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“Aye, I’ll do that.” Finn is quicker to get out of the office than I am, clearly wanting to be out of my way, and I don’t blame him. I walk towards the staircase in quick strides, feeling the tension within me build as I head up to the bedroom.
I see Marika the moment I open the door. She’s standing at the dresser in only a pair of jeans and her bra, and for a split second, I forget why I’ve come upstairs at the sight of her half-topless, her smooth skin bare and open to my hands and my mouth—
And then I imagine different hands and a different mouth sliding over her, and the anger I feel is blinding.
“Marika.” I’ve never said her name like that before, cold and hard and emotionless, and when she spins to face me, the shock on her face tells me that she heard it exactly like that. “I think you have some things to explain to me?”
Her hands tighten around the sweater she’s holding. I try to tell myself that it means nothing, that it certainly doesn’t mean she knows what I’m talking about, but it’s hard for me to think rationally. “What are you talking about?” she whispers, her voice trembling, and that doesn’t help the furious certainty pounding through me that Finn must be onto something.
Finn wouldn’t have brought something like that to me unless he believed it was worth mentioning. He works for me, but he’s also my friend—very close to a brother, in many ways—and he wouldn’t tell me that, wouldn’t make it sound as if Marika were complicit, unless he was very sure that it was more than a bodyguard stepping out of line. I want to believe my wife wouldn’t do such a thing—but I’ve also known Finn much, much longer than I’ve known her.
I’m inclined to believe him.
“I’ve just been told that Finn saw something interesting in Dublin yesterday,” I say slowly, my voice hard with the anger coursing through me. “You, in fact.”
“Me?” She swallows hard, frozen to the spot, and I feel with a sudden certainty that nothing that is going to come out of her mouth will be the truth.
The question is, what am I going to do about it?
“You. Pinned up against a wall in an alleyway, kissing another man. One of the security team Nikolai sent.” I take a slow step towards her, and I don’t miss the way she shrinks back, the first time she’s ever flinched from me. It cuts me to the bone, because I had hoped to never see that. I know somewhere deep within myself that no matter what comes of this, no matter what the truth is, this will change what there is between us. Our marriage won’t be the same after today.
That hurts more than I thought it possibly could.
“Tell me the truth, Marika. Because Finn seemed to think that it looked as if you wanted him to be kissing you. Like you’d done it before.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I didn’t want it. I—”
“So it was you he saw. He didn’t mistake some other woman for you?” I wouldn’t have believed it if she tried to use that excuse—Finn is smarter than that—but I want to hear it from her own lips.
“It’s true,” she whispers, and her voice is shaking in earnest now. “I—he pinned me up against the wall. Surprised me in the alleyway—he pulled me in there and had me pinned before I could get away. I tried to push him off of me, but he was too strong—”
I’ve often heard it said that the best way to lie is to keep what you say as close to the truth as possible. As I look at Marika, at her trembling hands and lips, the wide-eyed stare she’s giving me, all I can think is that’s what’s happening here. “So you didn’t want the kiss?”
She shakes her head vehemently. “No,” she whispers, but I don’t believe her. There’s something wrong about this, and even if my anger is clouding my judgment, I don’t think it’s so far clouded that I can’t tell that Marika is holding something back.
“Who was it? Which guard?” My voice is ice cold, and I see her shrink back again as I take another step closer, and then another.
“I–I don’t know his name.” The tremor in her voice sounds, again, like a lie. Either she’s protecting someone else, or herself.
Or both.
“He was from your brother’s security, and you don’t know his name?”
Marika shakes her head, swallowing hard. “I don’t know all of them by name.”
“Nikolai sent them for your comfort. Wouldn’t he choose ones youdoknow?” I step closer still, within touching distance now, and I can see she’s shaking all over. “Maybe ones you’re familiar with.Toofamiliar with, even.”
“Theo, I didn’t—I don’t—”
“What?” I reach out, my fingers clasped around her jaw as I hold her there so she can’t look away. “Didn’t want the kiss? Don’t know his name? Why don’t I believe you,cailín?”
She shudders at the word that I’ve almost always used as an endearment with her up until now. “No, Theo. I didn’t want it. I don’t know who he was—”
“I don’t believe you!” My fingers tighten on her jaw, my voice rising, and I hear her whimper of fear. A part of me shouts somewhere within my mind to back down, to have this conversation more calmly, but the anger is throbbing through me too forcefully, the thought that some other man has touched her making me feel nearly murderous with rage. The thought that I’ve been lied to when I trusted her, have begun to care for her, feels even worse.
“Has he touched you before this, Marika? Kissed you? Or—” I drag my gaze down the front of her body pointedly, as she tries to shake her head within my grasp.
“No—”
