Chapter 1 - The Question He Should Have Asked
“What is it about, then?”
Maren looked at the man standing behind the desk.
Once, she could have answered without speaking. She could have walked into his arms, pressed her forehead against his chest, and trusted that whatever frightened her would become something they faced together.
Now she could barely remember what that trust had felt like.
“It’s about the fact that you think I need proof of an affair to justify being hurt.”
Gideon’s expression changed.
Outside, rain tapped against the windows.
“I ate dinner alone for six months,” she continued. “I stopped calling because hearing your voicemail hurt less than hearing you say you were busy. I started apologizing to the housekeeper whenever she set two places.”
“Maren.”
“You told me I was safer not understanding. Do you know what I heard?”
He said nothing.
“That I was useful when you needed comfort and inconvenient when I needed honesty.”
Gideon lowered his eyes.
For once, he had no answer ready.
Maren reached for the ultrasound. This time, he let her take it.
“I’m staying with Nora.”
Her older sister lived in a small house in Evanston, where the kitchen faucet whistled and nobody required an appointment to speak to someone they loved.
“I can arrange somewhere more comfortable.”
“Nora’s house is comfortable.”
“Security, then.”
“If I need protection, you can explain why.”
His gaze moved toward the closed office door.
There it was again.
The calculation.
The decision about how much truth she could handle.
Maren slipped the photograph into its envelope.
“I won’t raise a child inside that silence.”
Gideon moved around the desk, then stopped several feet away.
“Six months ago, someone sent me photographs of you outside the children’s literacy center.”
She went still.
The center was where she volunteered twice a week.
“What photographs?”
“You arriving. You leaving. Standing beside your car.”
“Who?”
“I didn’t know.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“They included a message. If I continued asking questions about a shipment, the next photographs would be different.”
Maren stared at him.
For a moment, the office seemed unfamiliar.
The polished desk. The expensive carpet. The man who had shared her bed while deciding she should remain ignorant of a threat against her life.
“What shipment?”
“One routed through our freight company. It was connected to my brother’s accident.”
Theo Vescari had died the previous winter when his car went through a guardrail on an icy road. Gideon had buried him on a Tuesday and returned to work on Wednesday.
Maren remembered trying to get him to talk.
He had kissed her forehead and told her he needed a few days.
Those days had become half a year.
“You think Theo was murdered?”
“I think he found something before he died.”
She gripped her purse.
“And Cecily?”
“She’s been helping me trace the transactions.”
“While your mother told everyone she understood you better than I did?”
His jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“You let her.”
“Yes.”
That answer hurt precisely because he did not try to soften it.
Gideon looked at the envelope in her hand.
“I thought distance would make you less useful as leverage.”
Maren’s laugh was small and disbelieving.
“So you made me feel unloved to convince dangerous people you didn’t love me?”
“I thought—”
“You thought for both of us.”
He stopped.
She could see the instinct to defend himself. She had lived with it long enough to recognize the moment he swallowed it.
“I did,” he said.
Maren looked toward the door.
She was frightened now, but fear did not erase the loneliness that had brought her there.
“I need copies of the threat. I need the name of the investigator. And I need an attorney who doesn’t work for your family.”
“You’ll have all three.”
“Today.”
“Today.”
She started to leave.
“Maren.”
Her hand rested on the door handle.
“I signed because I thought keeping you married to me would be selfish.”
She turned.
“You could have asked what I wanted.”
His face seemed to age.
“I know.”
“No. You know now.”
She opened the door.
Adrian Pike stood farther down the hallway, speaking into his phone. He stopped when he saw her.
Something about the abrupt silence made Maren hesitate.
Then Gideon appeared behind her.
“Adrian,” he said, “have a complete copy of every document sent to Maren’s independent counsel.”
The attorney adjusted his glasses.
“Of course.”
“And don’t file anything else without written instructions from both sides.”
For the first time that afternoon, Adrian looked uneasy.
Maren noticed.
May you like
So did Gideon.
Neither said a word until the elevator doors closed between them.
