Page 112 of Thin Lives

And unhappy Affonso made for a quiet, awkward dinner with his people.

Emma almost wished she could feel sorry for her husband, but she found that she felt very little for the man at all. It was hard to care for someone who only used you, after all.

If it weren’t for her son sitting in Affonso’s lap, sucking on his thumb and curled against the man’s arm like he was comfortable there, Emma would have sneaked out of the dinner party long ago. Using the excuse that Cross needed to feed and be put down for a nap always worked, but the baby was currently happy and content in Affonso’s embrace as people chatted around the table.

She refused to call Affonso her baby’s father.

Everyone else did.

Everyone else believed it, too.

Emma knew better.

“Any news, boss?” a man asked down the way.

Affonso frowned into his glass of whiskey. He’d been drinking a hell of a lot more lately, though it really wasn’t a new development. He’d always drank, it just seemed like he was partaking more often, and with more gusto. Emma just tried to stay the fuck out of his drunken way when he was in a mood.

“No,” Affonso said.

“Ray would—”

“Don’t speak his name.”

Emma stiffened in her chair at the sudden vehemence and rage coating Affonso’s tone. He didn’t once look up from his glass, but he didn’t have to. She could plainly see his anger ticking in his jaw as his muscles in his neck worked over and over.

Ray hadn’t been around.

It was hard to ignore Ray’s almost-constant presence was suddenly … gone. Affonso didn’t talk about it, not a single word. Men came and went, asking about the underboss, only to have their boss brush them off in one of his many drunken spiels.

Tonight was clearly going to be no exception to that new rule.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emma caught Affonso watching her again like he had been doing a lot lately. Maybe the man was more paranoid than normal. It probably didn’t help that she’d come home two weeks before with no enforcer following her, and only a single red dress in a shopping bag.

He must have lost me, Emma had said when questioned.

The red one looked the best, she said when Affonso complained about the dress.

She could tell, just by the way he had narrowed his gaze at her, that he didn’t believe a word she had told him the day she came home after being with Calisto. But what could her husband say, exactly? There were no obvious marks on her body to say she had been with someone else. He had no reason to suspect she had lost her enforcer on purpose when she had never done anything of the sort before that day. And she had come home with a dress, after all, just like he’d demanded. She couldn’t help it if the dress wasn’t to his satisfaction.

Still, Affonso watched her.

Surveying her words. Monitoring her actions. Checking her behavior.

It wasn’t anything new, to be sure, but it still unnerved Emma like nothing else. She hid how uncomfortable it made her with false smiles and useless chatter.

She wasn’t the only person her husband watched, though. No one was above Affonso’s suspicions lately.

Emma supposed it didn’t help that whenever he seemed to have visitors, letters kept showing up in all sorts of places.

Letters she took the time to read.

Letters that laid out each one of his lies.

Letters that only one person was supposed to have.

Affonso went into a paranoid fit every time another one of Calisto’s letters showed up. No one was safe from his suspicions, but he almost always overlooked Emma. She believed that was because her husband was trying to hide what was happening.

Why would he want her to know Calisto was alive?