THE DOUBLE LIFE OF MY EX-CON HUSBAND

Chapter Three: Ninety Seconds

The first bullet hit the steel door before I finished screaming.

"Down!" Ethan dragged me behind the monitor desk. On the screens, black cars filled the street. Doors opened. Men poured out. Marcus stood in the middle of them, calm as a man waiting for a bus.

"He sold us," I said.

"He sold me." Ethan's voice was flat. "You were just standing in the way."

He pressed a hand to his ribs. Blood seeped through his white shirt.

"You're hurt."

"It's nothing."

"It's not nothing." I grabbed the first aid kit from the wall. "Sit."

"The door will hold ten minutes."

"Then I have ten minutes."

He sat. I pulled his shirt up, and the room went silent.

The wound was a long cut, torn open again. But it was not the cut that stopped my breath. His whole back was covered in marks. Pale prison scars. Fresh burns. And on his left shoulder, burned deep into the skin, a black serpent coiled around a letter C.

"What is that?"

"The price."

I pressed gauze to the cut. My hands were not steady now.

"The Corvins don't take your word," he said. "They take your skin. The night they put that on me, they made me watch what happens to men who lie. I learned fast."

"You said you gave an order. You said a man did not come home."

"That was true." He looked at the wall, not at me. "It wasn't all of it."

"Then tell me all of it."

"There were three men. They were Corvin soldiers who found out I was not what I said. I could have run. I could have died with them. Or I could stay close enough to the top to reach the man who destroyed us." His voice dropped. "I chose you, Maya. I chose this. I chose to become something you would hate."

I sat back on my heels. The gauze was red in my hands.

"Fourteen months," I said, "I begged God to give you back to me. And you came back with their mark on your skin."

"I know."

"I don't know if I can forgive that."

"I'm not asking you to." He met my eyes at last. "I'm asking you to use it."

The door boomed. Dust fell from the ceiling.

"Eight minutes," he said.

I taped the dressing over his ribs. My fingers lingered on his skin. He went very still. I could feel his pulse under my palm, fast and hard, the way it used to beat in the dark when I laid my head on his chest.

I hated that I remembered.

"A real truce this time," I said. "No more lies. Not one. Even the ones you think will protect me."

"No more lies."

"And I won't sit in a car and wait while you do what's necessary."

"Maya—"

"My name is on that note too." I pulled the black phone from my coat. "And I have something you need. The Hargrove vault has a family bypass code. Only the blood relatives know it. I know half."

His eyes sharpened. "Half?"

"Half now. The rest when I trust you."

A slow, dangerous smile touched his mouth. "You've learned to bargain."

"I learned from the best."

He stood. I stood. We were close again, too close, breath mingling, nothing left between us but the thin thread of everything we had not said.

His hand slid into my hair.

I kissed him first.

It was fury and grief and fourteen months of silence, all of it crashing together. His arm locked around my waist. My fingers dug into his shoulders. For one long, desperate moment, I forgot there was an army outside the door.

Then the steel screamed.

Ethan tore away, breathing hard. He slammed his fist on a red switch by the wall. The lights died. The screens died. The whole building plunged into black.

"Gun rack. Now!"

He dragged me across the armory. Behind a rack of rifles, a panel slid aside, revealing a narrow tunnel that smelled of earth and old rain.

"Go!"

"Wait." I turned back. A black box sat on the bench, wired to a block of explosives. The armory detonator. "If they get in, they get everything. Your files. Your names. Mine."

"There's no time to—"

"There's time to do it right."

I set the timer with steady hands. Ninety seconds.

Then I ran into the tunnel with him, my heart pounding in my throat, my gun raised in the dark.

The door burst open behind us. Boots. Shouts.

The blast came a breath later.

The shockwave hit like a wall. Ethan threw himself over me as stone and dust rained down. The air turned thick and black. I tasted dirt and smoke and blood.

Then silence.

He lifted his head. "Maya?"

"Alive," I coughed.

We crawled the last stretch together, soot-stained and shaking. A rusted grate gave way, and the night air rushed in, cold and clean.

The printing shop burned behind us in the rain.

I stood on the riverbank with my hand locked in his, and I knew there was no going back. My family had made me a pawn. Ethan had made himself a monster. And I had just burned the last safe place I had.

Somewhere in the trees, a muscle car waited. He tossed me the keys.

"You drive," he said.

The phone in my pocket buzzed. I read the message under the glow of the dashboard.

Corvin's master keycard is held by the manager of the Gilded Hollow. Private casino, members only.

Tomorrow night. Come as a couple.

I looked at Ethan.

"It means we'll have to look like lovers," he said quietly.

I started the engine.

The trouble was, I was no longer sure we would be pretending.