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Brian shrugs, grabs a croissant, and pours himself a cup of coffee as though this is his house. “You think the guy who taught you everything you know can’t get into your little fortress?”

Aidan rolls his eyes. “Did everything go okay?”

Brian’s gaze shifts to me and then back to Aidan. “Everything is handled, no problems.”

“No witnesses?” Aidan asks.

“You sure you want to have this conversation in front of her?” Brian says, gesturing at me with his half-eaten croissant.

“We’re not talking details. She’s not stupid, Brian. She knows I’m not an upstanding citizen.”

Brian shrugs. “Nope. Everything is fine. I just wanted to report in.”

“You couldn’t have called?”

“And miss the breakfast buffet?” he asks, making a sweeping gesture over the food. “Besides, you weren’t answering your phone, and it was on my way. Mina’s out in the car.”

“You guys out on a job?” Aidan asks.

Brian finishes the croissant and downs the rest of his coffee before plucking a strawberry out of the fruit salad. “Always.”

“This early on a Sunday morning?”

Brian puts his coffee cup in the sink and turns back to Aidan. “No rest for the wicked.” Then he winks at me and leaves.

Aidan turns back to me. For a moment he seems lost about what we were even talking about, but I remember, and I’m not about to let it go. So I just pick right back up where I left off before Brian—who clearly killed someone for Aidan recently—interrupted us.

“If you try to make me convert, I’ll tell Father Rossi.” I don’t know a lot about religion, but I do know the Catholic church takes their conversion process very seriously and that they don’t do unwilling conversion, at least not in the modern age.

An unsettled look passes over Aidan’s face, but it’s so fast I feel I must have imagined it. His gaze rakes over me, and I can tell he likes what I’m wearing, even if he doesn’t want to admit he likes it. He sits back down at the table across from me.

He’s clearly done with this conversational topic, even if I’m not.

“Do you need cream or sugar for that?” he asks, nodding at my coffee.

“I take it black, like your heart.”

He lets that comment pass.

“It’ll look weird if you aren’t at Mass with me. I go every Sunday,” he says.

“Why?”

“I’m Catholic.”

I put some butter on the croissant, and take a bite, then I say the thing that has been bouncing around in my brain on and off since I first considered it.

“So, you don’t believe in birth control?

Do you expect me to have ten kids, because I’m telling you right now, Aidan, I will kill myself before I allow that to happen. ”

It might be a bit dramatic, but I think I really would. I will not be his livestock on top of everything else, and I won’t be bound to his morals when he clearly isn’t bound by them either.

He gets up and leaves the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

I continue to eat my croissant and sausage.

It’s ridiculous that he’s throwing a tantrum like a toddler over this.

I won’t let him treat me this way. I may have had no way out of this marriage, but if he thinks he can make my life hell, I will match his energy.

He clearly wants me to want him, or else he wouldn’t have bought me all that stuff, or paid for that Dior gown for the wedding.

But it’s not enough to just buy me things. How shallow does he think I am?

If he wanted an expensive whore, there are plenty of places he could have purchased one.

Will he present me with a giant library next and just expect that I’ll fall at his feet in wonder and amazement?

I finish breakfast, get a bowl of fruit, and return to the table. It’s a mix of blueberries, strawberries, mandarin orange slices, and bananas.

I jump when Aidan returns a few minutes later and slams some papers on the table.

“What’s this?”

“I had a vasectomy.”

I look down at the papers. It’s records from different doctor’s visits.

The entire history from him making an appointment three years ago, to the checkups that proved the procedure worked and none of his little swimmers are swimming.

His last check up was three months ago. This is a man who wants to make sure he can’t reproduce.

“Why?” I say. Immediately I make it about me. I mean he’s been obsessed with me forever. I’m sure he had plans to take me three years ago when he started this process. Did he think I’d be a bad mother?

“I didn’t want to create more monsters like me,” he says. His voice is low and flat, and it sends a shiver down my spine. This guy is a total sociopath. Do sociopaths have the kind of self-awareness to not bring more of their kind into the world?

“But what if I wanted kids?” I’m not sure if I do or not.

I never had that urge to nurture anything as a kid.

I didn’t play with baby dolls. The only doll I liked was Barbie, and that was for doll fashion shows and grown up things like being a vet and a doctor and a lawyer and an astronaut—not to push around in a stroller like a baby.

I kept thinking some maternal clock would start to tick, and maybe it still will.

I’m only twenty-seven, but I’m starting to think maybe motherhood might be a giant scam, and I’d be happier without all the grossness and pain of pregnancy and childbirth.

Why does everyone need to do that one thing?

I get that if nobody did it humanity would go extinct, but that scenario is very unlikely.

I just want to be free, I think, as I sit here, a prisoner in Aidan’s house.

Though, with someone as wealthy as Aidan, motherhood itself might not be too bad. I could have a night nurse and a nanny and…

Aidan interrupts my thought trail. “Do you want to create more monsters like me?”

I can’t say he doesn’t have a point.

“You weren’t a monster when we were six.

” He was still just a sweet kid back then even if I didn’t want to be his girlfriend.

I still remember the way he looked at me when he gave me that handmade valentine and made sure I knew he was the one responsible for the chocolate cupcakes with the pink icing and sprinkles.

I can’t believe I even remember those details.

“No, I was worse,” Aidan says, “I was weird .”

I flinch at the word and the emphasis he placed on it.

He’s been carrying this around for a while.

I could say that we were six and six year olds say mean things, but I called him weird up until the point he got expelled from our school.

I don’t think he’s weird anymore… no, he’s just a dangerous criminal now.

“Aidan…”

He must read something on my face because he says, “Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not you. There are much deeper and darker things that shaped me than you and your rejections.”

“Tell me.” His hand is on the table near mine, and almost unconsciously I place mine on top of his.

I don’t know if I’m developing Stockholm Syndrome, if getting him to talk to me is some sort of survival strategy, or if I really care about what made him like he is—apart from Brian. I would love to know that backstory.

He jerks his hand away. “Don’t worry about it.

” He straightens his suit and looks down at his watch.

It strikes me that instead of pulling out a phone to check the time like everyone our age, he looks at an actual watch on his wrist as though he lives entirely outside of the modern age with all its buzzing, beeping, and whirring technologies.

This man doesn’t do interruption or notifications.

“We’ve got to leave in fifteen minutes.”