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“Ah, you had mentioned her before. I can’t even recall if I’ve met her.”

“It’s fine. She’s the one with the husband. I was sort of seeing them both, but Irene was the lynchpin in the arrangement. I consider her my ex more than Josh.” Helena hesitated. “That’s the husband.”

“I gathered.”

“And I only call her my ex because I was in their web for half a year. Pretty much from the night we met in LA. We all hooked up, and the next thing I knew, I was flying with them to Miami for a week. It was my first time back on the East Coast since my parents were stationed in North Carolina, and I had only been to Florida for a family vacation when I was like… seven. I barely remembered it.”

“That’s a long time to be with someone at your age. You were living with them, yeah?”

“Living with them, traveling everywhere with at least one of them, throwing parties and getting doted on… it was the kind of thing you read about in romance novels. I kept thinking about how jealous so many of my old classmates would have been.” It was embarrassing to admit now, especially when Helena realized that not a single one of her old classmates would have been enamored with that life. She had grossly overestimated how many older teen girls wanted to be the live-in mistress of a married couple who couldn’t function by themselves. Only after Helena left their asses did she realize how much Irene and Josh disliked each other but were too proud to divorce. More like too codependent. Having an open relationship was a way to defer the inevitable. Which, Helena figured, would be when Josh got one of his hookups pregnant and she refused to make it go away, no matter how much money he and Irene threw at the situation. Irene hates kids. She had her tubes tied at twenty-two and constantly offered to hook Helena up with her doctor. The only reason Helena declined was because she already had an IUD and was content to wait and see how she felt at thirty when she figured most of her “wild” days would be behind her.

“Did you like your time with them?” Delia asked. “You never said what made you leave.”

Helena scoffed. How had she ended up in this room, talking about them? Why did Delia care? What business was it of hers, anyway?

Then again… if there was anyone she could open up to… it had been a long time since she told anyone her innermost feelings. Helena rarely admitted them to herself.

“I was in it for the fun, even in the end. I didn’t love them or anything.” Helena stared at the blue liquid in her drink, meant to imitate curacao. “I knew it wouldn’t last forever. I mean, they were a married couple, for fuck’s sake. Even if I didn’t want to move on to something else, they would have grown tired of me eventually. I didn’t think… well, turned out Irene is pretty possessive. She didn’t mind sharing me with others, but she had to be the puppeteer behind the curtains. To be fair, she was sleeping with other people, too. Sometimes she was sleeping with people I knew and her husband didn’t know about, but so was he. I figured it wasn’t my business. They probably had an arrangement.”

“This is when I repeat the adage are the straights okay?”

Helena didn’t expect to laugh. “Irene is not straight. If anything, I think men like her husband are a stepping stool in wealth and society for her. Either that, or she gets off on controlling other women. Tale as old as time.”

“Fine. She’s not okay for other reasons.”

“You’re not freaked out by any of this?”

“Why in the world would I be? Do you think I forgot how we met? The things you’ve said about the past year of your life? I did crazy shit in my early twenties, too. I once two-timed a pair of ex-wives because the potential fallout gave me a thrill. Turned out, it just… turned them on. After the threesome, they ran off together and are still remarried.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Nope. My pussy brought them back together. Singlehandedly, even.”

“That’s amazing.”

Delia stretched her arms above her head, flexing her lean biceps and the lasered armpits that hadn’t seen a speck of hair in several months. Helena still shaved hers. Still got the razor burns to prove it, too. Another subtle way to show she didn’t know what she was doing.

“So, who ended it? You?”

Helena nodded. “They had a big fight one day and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired of Irene acting like a bitch all the time. She also kept making veiled threats. I don’t know what her problem is, because it’s something, but she’s the type to be fun and chill for two months and then spend a week throwing shit at the wall and screaming at the top of her lungs. I don’t mind being called dirty names in the middle of sex, but I draw the line when we’re out and about minding our own business. Keep that shit to the bedroom as long as it’s hot. You know?”

“Wasn’t hot anymore, huh?”

“Josh let her walk all over him. She’d throw shit, he’d yell at her and call her a bitch, and their housekeepers and cooks would scatter for the night… they’d call me into their bedroom and ask me to confess who was the better lover because they were splitting up and I was the family dog who had to go with one of them. Like putting me in front and whoever I went to… got me.”

Delia stifled a laugh. “I’m sorry… the image that gave me…”

“It’s okay to find it funny. It is when you think about it.” Helena sighed. “I quickly learned that was a thing for them. They’d fight a few times a year, spend time apart in separate countries fucking other people, and then love-bomb each other for another month until it started all over again. Things came to a head this past December, though. Irene was in legal trouble. So was Josh, although she was trying to keep him out of it. They were grateful that spousal privilege meant he could lay low even though he was as guilty as her.”

“Legal trouble?”

Helena knew she probably shouldn’t talk about this since it was an open case with the FBI. But she had confirmed for herself that digging enough online brought it up as “public knowledge” that Irene Feist was entangled with Candace Lister’s human trafficking charges.

She told Delia as much, who was gripped.

“Wow. So… was she doing it?”

“Doing what?” Helena asked.