Page 39 of Bad Bishop

What ticked me off the most—there was a list, and it was fucking long—was that she didn’t seem at all appreciative of the gallant gesture I put forth.

I could’ve taken her four times a day. It was my marital right.Duty, even. Christian burden, some would say.

Nice newfound Catholicism you’ve got there, buddy. Goes well with all the murder and torture.

My main problem with this marriage—apart from its existence—was that I suspected my wife was faking her condition.

On our wedding night, she acted like a frightened young woman who very much knew she was about to spend the rest of her life with a man who collected his enemies’ skulls as souvenirs.

In the past two weeks, she barely left her room other than to go to her parents’. She was strategic. Cunning. I fucking hated liars. They reminded me too much of myself.

But there were other things that didn’t add up.

She didn’t register half the shit that left my mouth. The other half was met with blank, empty stares. The day she moved in, a car lost control and slammed straight into Fermanagh’s, breaking all the street-facing windows. The sound alone rattledthe walls. Yet when I looked at her, expecting her to jump in fear, she was staring at the lighting fixtures on her bedroom ceiling disapprovingly, oblivious to the noise.

Against my better judgment, I stalked toward her room, rapping on the door. It was half past midnight, but she’d live. It wasn’t like she had important shit to tend to tomorrow morning.

There was no answer. I banged harder. “Open.”

I knew a load of bullshit when I smelled one. And my wife? She reeked of insincerity. One moment she couldn’t hear an atomic explosion, the other she carved my hand like she was performing a carpal tunnel surgery.

Yeah. No.Fuck. That.

She opened the door just before I kicked it down. Barefoot, blank-faced, still not looking directly at me. I supposed beautiful things didn’t want to be reminded of the ugliness in the world.

Tough luck, darlin’.

“What’s two plus two?”

She blinked innocently, laying it on extra thick just to piss me off, I suspected.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” I held up three fingers in the air.

Her gaze was stubbornly glued to my chest.

Perhaps an incentive was in order. “How about a new dollhouse if you use that pretty head of yours for more than just gawking and give me an answer?”

She actually arched a sarcastic eyebrow; good to know I wasn’t the only cynical asshole around here. I stepped into her personal space, eating the space between us, clasping that little pointy chin of hers that was more enticing than Becky’s entire bleeding body.

“Listen carefully, Lila. I’m a bad man who does terrible things, and I do them exceptionally well. Stay out of my way, and you’ll live.”

She gave me a slow, provocative,are-you-doneblink.

As it happened, I wasn’t.

“But if you’re a mole, if you were sent here to spy, I’m going to kill you.” I rubbed her velvety chin with my thumb, back and forth. “Probably fuck you to death. I like to press people’s trigger buttons. What happened with Becky tonight won’t even be the appetizer,Gealach.”

Her unbothered response came in the form of peeking over my shoulder to see if Becky was still here.

“She’s gone,” I said.

Lila yawned into the back of her hand, waiting for me to do the same. She had a point. Nothing was keeping me here. It was the middle of the night, and she hadn’t done anything to warrant my unwelcome visit. If anything, I was the one who screwed another woman on the surface where she ate her avocado toast every morning.

We’d had a routine where we avoided each other efficiently, and there was no reason to disrupt the arrangement. Complete separation was what we’d both wanted.

People thought I was an impulsivesonovobitch, when really, being this level of psychopath required a good deal of strategy. I didn’t justdoshit. I thought it through. And I couldn’t think of one good reason why I was standing here in front of her instead of tending to my million and one pressing businesses.

Still, something in me refused to let it go.