. The body. The confidence. The power. And I want you to use it. On me. I want–"
She stopped. Swallowed hard.
"I want you to fuck me," she said. "As her. The way she fucks. The way I've been fucking girls like me for a decade. I want to know what it's like on the other side."
David set down his wine glass. His hands were trembling slightly, but his eyes – those kind, mild, forgettable eyes – held something Janet hadn't expected.
Curiosity.
"Just once?" he asked.
"Just once."
(It wouldn't be just once.)
---
Part Four: Rebirth
David held the suit up and the penthouse lights played across its surface like oil on water. It weighed almost nothing. It smelled faintly of – something. Jasmine. Musk. Sex.
"Step into the legs first," Janet instructed. She was sitting on the bed now, a robe pulled tight around her small, unremarkable body. Her heart was hammering. "It'll feel strange. Just… let it happen."
He did.
The moment his right foot slid into the suit's leg, his breath caught. The material sealed around his calf with a wet, muscular contraction – not painful, but possessive – and Janet watched his face shift from apprehension to something else. Something hungrier.
"Oh," he said softly. "Oh, that's–"
"I know."
He pulled the suit higher. Janet watched, transfixed, as David's body disappeared into Valentina's. His bony, hair-covered legs smoothed into tanned olive columns. His narrow hips cracked and widened – pop, pop, pop – three sharp reports like knuckles being flexed, and suddenly he had the kind of hips that made men walk into traffic. His flat masculine ass swelled outward, round and firm and obscene, splitting the difference between athletic and pornographic.
"Fucking hell–" His voice was changing already. Climbing. Softening. Gaining that Italian warmth, that honeyed darkness.
He pulled the torso up and the breasts arrived – and this time Janet wasn't experiencing them from the inside but watching, and the sight of those large, perfect tits filling out like they were being inflated by some invisible god made her mouth go dry. David gasped – or rather, the woman David was becoming gasped – and cupped them instinctively, thumbs brushing the dark nipples.
"They're so heavy," he – she – breathed.
The arms went on. The hands refined. The nails lengthened and lacquered themselves in that same dried-blood red.
And then the face. David pulled the mask up and over and the world went silent for three seconds—
Crack. Shift. Settle.
And Valentina opened her eyes.
Janet made a sound. A small, involuntary whimper. Because there she was – the woman she'd built, the woman she'd been, standing in front of her for the first time from the outside. And Valentina was – God, Valentina was devastating. More beautiful than Janet had ever realised when she was wearing the suit, because from inside you could feel the power but you couldn't see it, not really, not the way others saw it.
Valentina's green eyes swept the room and landed on Janet and the look on her face was–
Amused.
"Well," Valentina said, and the voice was perfect – that low, honeyed purr, dripping with authority and sex. "This is interesting."
She looked down at her body. Ran her new hands over her new curves. Cupped her breasts again, this time with more purpose, and arched her back with a low, appreciative moan.
"Mmmmmh… I see why you didn't want to take this off."
"David?" Janet's voice was small.
Valentina looked at her. Tilted her head. That cruel, beautiful face arranged itself into an expression Janet recognised intimately – she'd worn it herself a thousand times, pointed at a thousand trembling girls.
"David's having a moment," Valentina said. "Give him a minute. Actually – give her a minute." She smiled, and the smile was a weapon. "Because right now, darling, I don't feel very much like David at all."
---
The suit did what the suit always did. It didn't just give you the body. It gave you the mindset. The confidence. The dominance. The absolute, unshakeable certainty that you were the most important person in any room you entered.
David had been a quiet, kind, malleable man who drank sparkling water at parties and missed his dead wife.
Valentina was none of those things.
She found the wardrobe by instinct – or rather, by the suit's embedded knowledge, the same way Janet had instinctively known her name, her preferences, her appetites. She selected a black lace bodysuit – the same one Janet used to wear for her sessions – and pulled it on over the suit's flawless skin. Thigh-high stockings. Heels. She didn't stumble in them. The suit knew how to walk in heels the way a dolphin knew how to swim.
When she emerged from the walk-in, Janet felt every molecule of oxygen leave her lungs.
Valentina stood in the doorway, backlit, one hand on her hip, head slightly tilted. The bodysuit strained across her breasts and barely covered the swell of her ass. Her chestnut hair was loose, tumbling over one shoulder. Her green eyes were predatory.
