AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I don’t finish the sentence. But I know she gets it. The unspoken thing here hanging over all of us is thatI’mthe target.I’mthe danger magnet.
She and everyone else I know are literally safer the further they stay away from me at this point.
“So, what’s up?”
I chew on my lip. “You guys use private investigators at the firm, right?”
Elsa’s a partner at Crown and Black, one of New York’s most esteemed law firms.
“Oh, yeah, lots of them, actually.”
“Do you have a good one you’d recommend?”
I can picture her frowning as she pauses before slowly answering.
“Ido, but…” She clears her throat. “What’s going on?”
“I… There’s this friend of mine who’s nervous about this ex of hers,” I lie. “I want to track him down and give her peace of mind that he’s not coming back.” I wince. “That’s…legal, right?”
Elsa laughs. “Yeah, that’s totally legal. And I do have someone. He’s good, too. Very discreet. I’ll text you his contact info right now.”
I smile, even though I suddenly feel likesuchan asshole.
Because of course this isn’t for a friend. It’s for me. To dig into Castle’s life. The lie I’ve told myself, to make myself feel likelessof an asshole for prying into his life, is that there’s no way I can be married to someone with that many secrets for a year, even if it’s a fake marriage.
The pathetic reality is, I just want to know everything about him. Selfishly, because if I learn things about him, they’re like little pieces of him that I can secretly cling to. And jealously, to see if thereareother women in his life that me and this situation are keeping him from.
God, I’m such a psycho.
“Okay, great. Thanks so much, Elsa.”
“No problem! Hope your friend’s okay.”
And that’s how, twenty minutes later, I’ve officially hired a PI to snoop on my own husband.
What could possibly go wrong?
23
CASTLE
I’m usedto the deep end, and not so much diving as getting chucked head-first into it. Hell, it’s been like that my whole life. Almost every major event has hit me unexpectedly, shoving me down deep and forcing me to either learn to swim really fast, or fucking drown.
My childhood. Realizing very young that my parentswere notthere to help me, or care for me, or protect me, but that they were going through life looking out for themselves first, and me and Kelly if they had any energy left over afterward.
That was being chucked head-first into the deep end with a brick tied to my feet. That was realizing I’d better learn to make food and clean my own clothes pronto, or I’d be going hungry and dirty for a week before anyone noticed.
But of course, as soon as you learn to swim in one deep end, life will scoop you up and dump you right into another, even deeper swimming pool.
Childhood was bad. But adolescence was a nightmare, and my teen years were hell. Then came the day when our family of four became a family of two. The day Kelly and our father died.
She by his hand.
And he by mine.
Taking a life at the age of seventeen is a deep end no one should stick so much as a toe in, never mind plunge into headlong. Luckily, Dominic Farrell, for whom I’d done some work before, pulled some strings with the arresting officers thatmy own motherhad called on me. As he explained it to me, I had a choice: trial as an adult and prison for a very, very long time. Or go serve my country.
In hindsight, prison would’ve been easier.
