married to my killer

chapter 9

Chapter 9

NAOMI POV

I was done finding things by accident.

Two clues in two weeks had come to me because I happened to be in the right room at the right time. That wasn't a plan. That was luck, and luck runs out. So when Julian mentioned the merger's kickoff luncheon over breakfast, half his attention on his phone, I told him I wanted to come.

He looked up. "You don't have to. It's mostly business."

"I want to."

"Okay." A pause, careful, like he was deciding whether to say more. "I'll tell Carla to lay something out for you."

"I'll handle it myself." I didn't want Carla doing one more thing for me. Not after her message. I texted her something small instead. Thanks for the warning, I've got it from here and got nothing back. I told myself she was just busy.

Twenty people, a private room at the merger offices, more business than celebration. I'd read the guest list Julian left on the counter that morning and memorized the names like a balance sheet. One of them stopped me cold.

Vivienne Marlowe. Senior consultant, audit transition.

I found her by the windows before lunch started, a glass of water in her hand instead of wine.

"You're Naomi," she said. "Julian's wife. Everyone's still talking about the wedding."

"We haven't met."

"I only started three weeks ago." She had an easy way about her, nothing guarded in it. I remembered hating her once, in a year that hadn't happened yet. Standing across from her now, all I felt was dread. "Edmund Voss brought me in himself, actually."

"How'd he find you?"

"Honestly, I'm still not sure. I never applied here. He reached out directly, said someone recommended me." She laughed a little. "Probably shouldn't admit that. Makes it sound like I didn't earn it."

"It makes it sound like he wanted you here for a reason."

"Maybe." She didn't catch the weight in it. "He said I had the right background. I didn't ask too many questions. You don't, when someone that powerful hands you an opportunity."

There it was. Not a guess pieced together from old paperwork. A fact, from the one person who'd lived it: Edmund had gone looking for her, specifically, before the audit gave him any real reason to.

I wanted to ask what "right background" meant. Whether it meant unmarried. Available. Placed close to Julian on purpose. But someone waved her toward the buffet, and she excused herself before I could get the question out.

"Nice meeting you," she said, and meant it. That was the part I hadn't prepared for. She had no idea what she was being used for. Neither had I, once.

My phone buzzed halfway through lunch. I checked it under the table.

Carla I won't be at the house when you get back. Mr. Voss senior let me go this morning. He didn't give a reason. I think you know why.

The fork stopped in my hand.

I'd told her I'd handle it. I hadn't handled anything. I'd spent the afternoon chasing Vivienne while a woman who'd worked in that house for thirty years lost her job over one text she sent to protect me.

Julian was watching me from across the table. Not casually.

"What is it," he said.

"Nothing. Work thing."

He heard how thin that was. He didn't say so, not there, not in a room full of his father's colleagues. He just took my hand under the table and held it hard enough that I understood it wasn't comfort. It was a warning that this wasn't going to stay until we got home.

We were still standing in the kitchen when he brought it up, both of us too tired to sit.

"I asked my father about Carla," he said. "This afternoon. In his office, in front of his assistant."

"What did he say?"

"That she'd been careless with confidential information. That it wasn't personal."

"What information?"

"He said I didn't need to know. That I should trust he only does what's necessary to protect this family." His jaw tightened around the words. "He's never talked to me like that before. Like I was a staff member."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't want you sorry. I want to understand what's happening in my own house." He wasn't angry, not exactly. Something quieter than that. "My father just fired a woman who's worked here since before I was born, and wouldn't tell his own son why. And you've been lying to me since the morning we got married."

"I haven't lied to you."

"You've left things out. That's the same thing, ."

I didn't have an answer for that, because he was right.

"I don't need you to tell me everything or what you are hiding tonight," he said. "I just need you to stop pretending there's nothing to tell."

I stood there thinking about Carla's message, and Vivienne's easy voice, and the one hard fact I finally had instead of a guess. I wanted to tell him. All of it. The hospital room. The flatline. The dress on the door. The words were right there, closer to the surface than they'd been all week.

Then I looked at him, waiting, already halfway to believing whatever I said next, and I thought about what it would cost him to hear it now. One recruited consultant. One firing I couldn't prove was about me and not something else entirely. If I told him everything about that, I wouldn't be giving him the truth. I'd be giving him a story about his own father that he had no way to check, from a wife he already suspected of hiding things.

He'd believe me anyway. That was the problem. He believed everything I told him, and then he'd have nothing to stand on except my word against a lifetime of his father being careful. I'd watched a whole family talk him out of his own instincts once already. I wasn't going to hand them a second chance to do it again.

"Okay," I said. "Not everything. Something."

He waited.

"I don't think Carla did anything wrong. I think she got fired because she warned me your father's been asking where I go. I think he's watching me closer than either of us knew. And Vivienne didn't get hired by accident."

Not the whole truth, and he knew it.

"That's not everything," he said.

"No."

"But it's something."

"It's something. I need a little more time before . I need to be sure before I hand you a version of this you can't take back once you've heard it."

He was quiet for a moment. "That's not really an answer."

"I know."

"But I heard it." He rubbed a hand over his face. "I'm not letting this go quiet again. Whatever it is. When you're ready, I want the real version.."

"I know."

"Say it back to me."

"The real version," I said. ."

He nodded, like that was enough for tonight, even though I could tell it wasn't enough for much longer. He turned off the kitchen light and reached for my hand in the dark, and I let him take it, already counting down how many more nights a little more time was going to be something he let me get away with.