"On the bed," Valentina said.
Janet's legs moved before her brain caught up.
She sat. Then – at a slight raise of Valentina's eyebrow – she lay down. On her back. Hands at her sides. Heart slamming against her ribcage like a bird trying to escape a cage.
Valentina approached. Slowly. The heels clicked against the hardwood – click, click, click – each step a countdown to something Janet had fantasised about for years but was now, in the reality of this moment, terrified of.
"You're shaking," Valentina observed. She sat on the edge of the bed. Placed one perfect hand on Janet's bare thigh. The touch was electric. Janet's breath hitched. "How long have you wanted this?"
"Years," Janet whispered. "Since– since before I can remember. Since I put the suit on for the first time and felt what it was like to be powerful and– and immediately started wondering what it would be like to have someone like me do those things to someone like… like the old me."
"The real you," Valentina corrected gently. Her hand slid higher. "Because this–" she gestured at Janet's plain, trembling body, "–this is the real you, isn't it? Not the goddess. Not the Mistress. You're the girl at the back of the bar. You're the one who texts first and never gets a reply."
Janet's eyes were wet. She nodded.
"I know exactly what girls like you need," Valentina murmured. And it was true – she did. Not because David knew, but because the suit knew. Because Janet had programmed a decade of knowledge into it. How to read a submissive's body. How to push without breaking. How to make a girl feel simultaneously worthless and worshipped.
Valentina leaned down. Her lips brushed Janet's ear.
"Ask nicely."
"Please," Janet breathed. "Please, Mistress."
"Please what?"
"Please– use me. Ruin me. Make me– make me yours."
Valentina pulled back. Looked at her with those cool green eyes. And smiled.
"Good girl."
---
What followed was the most intense two hours of Janet's life.
Valentina was masterful – but of course she was. She was using Janet's own playbook, filtered through a decade of dominance and amplified by the suit's intoxicating confidence. She stripped Janet's robe away with casual authority. Pinned her wrists above her head with one hand (the suit gave her surprising strength – Janet remembered that, how easily she used to manhandle her girls). Kissed her – deep, consuming, claiming – until Janet was gasping.
"Mmmmmh… you taste like desperation," Valentina whispered against her mouth. "I love it."
She straddled Janet's face – God, the weight of her, the heat, the scent – and ground against her mouth with the same slow, imperious rhythm Janet had used on a hundred girls. And Janet – small, plain, trembling Janet – worshipped her. Tongue pressed flat, then pointed, working in frantic, grateful circles while Valentina moaned above her.
"That's it– there– oh, good girl, don't you dare stop–"
When Valentina came, it was with a sharp cry and a hot, wet rush that drenched Janet's face. She squirted like she was making a point – forceful, claiming, marking territory. It ran down Janet's cheeks, into her hair, pooled in the hollow of her throat.
"Clean it up," Valentina said.
Janet licked her lips. Swallowed. Felt something inside her break – a wall, a pretence, the last remnant of the woman who used to wear the suit and pretend she was in control. Because this – this – was where she was meant to be. Beneath. Covered. Consumed.
Then came the strap-on. Valentina selected it from the drawer without hesitation – the thick black one, the obscene one – and harnessed it with practiced ease. She bent Janet over the edge of the bed, one hand fisted in her mousy hair, and positioned herself.
"Last chance," she murmured. "Tell me to stop and I will."
Janet looked over her shoulder. Met those green eyes. Her own creation. Her own monster.
"Don't you dare stop."
Valentina pushed in. Slowly. Relentlessly. Filling Janet completely, the stretch a bright white ache that blurred the line between pain and pleasure until they were the same thing – the same thing – and Janet screamed into the mattress.
"Louder," Valentina commanded, and pulled her hair harder.
She fucked her with long, deep, punishing strokes. Each thrust drove Janet further into the bed, further into submission, further into the realisation that she had been lying to herself for a decade. She wasn't Valentina. She never had been. She was the girl Valentina fucked. The girl who said thank you.
"Who do you belong to?" Valentina asked.
"You– you– Mistress– please–"
"Again."
"I belong to you! I belong to Valentina! I'm yours– I'm– fuck– I'm nothing–"
She came so hard her vision went white. Came screaming, sobbing, shaking apart on Valentina's strap while Valentina held her hips and didn't stop, didn't slow, just kept taking until Janet was a ruined, whimpering puddle of gratitude and tears.
