Page 90 of Malicious Marriage

“Exactly!” I throw my hands up, relieved that Don has the same reaction I had. I was beginning to go crazy with all of this stored up inside me.

“You think there’s truth to it?” Don is about to set his drink down when he offers it to me instead.

“Duke has no reason to lie. He barely knew of my connection to the Kuznetsovs until we were talking about Malcom.” I drain his glass in three gulps, drinking quickly while the ice cubes numb my upper lip. “So I want everything we can dig up on Malcom.”

“Do you think Clover was a plant?” Don’s eyes dart back and forth as the gears turn. “Was she planted here to keep some sort of eye on you?”

“Honestly? I have no fucking clue. She’s been lying to me, though, about a lot of stuff, and I don’t know how to unpack even half of it. But that fire?” I’ve thought about it every day since it happened while wearing the scars on my skin. “I’m getting the truth even if I have to beat it out of that fucker myself.”

“I’ll get on it,” Don says firmly. “What do you want to do about Clo?—”

“So sorry to interrupt.” Jack appears on the patio and winces. “But you’ve got a visitor.”

“If it’s Clover then tell her?—”

“Worse,” Jack cuts in. “It’s Trisha.”

My heart drops. What the fuck does she want?

Excusing myself from Don, I follow Jack through the house while trying to wrestle down the surging rush of anxiety. I’ve never considered myself an anxious person but it hits me now like a bulldozer. My palms sweat, my heart races, and there’s an antsy restlessness in my limbs that I can’t shake even as I walk. Trisha being here is nothing but a pain and I need to tell the gate guards not to let her through.

In the lounge, Trisha stands with her back to me, staring out the window. She’s dressed in a simple blouse and pencil skirt with a sheer shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

“The hell are you doing here?”

“Is that any way to greet the mother of your child?” She turns to face me.

“Fuck right off.” I’m instantly over whatever she might have come here to say but as I turn to leave, she hurries toward me.

“Wait, Dean. I’m sorry. I just… that’s not why I’m here.”

My hand lingers on the door handle, but I don’t leave. “Then why are you here?”

“I care about you, Dean. You know that, right?”

I can’t even keep a straight face as our eyes meet. “I don’t know what’s more pathetic, the fact that you think that means anything to me or the fact that you yourself might actually believe what you do iscaring.”

Her eyes narrow briefly. “When you see what I have to show you, you’ll understand.” Trisha rummages in her skirt pocket and pulls out a small folded piece of paper and hands it to me. “Call that number.”

One brow rises. “No.”

“Dean, call it.”

“Trisha, no.”

“It’s the number of a loan shark.”

“Do I look like I need to borrow money?”

“You’re impossible,” she mutters. “Look. When Conor was in a little bit of debt, I put him in contact with that loan shark because he was reliable when I was younger and my father was withholding my allowance.”

“Good for you.”

“Listen to me. Conor went back to him recently because he still has it in his head that if he has enough money then maybe we can be together, but while he was there, he found something. Did you know your precious little wife was so deep in debt they were considering carving out her kidneys?”

“What?” That catches my interest.

Trisha’s eyes light up. “Mmhmm. It turns out your precious little bride isn’t the Byrne heiress everyone thinks she was. She was cut out of her own family like a cancerous sore about fouryears ago and she’d been scraping by on loans from that loan shark ever since. The only reason they let her borrow so much and for so long was because she used to date one of the workers. Poor fucker’s dead now, though, some medical complication.” She dabs briefly at the corner of her mouth. “Anyway, my point is, she lied to you, my dear. That Clover isn’t the rich bitch everyone thinks. She’s a penniless cunt so deep in debt that the only way to pay it off was with flesh. Until she got a sudden injection of funds fromyourbank account. Which not only means she lied to and tricked you, but she also stole from you!”