Chapter 3
Bobby's office was on the third floor. She could see the glow from his windows, faint and bluish, against the building's facade. He was up there. Working. Doing the things he did to afford the life they shared in the exclusive neighborhood of The Bluffs.
The drive from King Street Lounge had taken less than ten minutes, but her mind reeled over the photo of Bobby and Ianthe Vadaj for every second of it.
The possibilities multiplied with each passing block.
It could be innocent. Bobby could have stumbled into something he didn’t understand, or Ianthe might have approached him about IT security work and found him too greedy, too flattered, or too stupid to turn it down.
The Pourciau Market was locked up tight at this hour, the glass entrance reflecting nothing but the empty courtyard inside.
Palm trees stood motionless behind the doors.
Wooden benches sat in the dark. The string of boutique shops, arranged in a U shape around the ground floor, was shuttered, their signs unlit, the whole building given over to silence.
Remi grabbed her keycard, swiped it against the reader, and walked inside.
Despite the urgency clawing at her, she found herself heading for the stairs instead of the elevator.
She rehearsed and rejected a dozen ways to broach the topic with Bobby.
The overhead fluorescents were off, but emergency lighting cast everything in a dull amber wash.
Minutes later, she emerged on the third floor.
The doors of A-to-Z IT Security Solutions were near the end of the hallway, closest to the elevators.
She walked slowly, footsteps muffled by the worn carpet.
A conversation about the PC-5 with Bobby could yield … nothing. She had no confidence that he’d tell her the truth if he had broken his promise to her. That he wouldn’t lie to her face and pretend there was an innocent explanation for being with Ianthe.
But more often than not, people were predisposed to misjudge her husband, assuming the worst about him when there was a gentle and caring heart beating inside of him. She would have to trust that his love for her would stop him from lying to her.
An expectation that stopped her cold.
How could she possibly expect honesty when she was the liar in their marriage? The one who was still trying to fall in love with the man she’d already told the world she loved more than anyone. More than Everett.
Lies. All lies.
Remi pressed herself flat against the wall, tucking into the shallow alcove near the maintenance room.
Her heart thudded in her chest. She should leave.
Coming here was a mistake. She took a step toward the stairs as the elevator chimed.
Ducking back into the shadows, she watched three women step out.
They were dressed for a very specific occasion.
Tight, shimmering dresses that left nothing to the imagination.
Heels so tall they seemed to be walking on stilts.
They moved in formation, shoulder to shoulder, their laughter ringing off the empty hallway walls.
Identical faces. Identical builds. Identical cascading waves of jet-black hair.
Triplets.
One of them held up a phone, showing the screen to the others. "Suite 307. He said come right up."
"Ianthe wasn't lying,” the second one said, flipping her hair. “He’s hot as fuck.”
“And that’s what we’re going to do to him tonight,” the third said, bypassing the biometric sensors. Staring at her phone, she tapped several digits on the keypad next to Bobby's door. It beeped. The lock disengaged. All three disappeared inside in a cloud of perfume that hit Remi like a slap.
Her back pressed harder against the wall.
Sent by Ianthe.
Bobby had requested them. That was why he’d been huddled with Ianthe in the photo her father sent.
This was no conspiracy. It was a transaction. Bobby had cozied up to Ianthe Vadaj to arrange this. Her husband was acting like the man he was known for being before they’d tied the knot. The man whose sexual appetite was legendary and whose restraint was nonexistent.
This was the better explanation, wasn't it? Bobby wasn't working for the PC-5. He was partaking in their services. Bobby was about to have sex with three women in his office, and the dominant emotion coursing through her was not anger or betrayal or heartbreak.
It was nothing.
A vast, flat nothing that stretched across the place where a wife's fury should live.
She knew she should leave. Every rational part of her screamed at her legs to move, to walk back down those stairs and drive home and pretend she'd never come.
But her body moved toward his door instead.
Something darker than curiosity was holding her there.
A need to confirm what she already knew about herself.
To let the evidence pile up until it was undeniable.
Sound traveled through the gaps in the door. Laughter first. Then music, low and thumping from a portable speaker. Bobby's voice, muffled but unmistakable, was saying something that made one of the women shriek with delight.
Remi's finger pressed against the biometric sensor. The soft click unlocked the door. Turning the knob, she pushed it slowly, opening it wide enough to slip inside. The hallway to Bobby’s office was dark.
In a few steps, she had crossed the reception area and was huddled underneath the desk, out of sight.
She should leave.
More laughter. The creak of furniture. A moan that started soft and built into something theatrical and breathless. Then another voice joined it. Then a third. The sounds layered over each other, a chorus of fabricated pleasure that echoed down the hallway like something out of a fever dream.
Bobby's voice cut through. Deeper. Rougher.
Commanding in a way she had never heard him speak to her.
Not once in the entirety of their marriage.