Afterwards, Valentina held her. Stroked her hair. Pressed a kiss to her damp forehead.
"Was that everything you imagined?" she asked.
"More," Janet whispered. "So much more."
"Good." Valentina smiled. That same sharp, cruel, beautiful smile. "Now sleep. We'll talk in the morning."
---
Part Five: The Morning After
Janet woke alone.
For a moment – one disorienting, panicked moment – she thought it had been a dream. But the ache between her thighs was real. The mascara on the pillowcase was real. The faint scent of jasmine and musk and sex was real.
She found Valentina in the kitchen.
She was making espresso. Standing at the La Marzocco in nothing but a silk robe – untied, open, her magnificent body on full display – with her chestnut hair piled in a messy bun and a look of serene contentment on her perfect face. She looked like she'd lived in this penthouse for years. She looked like she owned it.
"Good morning," Valentina said. She didn't turn around.
"Morning," Janet replied. She pulled her robe tighter. Felt suddenly, acutely, aware of the contrast between them. Valentina – tall, golden, impossibly beautiful. Janet – small, pale, forgettable. The same contrast she used to exploit. The same contrast that now pointed in the wrong direction.
"So," Janet said carefully. "That was… incredible. Thank you. Truly. It was everything I—"
"I'm not taking it off."
The words dropped like stones into still water.
Janet blinked. "Sorry?"
Valentina turned. Leaned back against the counter. Crossed her arms beneath those perfect breasts and looked at Janet with an expression of calm, absolute certainty.
"The suit. I'm not taking it off."
"David—"
"Valentina."
"David, we agreed. One night. That was the deal."
"There was no deal, darling." Valentina sipped her espresso. "There was a suggestion from a woman who voluntarily handed over the most powerful object she'd ever owned to a stranger and hoped for the best. That's not a deal. That's… naïveté." She smiled. "Charming, though. Very you."
Janet's stomach dropped. "You can't just—"
"Can't I?" Valentina set the espresso down. Uncrossed her arms. Took a step toward Janet, and Janet – involuntarily – took a step back. "Tell me something, Janet. When you were wearing this suit – when you were me – did you ever want to take it off?"
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because I— it was mine. I found it."
"And now I'm wearing it." Another step. Janet's back hit the kitchen island. "And I feel amazing. I feel more alive than I have since Sarah died. I feel more alive than I've ever felt, actually – sorry, Sarah. I feel powerful. Beautiful. I feel like I could walk into any room and every person in it would drop to their knees."
Her voice was doing something. Not just the words – the voice. That honeyed Italian purr, saturated with pheromones the suit produced (Janet had forgotten about the pheromones – how could she have forgotten about the pheromones?) – was burrowing into Janet's brainstem and liquefying her resolve.
"And I know what you're thinking," Valentina continued, closing the distance between them until they were inches apart, until Janet had to crane her neck to meet those green eyes. "You're thinking: I'll fight this. I'll take it back. I'm the original Valentina and this man can't just steal my life." She tilted her head. "But we both know you won't."
"I will."
"You won't. Because you spent last night being the happiest you've ever been. Didn't you?"
Janet said nothing. Her jaw worked silently.
"Didn't you?" Valentina repeated, softer now. Her hand came up to Janet's cheek. Cupped it gently. And the touch – God, the touch – sent warmth flooding through Janet's entire body, a chemical cascade of comfort and submission and want.
"...Yes," Janet whispered.
"You were made for this, Janet. Not the suit. Not the power. This. Being beneath me. Being mine. You knew it – you've known it for years. That fantasy you kept having? That wasn't a kink. That was your subconscious telling you the truth." Valentina's thumb traced Janet's lower lip. "You're not a Mistress. You never were. You were just… borrowing."
Janet's eyes were wet again. Her chest was tight. Every rational thought in her head was screaming at her to fight – to grab the zipper, to tear the suit away, to reclaim what was hers.
But beneath the screaming, a quieter voice. A voice that sounded exactly like the girl at the back of the bar, nursing a warm gin and tonic, dreaming of someone who would look at her and say: You. I choose you.
She's right, the quiet voice said. You know she's right.
"I—"
"Shhh." Valentina leaned down. Pressed her lips to Janet's forehead. "You don't have to decide anything right now. Just… let me take care of things for a while. Okay?"
