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She looked around, realizing for the first time how stark the room was. There were no photographs, no mementos, not even any books, although she knew he was a voracious reader.
The art was expensive and abstract, but it evoked no feeling in her. Like her husband, it was an enigma, chosen to fill space without giving anything away.
She entered the walk-in closet and was hit with his scent, tobacco and wood and musk and clean sweat. She closed her eyes, feeling calmer, and walked slowly among the suit coats arranged by color on one side of the closet.
They were velvety under her fingers, and she stroked them as she made her way down the line, then paused to open the drawers filled with ties and socks, cuff links and briefs.
In the bottom drawer, she was surprised to find a selection of activewear. She shouldn’t have been — he would need them for his runs — but the performance fabric and fleece seemed oddly out of place among the fine cotton and wool that dominated his closet.
She reached for a hoodie in the bottom drawer, wanting something of him close. It was thick and gray and she wondered if he’d ever worn it. She couldn’t imagine Lyon in a sweatshirt. He was usually showered and changed — and often gone — by the time she woke up in the morning.
But when she lifted it to her nose, it smelled just like him. She breathed it in and lifted it slowly over her head, wincing as her ribs cried out in protest. She pulled it gently down over her pajama top and sighed with the plushness of it, the comfort of it.
She was bending to close the drawer when a glint of metal caught her eye at the back of it.
She lowered herself to the floor — bending at the waist was too painful — and lifted the object, hidden beneath the sweats at the back of the drawer.
It was a photograph, the frame silvering with age. In the picture, a small boy stood holding the hand of a severe-looking woman with sleek dark hair.
Kira brought the photograph closer to her face and blinked in surprise.
The little boy was Lyon. She was sure of it.
She saw remnants of him in the set of his jaw, the coldness in his eyes. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, while the woman next to him wore a knee-length wrap dress in a geometric print. Large sunglasses shielded her eyes, but her mouth was set in a fine line.
His mother? She didn’t know. He never spoke of her, and the only thing Kira knew about her was that she had returned to Russia when his father was sent to prison.
Kira looked to where her hand was joined with the boy’s — with Lyon’s. It looked like she held it lightly.
Reluctantly?
Lyon looked to be about five years old, just a few years younger than he would have been in Kira’s first memories of him. He gazed directly at the camera, and now Kira wondered if it wasn’t coldness in his eyes but fear.
She touched her hand to her stomach, thinking about the baby growing inside her, wondering if he or she would feel loved, would feel safe.
She shook her head. She was reading too much into a simple photograph, letting her imagination run away with her in her desire to understand the man she’d married.
The picture made her feel strange. Strange and sad.
She tucked it back under the sweatpants and rose to her feet, turning off the light and closing the door of the closet behind her.
She hesitated at the end of Lyon’s bed. She was suddenly exhausted, the short foray into Lyon’s room feeling more like a long journey to her healing body.
He’d let her stay with him the night before she’d met Annie for breakfast (she didn’t want to think about the other thing that had happened that day). Surely he wouldn’t mind if she lay down, just for awhile.
She moved toward the bed and pulled back the expensive coverlet, then slid between the sheets. She sighed with pleasure. Like everything in the penthouse, the sheets were luxurious, as soft as feathers on her sensitive skin.
Her head sank into the down pillow, Lyon’s sweatshirt cocooning her in a cloud of cotton and fleece. She thought of her baby — of her and Lyon’s baby — floating inside her. What kind of world was she bringing it into? What kind of marriage? Was it possible to create a happy home without trust?
Did she trust Lyon? Did he trust her?
She was no closer to an answer when she fell into sleep.
43
They arrived at the cabin shortly after midnight, parked the car off the road where it wouldn’t be seen by passing cars — not that there were many of those — and made their way through the woods in silence.
He had to hand it to the Syndicate men: they were good, swift and quiet on their feet even though the snow was deep and challenging to navigate, their gear extra bulky because of the cold.
