Page 20 of The Expat Affair

Everything about Rayna is a surprise. Seeing her step out from that curtain of branches outside Xander’s funeral, the shock mingling with fear on her face when I told her I found her in five minutes flat, her enthusiastic yes when I asked if she wanted a drink. We’ve been here all of twenty minutes, and already, she’s on her third glass of wine.

“I’ve never seen a dead person before, and Xander was . . .”

She winces, her entire body giving a hard shudder. “His neck. His hand. Every time I close my eyes, I see him just . . . lying there.”

I think back to the articles I’ve read, the gruesome descriptions of the zip tie wrapped around his neck. I don’t remember reading anything about his hand.

“What happened to Xander’s hand?”

She leans into the table, too tipsy to bother to lower her voice. “His finger was gone, . They chopped it off, presumably to get in the safe. It worked on biometrics.”

My stomach twists, and I try not to picture it. The image is too awful to even contemplate.

But also, why? Xander’s safe has a fingerprint pad, yes, but it also opens with a code. Did Xander change it? Did he refuse to cough it up for the killer? A safe full of stolen lab-growns hardly seems worth losing your life trying to protect.

“I know,”

she says at the look on my face. “It’s the stuff of nightmares. I probably should get some therapy.”

I blow out a breath, leaning into the table like she does, mimicking her body language. “And you didn’t hear anything?”

“Not a peep. I’m assuming that’s what saved me, that the killer didn’t know I was there.”

I nod because she’s not wrong. If Rayna had stumbled out of bed at the noise, if she’d followed it into the bathroom and witnessed Xander in his death throes, there would have been two funerals today, not one.

“Xander was stealing from the House, apparently. One of the Asian labs was sneaking extra diamonds into their shipments for him to sell under the table. I don’t know much more than that, only that my husband fired him the night of the murder. Don’t go spreading that around, by the way. The timing doesn’t look great.”

A smarter part of me knows that I’ve probably said too much, and maybe it’s the wine on an otherwise empty stomach, but the words came out before I can stop them.

She gives me a look like she did in that parking lot, filled with distrust.

“It’s true, Rayna, I swear, and that’s not even all of it. Six months after he came on board, the Cullinans disappeared from the vault. Six months after that, he was murdered in his shower, and now a diamond trader was found in the Amstel with a bullet in his head. You see why I had to warn you, right? Xander was caught up in something bad. Something that got him killed.”

My words seem to do the trick. She blinks at me, and her frown dissolves, her expression changing from wariness to resignation in a split second. She picks up her glass, then just as quickly puts it back down with a hard thwack. “Jesus. I sure know how to pick them, don’t I? A thief and a black market criminal. I mean . . . what the hell?”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it. I know what a charmer Xander could be. He fooled a lot of people, my husband included.”

It’s shocking, actually, how long it took for Thomas to figure this out. I knew it the second I laid eyes on the man, when he rolled up to his own welcome party in a vintage Aston Martin and a Gucci suit. The hotshot gemologist Thomas lured from abroad to save the House from itself.

“I’m not savvy, as evidenced by . . . well, my whole entire life. And sorry, but . . .”

She bites the inside of her lip, regarding me over the table. “Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

“Which part?”

“That there are two dead men. First Xander and now the trader. Two murders, both connected to the House of Prins. The detective told me the trader was shot in the head in the same breath he said Xander had a gun. A 3D-printed one, apparently. The detective asked me if I’d seen it.”

I sit up straighter in my chair. Xander had a 3D-printed gun. Thomas had instructions for a 3D-printed gun on his desk. According to Fleur, he claimed he found the papers on the printer. Could it really be that simple?

Rayna frowns. “What?”

“It’s just . . . Fleur asked me if Thomas had one. She said she found instructions on how to print a gun on Thomas’s desk and asked me if I’d seen it.”

“, why does your husband need a gun?”

“I don’t know. Why does anyone need a gun?”

“Maybe because he’s scared.”

“Scared the scandal will impact his precious diamond house, you mean. That’s why they all ran off and left me like they did. After the newsflash about Frederik, they had to rush back to the office to do damage control.”

I pick up my wine, my finger tapping the glass. “And there’s no gun. I’ve searched the house. If my husband owns one, 3D printed or otherwise, it’s not under our roof.”

“Still. That’s an awful lot of hypothetical guns floating around in a country where they’re highly illegal.”