Janet closed her eyes. A tear slid down her cheek. Valentina caught it with her thumb.
"Okay," Janet breathed.
"Good girl."
---
Part Six: The New Order
Valentina moved into the penthouse. Or rather – she simply stayed, and the penthouse rearranged itself around her like a palace acknowledging its queen.
Within a week, the shift was total.
Valentina commandeered the master bedroom, the walk-in wardrobe, the ensuite with the rainforest shower and the heated floors. Janet was relocated to the guest room – a perfectly nice space, she told herself, smaller certainly, but perfectly nice – with her minimal belongings (what did she even own, really, without the suit? A few pairs of jeans. Some trainers. Three sports bras) folded neatly in the dresser.
The dynamic settled into place with the terrifying efficiency of water finding its level. Valentina ran the household. Managed the finances (Janet's finances – or rather, Valentina's, since every account, every investment, every property was in Valentina's name, and the woman standing in the kitchen making espresso looked exactly like the woman on the passport). Took meetings. Attended events. Wore the Versace. Drove the Maserati.
Janet… served.
It started small. Making the bed. Preparing meals. Drawing Valentina's baths. The kind of tasks that could be framed as gratitude – you're letting me stay, it's the least I can do – and therefore weren't technically submission.
But Valentina was clever. (Of course she was clever. She was wearing a suit that contained a decade of Janet's strategic intelligence, amplified by the suit's inherent dominance programming.) She escalated. Slowly. Incrementally. With the patience of a woman training a loyal pet.
"Lay out my outfit before I wake up."
"Yes, Valentina."
"Iron it first. I can see a crease."
"Sorry, Valentina."
"Pour my wine. No– use the Riedel glass, not that one. The good one. Honestly, Janet."
"Sorry, sorry."
And then – the moment that crossed the line from domestic service to something else entirely:
"Kneel."
Janet had been clearing the dinner plates. She froze. Turned.
Valentina was sitting at the head of the dining table, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of Barolo in her hand. She was wearing a green silk dress that matched her eyes and her expression was – expectant. Not angry. Not even demanding. Just… waiting.
"I said kneel."
Janet's mouth opened. Closed. She looked at the floor. At Valentina's feet – bare, perfect, with those red-lacquered toenails – and something inside her chest went warm and liquid.
(Fight it.)
(FIGHT IT.)
(Why?)
She knelt.
Valentina smiled. Set her wine down. Reached forward and tilted Janet's chin up with two fingers.
"There she is," she murmured. "My sweet girl."
And Janet – to her everlasting shame, her everlasting relief – leaned into the touch and closed her eyes and let herself be exactly what she'd always been underneath the suit: small, desperate, grateful, owned.
---
Valentina began bringing girls home.
This was the cruelest part. The part that made Janet burn with jealousy so hot it felt like acid in her veins.
Because Valentina didn't just dominate these girls – she dominated them better than Janet ever had. She was more creative. More commanding. More devastating. The suit had absorbed ten years of Janet's technique and the consciousness now wearing it – the shy, grieving architect who'd been David Harper – had brought something Janet lacked: a genuine hunger for it. Janet had always been performing dominance. A needy woman cosplaying as a goddess. Valentina – this new Valentina – was a goddess. She didn't perform. She simply was.
Janet would hear them through the walls. The moans. The commands. The sharp slap of flesh. The wet, unmistakable sound of Valentina coming on some pretty girl's face.
"Clean it up."
Always those same words. Janet's words. Stolen. Perfected. Weaponised.
One night, Valentina left the bedroom door open.
Janet walked past – on her way to the kitchen, she told herself, just fetching water, nothing more – and her feet stopped without her permission. She stood in the doorway and watched.
Valentina had a girl bent over the vanity. A redhead – pretty, freckled, probably twenty-two – who was gripping the marble countertop with white-knuckled hands and making sounds that barely qualified as human. Valentina was behind her, driving the strap deep, one hand wound in the girl's copper hair, the other gripping her hip hard enough to bruise.
Valentina looked up. Met Janet's eyes in the vanity mirror. And winked.
"Come in," she said. Not to the redhead. To Janet.
Janet's feet moved again. Treacherous, obedient feet.
"Sit in the chair. Watch. Don't touch yourself."
Janet sat. Watched. Didn't touch herself.
(Wanted to die.)
