‘OK… my turn.’ Mary reached into her handbag.
There was no doubt that Mary’s mind was racing at a thousand miles per hour after she had discovered the secret door in Quaddra’s office, but she was still able to remember to grab the correct handbag before leaving their house – the one with Quaddra’s present in it.
Mary placed the professionally wrapped box on the table, in front of her husband. This one was also square and about three to four inches high. ‘Happy anniversary, honey.’
‘Oh, baby.’ Quaddra’s smile reached his eyes. ‘You didn’t have to get me anything. You already gave me everything when you married me.’
‘You deserve extra.’ Mary smiled back. ‘Open it. I hope you like it.’
Like a kid opening his first present on Christmas morning, Quaddra ripped the paper from around the box. ‘No way,’ he said, as soon as he read the name on the lid of the box. He lifted it to find an F.P.Journe Quantième Perpétuel watch inside. This was a very similar watch to the one that Mary had seen on Phillip Evans’ wrist, fourteen years ago, in London.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ Quaddra’s gaze moved to her.
‘So, you like it?’
‘Who, in their right mind, wouldn’t like a watch like this, honey? This is insane.’
Mary laughed. ‘That’s because I’m insane about you. Go ahead. Put it on. Let me see how it looks.’
Quaddra reached for it, but paused just as his fingers brushed against the watch. ‘How about I put it on when I get home? I can wear just this.’ He winked at Mary.
She laughed again… harder this time. ‘Deal.’
Both of their meals were absolutely exquisite. No wonder customers had to wait months to get a booking for that restaurant.
‘So,’ Quaddra asked, ‘would you like to have a look at the dessert menu?’
Mary shook her head. ‘I don’t think I could eat another bite.’
‘Yeah, me neither.’ The smile he gave Mary was suggestive. ‘So how about we go back home so that we can both try on our presents?’
Mary mirrored her husband’s smile. ‘I’d like that.’ But what she really wanted to say was – ‘Sure, why don’t we do that inside your fucking secret room behind the filing cabinet?’
Eighty-Four
Mary and Quaddra had sex wearing just their anniversary gifts, and this was the first ever time that Mary had had to fake an orgasm with Quaddra. Not because he didn’t feel good inside her, like he always did, but because she just couldn’t stop thinking about that secret door.
Once Mary was done faking it, Quaddra fell asleep with his arm around her, like he’d done countless times before. Mary loved when he did that, but not tonight. Tonight, once they came back from their anniversary dinner, Mary noticed that Quaddra’s office door was still unlocked. He’d never locked it before they left. After sex, Quaddra never left the room. He went into the en suite bathroom, but he never actually left their bedroom, which meant that his office was still unlocked.
Once Quaddra placed his arm around Mary, it was like he had locked her in place, so instead of moving, she simply laid there, listening to his breathing, as it slowed down to a steady rhythm, until he’d fallen asleep.
Mary tried to push the image of the door behind the cabinet away from her thoughts… tried falling asleep feeling Quaddra’s warmth surrounding her – something that she had always loved – but tonight it was no good.
What Mary really wanted to do was slowly slither her way out of her husband’s grip, get out of bed, and go check whatthe hell was behind that secret door, but she’d seen that film before… plenty of times, actually. This was when fiction imitated real life, or real-life imitated fiction. Mary wasn’t really sure which, but it always happened… like Murphy’s Law. As soon as she got out of bed and went into his office again, Quaddra would wake up and catch her there, red-handed. If Mary got out of bed and went into the kitchen, or to read a book in the study, or even for a run, Quaddra would carry on sleeping like a baby. He would never even notice that she was gone, but the second that she stepped into his office and activated that secret door mechanism, just like in a movie thriller, he would wake up. That was just the way the world turned – if something could go wrong, it would.
As Quaddra slept, Mary tried reasoning with herself, arguing that billionaires were eccentric people and that they liked doing things and buying things that they had no real need for, just because they could. The voice of reason tried to argue that a secret room in the house of the super-rich, more often than not, was nothing special, tending to be something rather silly, like some kind of novelty room. It pondered that for all she knew, Quaddra could simply have a fridge full of cold beer hidden behind that cabinet. That was something that the super-rich would do just for the fun of it – just because he saw it in a film and thought it would be a cool thing to have. Or it could be a collectors’ room, where he kept his hidden collection of baseball cards, or Matchbox cars, or something. Quaddra was also an investor, so it stood to reason that he would probably have a secret vault in the house somewhere. What if he invested in gold, and the vault was full of gold bars? Or diamonds? Or cash? Or anything of extreme value that he didn’t trust the banks with?
Fighting the voice of reason was Mary’s paranoid self, arguing that she had also seen this film before, and Quaddra’s secret room could be an armory, in which case he could be an arms dealer, ora gun for hire… a paid assassin. He certainly traveled more than enough to warrant that possibility. That was what paid assassins did, wasn’t it? Traveled a lot and had a secret weapons room in the house. At least that was what they did in the films.
The secret room could also be full of drugs, Mary’s paranoid self told her, in which case Quaddra would be a drug lord.
All of those paranoid options terrified Mary, because if any of them were true, her plan was dead in the water.
It wasn’t that hard to con a rich guy out of millions with a wedding sting, or to send him to prison with an ‘abusive husband’ tag, if the plan was well-thought-out and executed, but she couldn’t do that to a drug lord, or a paid assassin. Those people wouldn’t go quietly. In fact, they wouldn’t go at all. She was the one who’d be gone… way before she managed to finalize her divorce or take Quaddra to court.
That night, Mary never fell asleep. Her brain just wouldn’t disconnect.
Quaddra did roll over, taking his arm with him, sometime around 1:30 a.m. Mary’s curiosity was killing her. She needed to know what was behind that secret door, but she didn’t want to get out of bed and risk it. Murphy’s Law was real. Her life was flooded with examples, and this was one that she didn’t want to add to her long list.
