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Callahan— The fake smile slips because it isn’t me. I frown. “Where is Callahan?”

“We’ll go shopping,” Declan says quickly. “I’ll bring extra help to carry things, too. There’s an emergency credit card for you upstairs in his dresser. Or we can use mine.”

But I don’t answer, anger and worry streaking through me. Something’s going on. I know that. I’ve spent a lifetime reading cues, and this is a distraction cue. Declan’s worried, which makes me worried. So I focus on the twinge of angerover getting an emergency card, like his control over me is absolute.

Anger is better than fear.

“Someone needs to make sure the animals are okay,” I say. “And to walk Arnold out the back if he needs to take care of business. Maybe show the cat where the litter is.”

Declan nods, pulls out his phone, and calls, I think, Torin.

I hover, but he waves his hand at the stairs and stalks off. I race up the steps and rip open Callahan’s drawer.

If I thought I’d find dark secrets or even banal ones, I’m disappointed. There’s a packet of cigarettes, Carrolls Number Ones, an Irish brand according to the pack. Five lighters. A framed photo that’s face down. When I flip it over, I see that it’s all of them. Declan’s a baby and Callahan’s younger than I’ve seen him, younger than Declan is now.

The adults are clearly his parents. His mom is stunning and his father handsome, and I see the resemblance.

I put it back.

There’s a black leather wallet. I pick it up.

Callahan Frances Murphy. Thirty-two, blue-eyed, six foot three, according to his New York driver’s license. Then there’s his passport… no, both of them. Irish and United States.

There’s something surreal about this, learning things about the man I’m married to, like his height, where he was born, his birth date, and the fact he has dual citizenship.

Then again, if I think about it, everything about my situation is surreal. I know arranged marriages exist. I guess I never thought I’d be stuck in one.

Blowing out a breath, I continue to look.

But there’s nothing else in there except an envelope from the bank. I open it and peek inside to find a credit card with my name on it.

I take it, but then I open his wallet and take three morecards, including the black American Express. Because fuck him for not being around. I’ll shop all right.

I run back down to the ground floor, shove the cards into my bag, then check my phone.

Nothing from my sister, my parents, or Callahan.

“…let me fucking know!” Declan yells into his phone as he stalks out of the living room. Then he sees me and the fake smile is back. “Ready to shop?”

I match his smile. I know I won’t get answers from anyone but Cal, and even that is questionable. “Until you drop.”

“Are you sure you need all this stuff?”

“Of course I do.” I just laser Declan with a hard look as the four of us—Dec, me, the driver, and the guard, who for some reason came with us—haul the mountain of purchases into the house.

My nerves grew tauter over the course of the trip.

The more Declan didn’t inform me that Cal would kill him, and then me, for something hideously expensive I bought, or he checked his phone with a deepening frown, the more I bought.

Callahan wants to keep things hidden from me? Well, I retaliated the only way I could think of… by spending as much of his money as I could. Was it stupid, petty, and childish? Yes, but it was the only control I felt I had.

Unfortunately, two times nothing is still nothing.

Declan sat outside of any store even remotely intimate like the lingerie boutique or the designer shop that sold pretty panties along with sexy dresses.

And I bought them.

All. Of. Them.