(Wanted to live here forever.)
When the redhead was finished – spent, sobbing, thanking Valentina through her tears – Valentina sent her away with a gentle kiss and a firm dismissal. Then she turned to Janet.
"Your turn," she said.
Janet was on the bed before the words finished leaving Valentina's lips. Robe discarded. Legs spread. Every shred of dignity she'd ever had pooling on the floor with her clothes.
"Jealous?" Valentina asked, climbing over her.
"Yes," Janet admitted. Because lying was pointless. Valentina could read her like braille.
"Of her? Or of me?"
"…Both."
Valentina laughed. Low, warm, delighted. "I know, baby. I know." She kissed Janet's throat. Her collarbone. The space between her small breasts. "But you understand now, don't you? Why you were never really her? Never really me?"
"Yes."
"Say it."
"I was… pretending. I was always pretending. I'm not a Mistress. I'm not dominant. I'm—"
"You're mine," Valentina finished. "That's what you are. That's all you need to be."
And she fucked Janet with the same devastating precision she'd used on the redhead, and Janet came screaming, and afterwards she lay in Valentina's arms and felt – for the first time in her adult life – settled. Like a puzzle piece that had finally been slotted into the right space.
The jealousy didn't go away. It sat in her chest like a second heartbeat – hot, sharp, constant. But beneath it, holding it, was something stronger.
Peace.
She was where she belonged.
---
Part Seven: The Daughters
Olivia and Phoebe Harper discovered the truth on a Sunday afternoon in February.
They'd been suspicious for weeks. Their father – steady, quiet, reliable David – had essentially vanished. He wasn't returning calls. He'd stopped visiting. When they texted, the replies were sparse and oddly formal, signed with an "x" that David Harper had never once used in a text message.
It was Olivia – the older one, sharp and stubborn, studying law at Bristol – who decided to investigate. She drove down from university with Phoebe in the passenger seat (Phoebe, seventeen, quieter than her sister, but possessing their mother's keen instinct for bullshit) and they let themselves into the Hampstead house to find it empty.
The Knightsbridge penthouse address came from David's email – he'd left his laptop logged in, a rookie error – and by 3 PM the Harper girls were standing in Valentina's living room, staring at their father's new life.
"What the fuck," Olivia said.
Valentina was on the sofa, legs curled beneath her, reading Vogue Italia and looking utterly unbothered. Janet was in the kitchen, preparing afternoon tea (Earl Grey, loose leaf, in the good pot – Valentina's instructions).
"You must be the daughters," Valentina said. She didn't look up from the magazine. "Tea?"
"Where's our dad?" Phoebe asked. Her voice was shaking.
Valentina turned a page. "Hmm? Oh. He's… around."
Olivia stepped forward. She was tall for a woman – taller than Janet, though still shorter than Valentina – with her father's sandy hair and her mother's direct gaze. "We know something's wrong. Dad hasn't been home in three weeks. His bank accounts have been redirected. His car is in your garage—"
"My garage," Valentina corrected mildly.
"—and I swear to God, if you've done something to him, I will go to the police."
Valentina closed the magazine. Set it down. Uncrossed her legs and stood – all five foot ten of her in bare feet, which still put her two inches above Olivia – and looked at both daughters with an expression of patient amusement.
"Your father," she said, "is standing right in front of you."
Silence.
Then Olivia laughed. A sharp, disbelieving bark. "Right. Sure. You're our dad. You – the six-foot supermodel – are David Harper."
"I didn't say I am David Harper. I said he's standing in front of you." Valentina touched her own collarbone. "He's in here. Somewhere. Quite comfortable, from what I can tell. Happier than he's been since your mother died, actually."
She explained. Not everything – not the zipper, not the mechanics – but enough. The suit. The transformation. The choice.
"He chose this?" Phoebe whispered.
"He stepped into it willingly. And he is choosing – every single day – not to step out."
"Because you won't let him," Olivia snapped.
"Because he doesn't want to." Valentina's voice hardened. Just a fraction. Just enough to remind everyone in the room who the apex predator was. "Your father was a broken man, Olivia. Grieving. Lost. Drinking sparkling water at parties because he couldn't taste anything anymore. And now–" she gestured at herself, "–he feels everything. Beauty. Power. Pleasure. Purpose. He's not your prisoner. He's mine by choice. Just like Janet."
