He made it to my house in nine minutes and didn’t even look ruffled.
I, on the other hand, moved from no profanity to nothing but profanity.
“Good morning to you, too,” he said calmly, readjusting his nose back to its place without as much as a wince as blood spurted out of his nostrils. The crack the bone made alone would make anyone but the two of us gag. “To what do I owe this greeting?”
“To being a bullshit private investigator and a terrible fucking friend. You slacked off. Guess how my wife spent her night yesterday?” I plastered him against my front door, swinging my fist again.
I jabbed his ribs, feeling and hearing at least two of them crack.
“With your dick in her ass?” he asked flatly, tapping the pocket of his leather jacket, taking out a pack of cigarettes and lighting one up. He really was immune to pain. “I suggest you try other holes if you’re interested in knocking her up.”
“You’re a sick human.”
“Thank you.” He dropped his Zippo into his front pocket.
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“To me, it was. Most people don’t consider me human at all. So what was your wife up to yesterday?”
I stepped back from him, realizing his lack of fear and pain made it pointless to beat him up. I walked over to the bar cart. It was five o’clock. Sure, it was in the morning, but I never let semantics get in my way.
“Paxton Veitch paid her a visit.” I poured a finger of cognac into a goblet, training my eyes on the golden liquid.
Sam limped in my direction, his expression unfathomable. “He’s in town?”
“You should’ve known that.”
“You told me not to check on him. You were fucking specific about it, too.” He leaned against the wall, watching me.
He had a point. I’d rejected the idea Paxton Veitch posed a threat to my marriage for so long, being proved differently wasn’t on my radar.
“You need to tail him,” I instructed. “Find out why he’s here. What he wants.”
“I can tell you right now why he’s here—he’s here because his ex-wife just married into one of the wealthiest families in the country, and because he is a money-grabbing scumbag. Do you need me to deal-deal with him?” He raised his eyebrows.
My instincts told me to say yes.
Have Sam off him, chop him up, and throw him into the ocean.
Not necessarily the Atlantic. That was too close. The Indian Ocean sounded good.
I’d never made such a request before, but in Veitch’s case, I was ready to make an exception. I’d refused to give my wife the only thing she’d ever asked from me—love—and sent her right into the arms of her ex-husband, who was probably waxing poetic at her all night.
I pretty much wrapped her up in a bow and handed her over to him.
Yet I couldn’t, for the life of me, do this to her.
Have her idiotic ex-husband killed.
No matter how much I wanted him out of the picture.
I shook my head, clutching the goblet so hard, it dented out of shape, the liquid raining down to the floor. Sam’s face remained unmoved, as if I hadn’t just bent a gold chalice with my own fist. I dumped it to the floor, turning to the bar and plucking a napkin. I patted my palm clean of alcohol and blood.
“Don’t touch him. Just find out as much as you can. Where he lives, what he’s doing, what’s his angle. I’ll deal with him myself.”
Sam nodded.
“Do it now. Drop everything else.”
Another nod. “Anything else you want to know?”
Yes, I wanted to know if I was truly losing Persephone, but that was beyond Sam’s scope.
“Just do your fucking job.” I turned around, ascending the stairway back to my office.
I cursed again.
But this time, no one was surprised.
I was beginning to unfurl, break, crack, and shatter.
I was changing.
Feeling.
And I hated it.
I spent the rest of the day pretending.
Pretending to be present, pretending to work, pretending not to give a damn.
I attended meetings, scolded employees, went through our quarterly reports, and grabbed lunch with Devon, in which we strategized our defense in court against Green Living.
“I should not have eaten the sashimi. It upset my stomach,” I complained when we parted ways at the entrance of the restaurant.
Devon barked out a laugh. “The sashimi was fine. The queasy feeling in your gut is longing. Is Persy still living in her Commonwealth flat?”
I didn’t even grace that with an answer. Longing was something teenage girls did with Armie Hammer. The only long thing about me was between my thighs.
At six o’clock, I called it a day. I drove back home, parked, then spotted Persephone’s Tesla at the front gate.
Killing the engine, I got out of the car, something weird and warm rattling in my stomach.
Food poisoning. Fucking raw fish. I saw a documentary about it. I probably had maggots the size of shits inside my intestines.