“Tell me about it.”

I glance at the people around us, the couple at the next table, the group of women huddled around the fireplace, the waiter carrying a loaded-down tray on his fingertips. None of them are listening, but I lean into the table anyway. “I really wish you had some of those missing diamonds.”

“Me, too. Though I don’t think the man in the baseball cap will see it that way. Even if—”

“Hang on.”

Two words ping me like a tuning fork, and I sit up straighter on my chair. “What man in the baseball cap?”

“I’ve seen him twice now, first in a baseball cap and the second time in a beanie. I noticed him because I’d just found a tracker in my bag and there was something about the way he was watching me, the smile he gave when I shook him off, almost like a touché. It was creepy.”

“I don’t know if it means anything, but Xander said a guy in a ball cap was following him, too.”

Her face blanches. “I think it must mean something. Don’t you?”

My skin goes warm, and I think back to what I told Xander that night—that description could fit a million men in this country, a ball cap means nothing, stop being paranoid.

Except it definitely means something. I nod. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

“Well, shit. Now I really wish I had some of Xander’s diamonds.”

“What about the necklace?”

She frowns. “What about it?”

“You really don’t have it?”

Her frown deepens and I quickly add, “That guy who’s tracking you around town? He’s assuming you do. You realize that, right?”

I don’t say what I’m really thinking, that any man who would kill Xander for the diamonds in his safe wouldn’t hesitate to do the same to Rayna. It’s why she’s still alive right now, why baseball cap man hasn’t slipped a zip tie around her neck and pulled it tight just yet, because he’s hoping she’ll lead him to the diamonds.

“But I don’t. Somebody’s already searched my apartment for it. The necklace is not there. I don’t have it.”

She doesn’t blink as she says it, doesn’t look away, doesn’t shift in her chair, doesn’t squirm or fidget at all. The truth, then. Rayna doesn’t have the necklace. This is not the greatest news for either of us.

That necklace I’ve been seeing all over the news. I want those diamonds too.

“You should probably find another place to stay,”

I say, but I don’t offer up my guest room because what would I say? How would I explain it to Thomas, to Martina? I don’t need either one of them analyzing my invitation, why I’ve chosen to bring the woman the press has positioned as Xander’s killer into our home. It would summon up too many questions.

Rayna frowns. “The detective told me to stay put. He’s ordered extra patrols, and he says my street has more cameras than any other in Amsterdam.”

She studies my face, and the lines in her forehead deepen. “You don’t agree?”

I shake my head. “If I were you, I’d disappear for a while. Just until things settle.”

She falls back in her chair, her expression crumpling. “I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to disappear in this country. I don’t speak the language. I’m still learning how things work. And I’d need a thick wad of cash—cash that I don’t have—to even try.”

“The last one I can help you with. All we need is an ATM.”

“. I can’t ask you to do that. I have no idea how I’d pay you back, or when. It would take me years. Though I’d probably feel better if I could get my hands on a gun.”

“I can help you with that, too.”

We fall silent then, the gravity of the conversation hitting us both in a warm, boozy rush. Rayna would feel better with a gun. She’s an innocent bystander in all this, and now she wants a weapon, a deadly kind of protection. I think of Xander’s killer tracking Rayna around town, of Willem saying that Arthur’s men would deal with her somehow, and she definitely needs a gun.

“Let me ask you this,”

she says. “What does your husband think happened? Who does he think killed Xander?”

“Who the hell knows? Thomas doesn’t talk to me. We’re not exactly on the same page these days. I’m pretty sure he’s having an affair.”

Once again, the words fling themselves off my tongue before I can stop them. The wine and the warmth and Rayna watching me with that scrunched brow—it’s doing something to me, and it’s not like I have anyone else to say it to. The friends I’ve made here know me as a Prins, and they all have some kind of tie to Thomas—husbands who’ve known him since college days, the female halves of couples we see socially. Rayna has never met Thomas or his family, and it feels good, telling someone. Telling her.

“I don’t have proof,”

I say, “not yet at least, but a woman knows these things.”

“Do we, though? Because I sure didn’t.”

“Well, I do, and I’ll tell you something else.”

My cell buzzes against the table, but I ignore it. “If there’s another woman in his life, if he wants to be with her, then he needs to just come out and say it. Stop sneaking around. Stop lying about where he is and who he’s with. Who he loves. Because I’m not the kind of person who can just . . . close my eyes to it. I’m not the kind of wife who can keep acting like nothing is wrong, like I haven’t noticed that he’s checked out. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally. That his love has just . . . drained away.”