Janet, who had been hovering in the kitchen doorway, flushed scarlet.
Olivia looked at Janet. Then at Valentina. Her expression shifted from anger to confusion to something harder.
"I'll prove it," she said. "I'll prove you're lying. I'll go to the police. I'll get a DNA test. I'll—"
"A DNA test will show that I am Valentina De Luca," Valentina said calmly. "Because that's what the suit does. It doesn't disguise – it becomes. My fingerprints are Valentina's. My dental records are Valentina's. My DNA is Valentina's. There is no trace of David Harper in this body. Not one cell."
"That's impossible."
"And yet."
Olivia stared at her. Jaw clenched. Eyes bright with fury. Beside her, Phoebe was crying quietly.
"We'll fight this," Olivia said.
"I know you'll try." Valentina smiled. It was not a kind smile. "Sit down, both of you. We need to discuss the future."
---
The fight lasted six weeks.
Olivia went to the police. Filed a missing persons report. David Harper was investigated and found to be – officially, bureaucratically – on an extended holiday in Positano. (Valentina had arranged the paper trail. Credit card activity. Passport stamps. Even a postcard, handwritten in David's slightly cramped script, because the suit retained motor memory.)
Olivia hired a private detective. He followed Valentina for ten days and reported back that she was, as far as he could determine, a wealthy Italian-British socialite named Valentina De Luca who was definitely not harbouring a missing architect.
Olivia consulted a solicitor about gaining power of attorney over David's assets. The solicitor found that all assets had been legally transferred – paperwork signed in David's hand, witnessed, notarised – to a trust controlled by Valentina De Luca.
Every door Olivia kicked open led to another locked one. Every avenue she pursued dead-ended in Valentina's flawless, impenetrable web.
Phoebe, meanwhile, tried a different approach. She tried to reach her father.
She came to the penthouse alone, on a Thursday afternoon, and sat across from Valentina with her mother's earnest eyes and said: "Dad. If you're in there. Please. Just – give me a sign."
Valentina looked at her. For a long moment, something flickered behind those green eyes – a tremor, a softness, a flicker of the man who used to carry Phoebe on his shoulders at the beach.
Then it was gone.
"Your father loves you very much," Valentina said. "But he's not coming back. And the kindest thing I can do – for both of you – is to make sure you're taken care of."
"We don't want your money."
"I know you don't. But you need stability. And this situation – the detective, the police, the solicitor – it's not stable. It's not good for either of you. Especially you, Phoebe. You have A-levels next year."
"Don't you dare—"
"I've enrolled you at St. Margaret's. It's excellent – one of the best girls' boarding schools in the country. Full scholarship. Your father's savings are covering Olivia's tuition at Bristol. Everything is arranged."
Phoebe stared at her. Tears streaming down her face.
"You can't just—"
"I already have."
"Olivia won't go. She'll fight—"
"Olivia has been fighting for six weeks and she has achieved precisely nothing." Valentina's voice wasn't cruel. It was final. "She's exhausted. Her grades are slipping. She's drinking too much. I've spoken with her tutor. The kindest thing – the best thing – is for both of you to step back, focus on your futures, and accept that your father is safe, happy, and not coming home."
Phoebe was silent for a very long time.
"Can I– can I visit?" she asked, in a voice so small it made Janet's chest ache.
Valentina softened. "Of course you can. Holidays. Weekends. Whenever you want. I'm not a monster, Phoebe."
(Debatable.)
"You're not our mother."
"No. I'm not. And I'm not trying to be. But I am the person who loves your father enough to give him what he needed, even at great cost." She paused. "And I'm the person who's going to make sure his daughters are safe and well and brilliantly educated. That's not nothing."
Phoebe wiped her eyes. Stood. Walked to the door. Stopped.
"If he ever wants to come back," she said. "Promise me you'll let him."
A beat. Two. Three.
"I promise," Valentina said.
It was the first lie she'd ever told Phoebe Harper. It would not be the last.
---
Olivia came for one final confrontation. A week later. A Friday evening. She'd been drinking – Janet could smell the wine on her breath from across the room – and her eyes were red-rimmed and wild.
"Give him back," she said. She was standing in the penthouse foyer, fists clenched, and for a moment she looked terrifyingly like her mother – the same jaw, the same steel, the same refusal to accept defeat.
