Page 73 of Thin Lines (Donati Bloodlines 2)

Quietly, she cried. Tears wet the pillow, but it didnothing.

Nothing would help.

Had she deserved this? After what she did, was thisher punishment?

“Quiet,” she heard rumble from the other side of thebed.

Emma shoved the side of her fist into her mouth tomuffle her sobs. The sickness making her vision swim wouldn’t go away.

She wanted Calisto.

He never would have done this to her.

She knew it.

“I apologized, Cam,” Affonso mumbled in his stupor.“You know I did.”

What did that even mean?

“My head feels like someone took a sledgehammer toit.”

Emma straightened on the seat, and glanced at the reflectionstaring at her in the vanity. Affonso stood a few feet back, watching her withhis familiar cold gaze. He was in her space—her safe space. He never enteredthe walk-in closet that was big enough to be a small room. It housed herthings, and it gave her time away from him.

Why was he in there?

“Maybe lay off the bourbon next time,” Emma managed tosay.

She went back to her work at the mirror, covering thebruises of her husband’s fingerprints under her jaw with a green tintedconcealer that would neutralize the redness. There was nothing she could doabout the fingerprints on the insides of her thighs except to make sure herdresses were long enough that they wouldn’t ride up to expose the marks.

Affonso watched her work in silence.

By the time she was reaching for the rows oflipsticks, Affonso had moved to stand directly behind her. She made a grab forthe pink tube, the one Affonso liked, and switched to the fire-engine red thatshe preferred.

Affonso sighed behind her.

Emma didn’t pay him any mind as she went to work onthe task of painting her lips with carefully done strokes.

“Do you want something?” Emma finally asked when sheput the tube back.

“I’d like for you to wash that red off before we go tochurch.”

“I think you can manage to look at it for one day.”

Affonso’s gaze narrowed. “I can force you to take itoff.”

“Seems you can force a lot of things when you wantto.”

Emma wished she could take the words back the verysecond they left her mouth, but they were out there. She watched her husband’sface turn from a mask of apathy to anger in a blink. Then, he was back to stoneagain.

Blank like paper.

“I wouldn’t quite call it forcing anything when it’smy wife,” Affonso noted.

“The law believes differently.”

Affonso barked out a short laugh. “Sweetheart, in myworld, I am the law.”

She knew that, too.