Under His Roof
1581 Words
Josephine Brooks
I'd read the email four times and then put the phone face down on the couch and stared at the ceiling for an hour.
The email address was a string of numbers. Completely Untraceable. And somehow… they had my private email, which wasn’t listed anywhere public.
Only Arthur knew about this marriage and Arthur would never send me an anonymous email.
He was awake too. I could see the strip of light under his door. I could walk over there right now and knock and show him the email and watch his face. That was the rational thing to do.
Except, I had no idea what actually happened and he could be a serial killer for all I know and just decide there and then to kill me.
I know thinking he was a serial killer was a bit of a stretch but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I went to bed instead but I couldn’t sleep
I Googled him at two in the morning.
Nikolai Jacobs. CEO. Forbes listed. Forty-five.
Three hundred and forty million divorce settlement. His face in every photograph was the same: composed, unreadable, slightly bored by the camera.
There was nothing about New York.
I searched more specifically for an hour. Nikolai Jacobs New York. Nikolai Jacobs incident.
Nothing. A clean result. No incident. No New York story that meant anything.
Which either meant there was nothing to find.
Or someone had made sure there was nothing to find.
I put my phone face down on the mattress and looked at the ceiling. The penthouse was silent except for the hum of the city forty floors below. What if I was just chasing the wind and there was no New York incident? Why else would someone send me that email?
I finally decided to confront him about it in the morning, possibly in front of Charlie. He wouldn’t kill me in front of his son, right?
I found him in the kitchen at seven the next morning.
He was already dressed in dark trousers, a grey shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, coffee in hand. He looked perfectly rested, which was unfair given that I had been awake since two because of him
He looked up when I walked in.
"You look terrible," he said.
"Good morning to you too." I went for the coffee machine. "I didn't sleep well."
"The bed?" He asked, a hint of concern in his eyes as he watched me pour coffee without commenting. I took a long sip and turned to face him and decided to do the thing I had been arguing with myself about since two in the morning.
Charlie was at the dining table having breakfast and watching videos on his iPad, not looking our way. I grabbed a knife just for additional safety.
He lifted his brows, staring at me and the knife in my hand.
“Josephine? I don’t think there’s any part of drinking coffee that needs a knife.”
"I got an email last night," I said, ignoring his comment on the knife. "After Arthur left, while you were in your room."
Something shifted in his expression. Just slightly. The kind of shift that a person who wasn't watching for it would miss entirely. I was watching for it.
"What kind of email?”
I held the knife firmly and pulled up my phone and held the screen out to him.
He read it. I watched his face the entire time. His jaw was still. His eyes moved
across the screen exactly once. When he finished, he handed the phone back without a word.
"That's it?" I said. "Nothing?"
"It's nothing. Spam."
He was way too calm about the email and I had to ask the one question on my mind.
“Nikolai, please don’t tell me you’re a—”
“—murderer?” He finished for me and eyes grew wide, and I didn’t even think. I immediately pointed the knife straight at his chest.
“How did you know that I was going to say that?” I asked, my eyes on him, hoping he couldn’t see how fast my pulse was racing.
“Jo, I’ve known you literally all your life. Plus, you’ve always been obsessed with all those crime documentaries you watch. Of course, you’d think that I’m a murderer.” He chuckled, sipping his coffee as though it was just another day, and I wasn’t pointing a weapon at him.
“Well, are you?” I took a step forward, and I placed the tip on the knife on his chest. “I’d suggest you stop moving. Don’t think you can overpower me. I’ve got the weapon.”
He looked at me like he was looking at a cute doll in a child’s store. A smile curved on his face and he set his coffee mug down on the counter and raised both his hands in the air.
I inhaled to steady my breathing. “Now answer the question. What happened in New York?”
He looked at the knife, then he looked at me.
And then he did something I was not prepared for.
He reached up and wrapped his hand around mine, around the hand holding the
knife and redirected the blade. Not away from him. Toward him.
“The heart is just a few inches below.” He said, lowering the knife. He then pressed the knife against his chest, directly over his heart with his own hand guiding mine.
I felt the resistance when the tip caught his shirt.
I felt the moment it went through the fabric.
"Nikolai—"
"Go on." His voice was completely level. His eyes did not leave mine. "If you genuinely believe I am a murderer, Josephine, then do it. Kill me. You have the knife. You know where the heart is. " His hand pressed mine forward another fraction. "Go on."
A thin dark line bloomed through his grey shirt.
Oh, God!.
"Stop!" I whispered.
"Why?" He smiled. "I thought you had the weapon."
"Nikolai, stop—"
I yanked my hand back. The knife clattered onto the counter. I stumbled back a step, my heart slamming against my ribs, my hands shaking.
He looked down at his chest. Then back up at me. Completely unbothered. Like he had not just pressed a blade into his own sternum to prove a point.
He smirked.
"You are insane," I said. My voice came out higher than I intended. "You are actually, clinically, certifiably insane. You just…you pressed a knife into yourself. Who does that?"
"Someone who isn't a murderer," he said simply, and reached past me to pick up his coffee.
"You're bleeding."
"Barely."
"That is still bleeding! That is blood on your shirt, Nikolai, that is—"
"Daddy?"
We both turned.
Charlie was standing in the kitchen entrance in his dinosaur pyjamas, iPad forgotten on the dining table, eyes fixed on the dark stain spreading slowly through the grey fabric of his father's shirt. His small face was doing something complicated, the specific expression of a child who had not yet decided whether to cry.
"Why is daddy bleeding?" he asked, his voice was very small.
I crossed the kitchen in three steps and crouched down to Charlie's eye level before I made any conscious decision to do so. I took both his hands in mine. His fingers were warm and slightly sticky from breakfast.
"Hey." I kept my voice soft and completely calm. "Everything is fine, okay? Daddy had a tiny little accident with something in the kitchen. It happens all the time. It looks scary, but it is absolutely nothing, I promise you."
Charlie looked past me at Nikolai. Unconvinced.
"It really is nothing, buddy," Nikolai said. His voice had changed completely, all the dry amusement gone, just warmth. "You know how you fell off your bike last summer, and it bled a lot, but it was fine?"
Charlie considered this with the gravity of a small philosopher. "Yeah."
"Exactly like that. Much less cool, though. You were much braver."
The corner of Charlie's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile yet. Almost.
"You and mummy aren’t fighting?" Charlie asked.
My body stiffened hearing him refer to me as his mother.
Nikolai let out a chuckle. “Why would you think that, buddy?”
Nikolai walked up to where Charlie and I were and told me to get up.
I did, and he immediately pulled me into a hug from behind and then placed kisses at the back of my neck, which immediately spiked my pulse.
“See buddy. We’re not fighting,” he assured him. “You know what would make daddy better? If you go upstairs and go bring me your superhero plasters.”
Charlie nodded, his fear now gone as he rushed upstairs.
Charlie’s footsteps faded up the stairs, but Nikolai didn’t let go.
His arm was still around me, his body pressed close, closer than necessary.
“Let go,” I said under my breath.
He didn’t let go.
His hand stayed on my stomach, holding me in place.
I tried to pull away.
He didn’t budge.
I could feel the dampness of the blood on his shirt soaking into the back of my thin pajama top.
I struggled against him—and then I felt it.
A hard, unmistakable pressure against my lower back.
My breath caught.
My entire body went still.
Was he…actually hard?
- Writer