"Olivia—"
"GIVE. HIM. BACK."
Valentina regarded her calmly. Then she walked to the foyer. Stood in front of Olivia. And said, very quietly:
"No."
Olivia lunged.
It was uncoordinated – a grief-fuelled, wine-clumsy grab for the back of Valentina's neck, where the zipper was. She'd figured it out, somehow. The detective, maybe. Or maybe she'd just been watching and noticed the faint, hair-thin seam.
But Valentina was faster. She caught Olivia's wrist. Twisted – not hard enough to injure, but hard enough to stop – and pinned her arm behind her back.
"Don't," Valentina said, her lips inches from Olivia's ear. "Ever. Try that again."
The pheromones hit Olivia like a wall. Janet watched it happen – watched the girl's rigid body go slack, watched the fight drain out of her muscles like water from a punctured balloon, watched her eyes go glassy and unfocused.
"You're going to St. Margaret's," Valentina continued softly. "You're going to transfer your remaining credits and finish your law degree from there. You're going to stop drinking. You're going to stop looking for your father. And you're going to be brilliant. Because that's what he'd want."
Olivia's breath was ragged. Uneven. A tear slid down her cheek.
"I hate you," she whispered.
"I know, darling. But you'll thank me one day." Valentina released her wrist. Straightened her jacket. Kissed her forehead – a gesture so maternal, so eerily David, that it made Janet's skin prickle.
"Now go home. Pack. The car's coming Monday at nine."
Olivia left. She didn't look back.
---
Part Eight: The Kingdom
The penthouse was quiet after that.
Quiet and settled, like a house after a storm. The girls were at St. Margaret's – Olivia furious, Phoebe resigned, both of them gradually, reluctantly adapting to their new reality. They visited occasionally. Valentina was gracious with them. Warm. Generous. She took them shopping (Phoebe loved it, despite herself). She helped Olivia with her dissertation (the suit's knowledge base, supplemented by David's architectural precision, made Valentina a formidable researcher). She was, in many ways, a better parent than David had been – more present, more attentive, more capable.
She was also never, ever going to unzip that suit.
Janet knew this. She'd known it from the first morning, when Valentina had stood in the kitchen making espresso with the casual ownership of a woman who'd already won. The suit had found a new host. A better host. Someone who wore the power not as a costume but as a self – integrated, complete, unshakeable.
David was in there, somewhere. Occasionally Janet caught a glimpse – a turn of phrase, a gentle gesture, the way Valentina sometimes stared out the window at the rain with an expression of soft, private sadness that didn't belong on a goddess's face. But those glimpses were becoming rarer. David was dissolving, like sugar in hot water, and what remained was Valentina. Pure, undiluted, permanent Valentina.
And Janet?
Janet made the bed. Prepared the meals. Drew the baths. Knelt when told to kneel. Served when told to serve. Spread her legs when Valentina wanted her (which was often – the suit's sex drive was voracious, and Janet's willing, grateful body was always available). She came when Valentina allowed her to come. She waited when Valentina brought other girls home. She watched, sometimes, from the doorway – green with jealousy, wet with arousal, hating herself, loving herself, loving Valentina with a devotion so total it had erased everything else.
She was happy.
Not the fireworks-and-champagne happiness of Valentina's life – the penthouse, the Maserati, the Versace, the girls – but a deeper, quieter thing. The happiness of a woman who has finally stopped pretending.
She'd spent a decade as a goddess and it had been exhausting. The performance. The dominance. The constant, crushing pressure of being the most powerful person in every room. It wasn't her. It had never been her. She was Janet – mousy, square-jawed, flat-chested Janet – and Janet was a servant. A worshipper. A girl who texted first and waited for a reply and glowed when it came.
Valentina gave her that. Every day. Every command, every correction, every casual display of superiority confirmed Janet's place in the hierarchy and – paradoxically – filled her with a warmth she'd never felt while wearing the suit.
"You're smiling," Valentina said one evening. They were on the sofa. Valentina was reading (Ferrante, in the original Italian – the suit had opinions about literature). Janet was at her feet, head resting against Valentina's knee, eyes closed.
"Am I?"
"Mmm. What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing."
"Liar." Valentina's hand found Janet's hair. Stroked it. "Tell me."
