Page 45 of The Silent Hour

Toya’s expression shifted into something between exasperation and amusement. "Respectfully, Juju, the man is fine."

I stared at her, the patio’s ambient noise fading for a beat. "What?"

"He is!" Her Creole accent warmed the words, layering them with a richness that made even this absurdity sound reasonable. "He still fills out a Tom Ford suit like it was poured directly onto him—shoulders broad enough to hold up all that generational wealth, dark hair always perfectly in place even when he runs a hand through it." She leaned forward slightly, her gold bangles sliding down her wrist. "Fit, all broody and expensive-looking. And the hygiene?" She tapped a manicured nail on the tabletop for emphasis. "Impeccable."

Serena's perfectly shaped eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline. "The hygiene?"

"You know I dated that guy in college who looked like Adonis but had turtle-tank breath."

Serena's entire face contorted in disgust, her nose wrinkling as if she’d caught a whiff of it right there on the sunlit patio. "That's disgusting."

"And sadly true," I confirmed, the memory surfacing with startling clarity—the dissonance of sculpted cheekbones and stale air.

"That's one of the reasons I fell so hard for Knox," Toya continued, a fond smile playing on her lips. "That man knows his way around a toothbrush, mouthwash, floss—the whole damn arsenal."

We all laughed, the sound blending with the distant clink of glasses and the low hum of conversation around us.

A low murmur of conversation and the clink of ice in crystal glasses drifted around us as Serena’s soft voice cut through like a blade.

“On a more serious note,” she said, leaning forward and resting one immaculate hand on the edge of the table, “everyone knows Ethan Marcelli adores his wife.” Her dark eyes, framed by perfectly arched brows, locked onto mine with quiet intensity.

I felt the plush banquette cushion shift beneath me.

“Add everything together, and you’ve got a powerful man in his own right—who also happens to be unavailable. Completely, publicly unavailable. For someone like Lila, that probably makes him more appealing, not less.”

They were right. Every point Serena made felt like a sharpened arrow. Still, something inside me twisted at the thought. Marriage was supposed to be enough. A ring resting on my finger, our shared last name inked on every legal document, a life we’d built side by side. That meant something to me.

Women had noticed Ethan before, glances that lingered a half-beat too long, chipped-red lipstick on cocktail napkins. Some had even tried their luck. He’d stiffly closed the door on each one and moved on. None had worked for his firm; none had dared sit across from him in his office and test the limits of his patience.

“I can handle this for you, Juju,” Serena said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. She glanced around our secluded corner before sweeping her gaze back to me. “I keep a little insurance policy in my desk, my purse, even the trunk. One call to her after hours, and she disappears from our lives like she never existed.”

Toya’s lips curved into a grin so sharp it could cut glass. “If you want something less permanent, I can still make that bitch regret the day she looked at you sideways. Some lessons leave scars every time you look in the mirror.”

I stared between them, the heat of their loyalty both comforting and terrifying. “We are not going there. Not yet. Maybe not ever.” I lifted a hand to forestall any eager protests from these two—my own personal SWAT team. “Ethan told me how he intends to handle her, and I’m going to be there when he does.”

Serena cocked an eyebrow, folding her arms beneath sleeves of delicate lace. “You sure? Some problems only go away once they’re buried.”

Toya’s smile went feral. “Just say the word.”

I laughed, shaking my head against the tension. “I appreciate the offers, but I can get my own hands dirty if I need to. You both know that.”

Neither argued—because they knew. They always knew.

“I trust my husband. Do I trust that harlot? Absolutely fucking not. But ultimately, she’s irrelevant. She wasn’t standing beside me when we exchanged vows at the altar, or when we made the ones beneath it. She didn’t promise me anything. She owes me nothing. Not loyalty. Not decency. Not respect.”

Their faces turned serious as I met their gazes. “He does. If another woman wants my husband, that’s her problem. If my husband ever decides he wants her back, then it becomes mine.”

There. That was Simple enough. I couldn’t fathom why anyone wasted time blaming the woman outside a marriage for promises she never made. Ethan had made mine. I trusted him to keep them.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ETHAN

THE COFFEE ON MY DESK had gone cold hours ago, a bitter black sludge settled in the chipped ceramic of a mug that declared me the World's Okayest Lawyer. A Father’s Day gift from my girls, still too young to understand what their father did for a living—or who he did it for.

I drank it anyway, the acrid swallow scraping down my throat like ground glass. Perfect. It tasted like the case files hemorrhaging across my desk: manila folders gutted open, their contents spilling out like evidence tagged and bagged, others stacked in teetering Jenga towers that threatened to bury me alive.

My Montblanc, one of many my father kept bringing me as if I collected pens instead of regrets, lay heavy against the yellow legal pad.