THE DOUBLE LIFE OF MY EX-CON HUSBAND

Chapter Two: The Missing Pages

Half the pages were missing.

I stood in my father's sealed archive room, Ethan's keycard still warm in my hand, staring at a shelf of ledgers from the year he was arrested. Every book had gaps. Every gap had been cut out with a blade.

The lock had opened at the first swipe. Midnight was forty minutes away. But I had not come to the old wing to obey him. I had come to check him.

A man who comes back from the dead does not get my trust. He gets proof.

So I read.

The transfers were all there. Forty million dollars, moved in neat stages, with Ethan's signature on every line. But three bank dates did not match the stamps. And the approval pages, the ones that would show who authorized each transfer, were gone.

Someone had framed him. Then someone had cleaned up after.

I photographed every page with the black phone. My hands were steady. That surprised me.

Then I heard a soft click upstairs.

I slipped out and climbed to my room. The hallway was dark. The house was silent. Victor's car had returned an hour ago, and no one had told me.

On my carpet, just inside the door, lay a white envelope.

I opened it.

Stop digging. Burn what you found, and sign what Victor gives you on Monday. Or your husband dies a second time, and there will be no grave to fake.

No name. The handwriting was neat and careful. Too careful, like someone hiding their own hand.

Someone in this house knew what I had just seen.

They knew about Ethan.

I grabbed my coat and went down the back stairs. The kitchen door opened onto the garden, and the garden opened onto rain.

I ran.

I was halfway across the lawn when headlights blazed at the end of the lane. An engine roared. The car was coming straight at me, fast, with no plates and no sign of slowing.

I froze.

Then a black sedan slammed across the lane between us. The passenger door flew open.

"Get in!" Ethan shouted.

I dived inside. The door slammed. The sedan tore away as the other car scraped its side and spun off into the dark.

I gripped the dashboard. "Who was that?"

"Someone who wanted you quiet." His eyes stayed on the mirror. "You were supposed to wait for midnight."

"You were supposed to be dead."

He almost smiled.

His safehouse sat beneath a shuttered printing shop by the river. A steel door. A concrete stairwell. A long room lined with screens, each one showing a different street.

Two men in dark coats stood at the far end. When Ethan entered, they straightened.

"Sir," one said.

Sir.

The word stayed in the air after they left.

I turned to him. "Who are you now?"

"Maya."

"Those men are afraid of you." My voice shook, and I hated it. "I saw the guns. I saw the screens. You told me you were a victim. You didn't tell me you were a boss."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he took off his wet jacket and hung it on a hook, slowly, like a man putting off a verdict.

"The Corvin syndicate," he said. "They run the docks, the smuggling, half the city's dirty money. They were the ones who moved forty million through my name. Victor was only the door they used."

"And now you run them."

"Now I run part of them."

I stared at him. "How?"

"The prison fire was not an accident. The Corvins arranged it. A man inside offered me a deal. A way out, a new name, and a place inside their ring." His jaw tightened. "In return, I had to work for them."

"Work doing what?"

"Whatever they asked."

The words sat heavy between us.

"I moved money. I broke a man's debts, and then his business. One night I gave an order, and a man did not come home." He did not look away. "I did it so I could get close enough to see who sat at the top. I will answer for it. But I will not apologize for being alive to tell you this."

The fury rose in me so fast it burned.

"Fourteen months," I said. "I sat in that house while everyone called me a thief's wife. You could have told me. One message."

"They were watching you."

"You could have trusted me!"

"I did," he said quietly. "That was the problem. I trusted you to be as careful as I couldn't be."

I crossed the room before I knew I was moving. I stood close enough to see the rain still caught in his lashes, close enough to feel the heat of him through damp silk.

I wanted to hit him again. I wanted to do something worse.

His breath caught. His hand lifted, hovered near my cheek, and stopped.

"Don't," I whispered.

"I know." He lowered his hand. "Not like this."

The silence hummed. I stepped back first.

"The note," I said, and held out the envelope. My voice came out rough. "Someone in my house wrote this."

He read it once, and his face went cold.

"Then they are watching both of us," he said. "Maya, I do not need you to forgive me. I need you to work with me."

"A truce?"

"Until we find the name at the top. Whoever is above Victor. Whoever gave the order." He held out his hand. "After that, you can hate me properly."

I looked at his crooked little finger, at his scarred eyebrow, at the man I used to know and the stranger he had become.

I took his hand.

"Until we find the name," I said.

His fingers closed around mine, warm and steady.

Then a monitor chimed.

Ethan turned. The color drained from his face.

On the screen, a figure stood at the gate of the printing shop. A tall man in a long coat, rain running off his hat.

"Only three people know this address," Ethan said softly. "You. Me. And Marcus."

The man on the screen raised his head toward the camera.

He smiled.

And behind him, one by one, the dark street began to fill with headlights.