Janet was quiet for a moment. Then:
"I'm thinking that this is exactly what I wanted. Not– not the version I planned. I thought I'd have one night and then take the suit back and go back to being Valentina and it would scratch the itch and I'd be fine. But this is… this is better. Being here. Being yours. I'm thinking I should have given the suit to someone else ten years ago."
Valentina's hand paused. Then resumed stroking.
"You weren't ready ten years ago," she said. "You needed to build me first. To perfect me. So that when I finally had a proper host, I'd be—"
"Irresistible."
"I was going to say flawless, but irresistible works."
Janet laughed. A real laugh. Light, unguarded, free.
"I'm jealous of you," she admitted. "Every single day. I look at you and I think: that was me. That body, that face, that power – it was mine. And it makes me want to scream."
"Does it?"
"Yes."
"But?"
Janet looked up. Met those green eyes. Her green eyes. Not her green eyes.
"But I wouldn't trade places," she said. "Not anymore. Because you're better at being her than I ever was. And I'm better at being this–" she gestured at herself, small and plain and kneeling, "–than I ever was at being that."
Valentina smiled. Leaned down. Pressed her perfect lips to Janet's imperfect mouth.
"You're learning," she murmured.
"I'm a slow learner."
"You're my slow learner. And I'm very, very patient."
---
Epilogue: Her Kingdom
On a warm evening in May, Valentina De Luca stood on the balcony of her Knightsbridge penthouse and surveyed her kingdom.
Below, London glittered. Taxis and buses and tourists and lovers, all moving through the city like blood through veins, none of them knowing that the breathtaking woman on the fourteenth-floor balcony was – had been – a widowed architect named David Harper who'd only wanted to stop feeling empty.
She didn't feel empty anymore.
She felt full. Full of power. Full of beauty. Full of the exquisite, addictive certainty that she was the most extraordinary person in any room she entered. The suit had given her that – or rather, Janet had given her that, by spending a decade refining the suit's potential and then handing it to a man desperate enough to accept it.
Behind her, through the glass doors, she could hear Janet in the kitchen. Humming. Preparing dinner. Something with truffle, because Valentina had mentioned craving truffle at breakfast and Janet had memorised the comment and driven to Harrods and spent forty-five minutes selecting the perfect Umbrian black truffle to shave over Valentina's pasta.
That was love, Valentina thought. Not the performative kind. Not the gift-giving, grand-gesture, Instagram-captioned kind. The real kind. The kind where someone anticipates your desires before you've fully articulated them and derives genuine satisfaction from fulfilling them.
Janet was the best servant she'd ever had. The best lover. The best person – not despite her plainness, her neediness, her desperate, bottomless hunger for approval, but because of it. Those qualities, which had been weaknesses in Janet's old life, were strengths in her new one. She was attentive because she was anxious. She was devoted because she was desperate. She was obedient because she was, at her deepest core, a woman who craved being told what to do by someone strong enough to mean it.
Valentina was strong enough.
She would always be strong enough.
She turned from the balcony. Walked inside. Found Janet at the stove, wearing an apron over a plain cotton dress, her mousy hair pulled back with a clip. She looked – domestic. Unremarkable. A woman you'd pass in Tesco without a second glance.
Valentina stood behind her. Slid her arms around Janet's waist. Pressed her lips to the back of Janet's neck.
"Smells wonderful," she murmured.
Janet leaned back into her. "Truffle tagliatelle. Twenty minutes."
"Perfect." Valentina's hand slid lower. Janet's breath caught. "That gives us time."
"Valentina— the pasta will overcook—"
"Then you'd better be quick." She spun Janet around. Lifted her onto the counter. Pushed the apron aside. "Or I'll be very displeased."
Janet looked up at her. Green eyes meeting grey. Goddess meeting mortal. And the expression on Janet's face – that mixture of fear and adoration and helpless, hopeless desire – was the most beautiful thing Valentina had ever seen.
"Yes, Mistress," Janet breathed.
Valentina kissed her. Hard. Claiming.
Mine, she thought. All mine. The suit. The penthouse. The money. The girl. The girls. The daughters who'll come around eventually. Every single piece of this perfect, corrupt, magnificent life.
Mine.
And somewhere deep inside – deeper than the suit, deeper than Valentina, deeper than the pheromones and the power and the perfect olive skin – David Harper felt a faint pulse of something that might have been guilt.
Then Valentina pushed it down.
And it didn't come back up.
---
~ Fin ~