With her, he was gentle. Careful. Patient to the point of sainthood because he understood that patience was the only currency she would accept.
But this man in that office was someone else entirely.
Someone unrestrained and ravenous and fully alive in a way that Bobby never allowed himself to be when she was in the room.
The sounds grew louder. Flesh against flesh. The rhythmic protest of a desk being pushed across the floor. Voices tangling together in escalating urgency.
Remi waited for something to ignite inside her. Anything that would prove she was still capable of being moved by the act that was supposed to be the most intimate expression between two people.
Nothing stirred.
She pressed a hand against her stomach and felt the ridged landscape beneath the thin fabric of her tank top.
The scars ran from her hip bones to below her ribs, a network of raised tissue that no amount of cocoa butter or time or plastic surgery had been able to erase.
They continued around her sides and up her back in jagged lines that told the story of a night in a house in Jamaica when two men had decided hurting her was the fastest way to flush out the man she loved.
She had long since stopped looking at herself in mirrors from the waist down.
She showered without glancing at her body.
She dressed in closets with no mirrors, and the door closed.
Bobby had never seen the full extent of it.
Nobody had, except the surgeons who rebuilt what they could and told her she was lucky to be alive.
Lucky. As if survival were the same thing as living.
The noises from the office surged, and Remi closed her eyes.
A different place surfaced behind her eyelids. The gatehouse nestled in the heart of the Breaklands on the east side of the island. The bedroom with wooden shutters thrown open to the Caribbean night. Salt air drifting in through gauze curtains.
Everett's hands. That was what she remembered first. Always his hands.
The way they'd moved across her skin like he was reading something sacred.
Slow and deliberate. His palms warm against her ribs, his thumbs tracing the dip of her waist as he looked at her with those gray eyes that held everything he was too stubborn to say out loud.
She'd been nervous that night. They'd been together before, but there was something different about this time.
They'd both felt it. A weight in the air between them, as if the room understood that what was about to happen would mark them permanently.
She'd tried to make a joke about it. He hadn't laughed.
He'd looked at her, and the look was so naked and unguarded that she'd stopped breathing.
"Come here," he'd said.
And she had.
He'd pulled her against him, and the heat of his body along the length of hers had made every nerve ending fire at once.
His mouth had found the curve of her neck, and she'd felt herself evolve.
Become someone else entirely. A stronger, more confident version of herself that only existed in the space between his body and hers.
She remembered the way he'd lowered her onto the bed.
The deliberate way he'd positioned himself above her.
His forearms braced on either side of her head, his weight distributed so that she felt surrounded without feeling trapped.
The first thrust had been slow and deep, and she'd grabbed his shoulders and arched into him because the sensation was so consuming that staying still was not a possibility.
He'd whispered her name. Not Remi. Remington. The full name that nobody used except him, because he wanted her to know he was seeing all of her.
"Remington."
She'd wrapped her legs around him, and they'd found the rhythm that was theirs alone.
His hands in her hair. Her nails raking down his back.
His breath hot and ragged against her ear as they moved together.
She remembered the precise moment the pleasure crested.
The involuntary sound she'd made. The way his entire body had shuddered in response.
They'd crashed together, and he'd held her so tightly she thought her ribs might crack, and she hadn't cared.
She'd been whole then. Unblemished. Every inch of her skin was soft, smooth, and beautiful. A body that could feel everything. A body that wanted to feel everything. A body that was hers.
The memory that should have been a lifeline was another example of how damaged she was.
Even Everett's hands on her skin, the most vivid sensory imprint she possessed, could not kindle a single spark in the ruins those men in Jamaica had left behind.
She could recall every touch, every sound, every shift of weight and whisper of breath.
But it was academic, a documentary playing in her mind, with no feeling attached.
Tears slid down her cheeks. She didn't wipe them away.
Crying required nothing from her. It was the one physical response she still had reliable access to, and she hated it for being the wrong one.
She didn't want to cry. She wanted to feel what those three women were feeling in that office.
What Britt felt when Lachlan pinned her wrists above her head.
What every woman she knew seemed to experience without effort or thought, as naturally as breathing.
Instead, she had emptiness.
She was listening to her husband have the kind of sex she couldn’t give him, crying over a man she couldn’t stop loving, in a body she couldn’t stand to look at.
Pushing up from the floor, Remi stumbled across the reception area toward the door.
As she reached for the door, her leg slammed into the potted plant beside it, sending it crashing to the floor.
A wail of protests erupted from the back room as Bobby barked something at the women. Then a door jerked open.
Remi moved, rushing out the door and slamming it behind her. She raced to the stairwell, slipping into the darkness as Bobby’s head poked outside the door.
He stepped into the hallway and scanned the empty corridor. Then he returned to the office, shutting the door behind him. Seconds later, the muffled bass of the music started again. Faint laughter. Low moans.
Remi’s pulse settled as she descended the stairs in the dark and let herself out into the night.