The Two Year Wife

Chapter 11: The Locked Drawer

Camille’s POV

I do not sleep again this night. I lie awake thinking about the words I heard through the door. If this gets out now, it ends everything.

By morning I have decided I am done waiting for the truth to come to me.

I find Nico in the kitchen, already dressed, already on his second cup of coffee like the night before did not happen at all.

“Who were you talking to last night?” I ask.

He looks up, calm as ever. “A business matter.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I can give you right now.”

“You said no more secrets.”

“I am not keeping a secret. I am handling something that is not ready to be shared yet.”

“That sounds like the same thing to me.”

He sets down his cup, and for the first time since I have known him, I see something close to frustration cross his face.

“Camille, there are things happening right now that involve people beyond just us. My aunt. Your company. Old business that has nothing to do with you directly.”

“It involves your father, does it not? And mine?”

He does not answer right away, which is answer enough.

“I deserve to know,” I say. If it touches my family, i deserve to know.”

“When I know more, you will know more.”

“That is not good enough.”

“It is what I have right now.”

I stare at him, searching for the c***k in his calm the way I have every time since the first day in his office, and for once I think I actually see it. Something tired behind his eyes. Something that looks almost like fear, though I cannot imagine what a man like him would ever be afraid of.

“Fine,” I say, though it is not fine at all. “Then I will find out on my own.”

I spend the rest of my morning in the small study Nico gave me when we moved in. It was supposed to be my space, somewhere I could work and keep up with my company files. But instead of opening my reports, I find myself thinking about the boxes Luca once mentioned, old files from the original dispute between our fathers, still somewhere in this house because Nico’s father never threw anything away.

I ask Marta about them over lunch, careful to keep my voice light.

“Old records,” she says, thinking it over. “There is a locked room downstairs. Mr Marchetti’s father kept everything from his years running the company. I do not have a key, if that is what you are asking.”

“I was not asking that.”

She gives me a small, knowing smile and says nothing else.

That evening, while Nico is out for another one of his sudden meetings, I go looking anyway.

The locked room is exactly where Marta said, at the end of a hallway at the lower floor, a heavy door with an old fashioned lock that looks nothing like the rest of the house. I do not have a key either, but the door beside it, a small office that once must have belonged to Nico’s father, is open.

Inside there are boxes stacked along one wall, dust thick across the tops of most of them. I go through them slowly, careful to put everything back the way I find it, until I reach one marked with a date twenty years old.

Inside are letters. Contracts. A name I recognize instantly.

Laurent Ateliers.

I sit down on the floor and start reading, my hands shaking slightly as I go through page after page of old business between my father and Nico’s, deals that fell apart, promises that were broken, and near the bottom of the box, a single letter that stops me completely.

It is from Nico’s father to my father, dated only a few months before the business war between them turned ugly. It reads more like an apology than a threat.

I am asking you one last time to reconsider. What we are about to do to each other will stay between the two of us. It will reach further than either of us intends, further than our children, if we let it.

I read it there time before I hear the front door open upstairs.

Nico is home.

I gather the letter and slip it into my pocket before I ever decide to, my heart pounding, because whatever this means, I am no longer sure I want to hear his explanation for it.

I hear his footsteps coming down the stairs, closer to the hallway I am standing in.

“Camille?” His voice carries down the hall, confused, maybe a little alarmed. “What are you doing down here?”

I do not have time to think of an answer before he rounds the corner and sees exactly where I am standing, exactly which door is open behind me, and the color drains slowly from his face.