married to my killer

chapter 10

Chapter 10

NAOMI POV

I got a text from Marcus an hour before we were supposed to meet, a new location this time, further from the merger offices, somewhere he clearly trusted more than the last place. I read it twice, memorized the address, and deleted it before I left the house. On the walk over I found myself checking the reflections in shop windows, watching for anyone walking too slowly behind me, and I hated how quickly that had become a habit I didn't have to think about anymore.

He was already at a corner table when I got there, two coffees sitting in front of him, one pushed toward the empty chair across from him.

"You didn't have to guess what I drink," I said, sliding into the seat.

"I didn't guess. It's coffee. Drink it or don't." He waited until I was actually settled before he leaned forward, studying my face the way he had the first time, like he was reading something written on it that I hadn't meant to show him. "Something happened. I can see it on you."

"Carla got fired."

"Who's Carla?"

"The housekeeper. She's worked for the Voss family for thirty years. She warned me Edmund was asking questions about where I'd been. He let her go the next morning. Didn't explain it, not even to Julian."

I expected him to react. He didn't, not the way I thought he would. No surprise crossed his face at all, and that unsettled me more than if he'd looked shocked. He just nodded slowly, the way a person nods at something they already suspected and were only waiting to hear confirmed out loud.

"That's not new," he said. "That's a pattern. Anyone who gets close enough to help you starts disappearing from the picture. Quietly. No accusation, no scene. Just gone, with some reasonable excuse attached to it so nobody asks twice." He turned his cup slowly on the table without lifting it to drink. "It happened to my father too, before his company came apart. He had a bookkeeper, someone who'd worked for him for years. She got offered a job somewhere else out of nowhere, more money than she'd ever made with him. She left inside two weeks. My father always said something about it felt off. He just never had a reason to think it was more than a coincidence."

"You think it was Edmund."

"I think it's the exact same method." He looked straight at me then. "Which means you need to start thinking hard about who's still standing close to you right now. Not because they're loyal enough to survive it. Because they simply haven't been removed yet."

That landed somewhere low in my chest. "Julian."

"Julian's harder to touch. He's the son." Marcus said it plainly, no cruelty behind it, just the truth as he understood it. "You're not. You're not blood, and you're not indispensable to anyone in that house but him. If Edmund decides you're a problem before you finish whatever it is you're building, you'll be the easiest piece on the board for him to take off it."

"I already know what happens if he decides that."

The sentence came out flatter than I meant it to, and I watched him catch it exactly the way he'd caught something similar the first time we sat across from each other. He didn't let it slide past this time.

"You keep saying things like that," he said slowly. "Not what could happen. What does happen. Like you've already lived through watching it."

I didn't answer right away. The silence stretched a beat longer than it should have, long enough that it started to say something on its own.

"I've had a theory about you since your first message," he said. "I didn't want to say it, because it sounds insane out loud."

"Say it anyway."

"You already know how this ends." He watched my face closely while he said it, waiting to see whether I'd flinch. "Most people spend months circling something like this before they find their footing. You moved into that archive within days of your wedding like you already knew exactly what you were looking for and exactly where it would be. That's not instinct. That's memory."

My heart was beating loud enough that I was sure he could hear it from across the table.

"That's not a theory," I said carefully. "That's a lot of guessing dressed up as one."

"Maybe." He let it go, which surprised me more than if he'd pushed. "I'm not asking you to confirm it right now. I'm telling you that whatever you actually know, however you know it, I've spent six years working without it. If you're sitting on something that could save either of us a year of circling in the dark, I'd rather hear it from you than keep wasting time we might not have."

I thought about Julian, two nights ago, standing in that kitchen. I want the real version. Not the easy one. I thought about how close I'd come to giving it to him, and how I'd pulled it back at the last second because the ground under it still felt too thin to stand on.

The ground under Marcus felt even thinner. He wanted exactly what Edmund had destroyed his father to protect. That didn't make him dangerous to me. It made him motivated, and motivated wasn't the same thing as safe.

"Not yet," I said. "When I have something solid enough that it doesn't sound like I've lost my mind saying it out loud, you'll be the second person I tell."

"Second."

"Julian's asking too. I already told him something. Not everything. Two nights ago."

Something shifted across his face, quick and small, gone almost before I caught it. Not jealousy. Something closer to worry. "Be careful what you give him before you give it to me."

"Why would that matter?"

"Because he's still a Voss. Blood runs deeper in that family than you think it does right now, even with a good son. I've watched sons choose their fathers before. Good ones. Ones who didn't want to." There was no heat in the way he said it, just the flat certainty of someone who'd learned it the hard way and never quite gotten over it. "I'm not telling you not to trust him. I'm telling you not to be the only one who pays for it if he doesn't choose the way you're hoping."

I didn't like hearing that out loud. I liked it even less that some small, cold part of me had already thought the exact same thing, lying awake at two in the morning next to Julian while he slept.

My phone buzzed against the table before I could answer him. Julian's name lit up the screen.

Lunch with my father just got moved up. He wants us both there. Can you be at the office by one?

I stared at it for a second too long.

"I have to go," I said, already reaching for my bag.

"Wait." Marcus pulled a folded page from inside his jacket, fast, like he'd already decided he was going to hand it over before I'd finished asking. "I have three of the six names on that list. Reyes. Cole. And this one." He tapped the paper before sliding it across the table toward me. "Harmon Shipping Group. Collapsed nine years ago. The owner's daughter still lives in this city. Never talks about it publicly, far as I've been able to find. I've never gotten close enough to ask her anything myself."

"Maybe she'll talk to me."

"Maybe. Be careful with her. If she knows anything at all, she's spent nine years learning how to be careful too." He stood, dropping cash on the table before I could offer any. "People like that don't open doors for strangers."

"I won't be a stranger. I'll be someone else it happened to."

He looked at me for a long moment, something in his face settling into a kind of certainty it hadn't held an hour ago.

"That's the part that scares me about you," he said. "You already sound like someone who's done this before."

He was gone before I could decide whether that was a warning or the closest thing to trust he knew how to offer.

I folded the page with Harmon's name on it into my pocket, grabbed my bag, and walked out fast, already rehearsing what I was going to say to Julian about where I'd been, my mind splitting itself in two directions at once toward a lunch I wasn't ready for, and toward a woman I hadn't met yet who might already know exactly what Edmund Voss was capable of.