I say these things and I feel it all over again, the anger I felt when I spotted him coming out of the Conservatorium Hotel, the restless sense of urgency his betrayal has injected into my chest, my blood, my bones. I am married to a man who still comes home every night, still sleeps inches away from me in bed, still eats meals across the table and reads books beside me on the couch, still smiles and laughs and kisses me, but only when his mother is watching.

“Jesus, , I’m so sorry.”

She backtracks with a shake of her head. “I always hated when people said that to me when my marriage imploded. I’m sorry implied that they pitied me, and Lord knows I was pitiful, but I didn’t want their pity. Pity just pissed me off even more than I already was. But I say it now to you because what you’re describing—I’ve been there and it’s awful.”

“You want to know the worst part? I kinda get it. I’m a totally different person than when we first met. I’m living in a country that is not my own, trying to express myself in a language that ties my tongue and makes it easier for me to say nothing at all. My four-year-old son has a better vocabulary than I do. Do you know how much smarter I am in English? How much funnier? Thomas has no idea. His family has no idea. They think I’m an idiot and a bore, and why wouldn’t they? Of course my husband fell out of love with me. I wouldn’t love me anymore, either.”

She gives me a closed-lipped smile, commiseration mixed with comfort. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“Which part?”

“All of it. There’s a reason your husband chose you.”

“You’re right. There is. Because I got pregnant. Ours was a classic shotgun wedding, not that Thomas ever gave any indication he wasn’t thrilled by the news. He’s a better person than that. But before he chose me, like really chose me, he chose Sem.”

At the thought of Sem, my body vibrates in my seat, my bones threatening to bust out of my skin. From the moment those two pink lines appeared on the stick, every decision I’ve made has been for Sem. Holding him inside, carrying him to term, keeping him alive. When people hear my story, they point to Sem as my golden ticket, and I suppose he was in a lot of ways. They think I’m a gold digger, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Rayna is quiet for a long while. “I should probably preface what I’m about to say with the fact that I’m the last person on the planet you should be listening to when it comes to relationship advice. But I’ve been to a lot of therapy, so I have a pretty decent idea of what a therapist would say to you right now, and that’s that you can only be in charge of your half of the relationship. You can’t carry the whole thing all on your own. You can’t make another person participate or reciprocate. The only thing you can do is decide if you want to be with someone who isn’t giving you one hundred percent.”

“Thank you. But it’s not that simple.”

“Because of the money?”

“Because of the money, because of Sem’s health, because I’m stuck here either way. But mostly because of Sem.”

My cell buzzes again, and this time, I glance at the screen and see I’ve missed multiple texts from Martina. A familiar worry pounds in my chest, and I snatch up my phone and start scrolling. “Oh, shit. Sem’s not eaten all day, and now he’s complaining of a headache.”

“The flu?”

“Maybe, but Sem has cochlear implants. Anytime he complains of ear or head pain, it freaks me the hell out.”

I pull a fifty from my wallet and toss it to the table, batting away Rayna’s hands as she scrambles for her wallet. “It’s on me. Also, screw the train. Let’s Uber back.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re rolling in dough.”

“I have access to dough. Not at all the same thing. But you’re right. Uber’s on me, too.”

I pull up the app on my phone and request a black car. As soon as we’re assigned a driver, I drop the phone in my bag. “Six minutes. And about that gun.”

“Which one?”

“The one I can help you get.”

“Oh, my God, ,”

she says, panic creeping into her voice. “I thought you were kidding. Are you serious right now? You really think I should get a gun?”

I stay quiet, holding her gaze, and my silence is not an answer, and yet at the same time, it is. Yes, Rayna needs a gun. Yes, I’m completely serious.

And not a gun that’s like Xander’s diamonds, grown with enough fire and hardness to fool people into believing it’s the real thing. Only an idiot or a half ass would settle for a gun printed with plastic. Rayna needs a real gun, one made out of steel and that uses metal bullets.

“Okay . . . now I’m really freaked out.”

She drains the last of the wine from her glass and pushes to a stand. “And even if I agreed with you, which I’m still not certain I do, I wouldn’t have the first idea where to get one.”

“Well, let me know, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned by becoming a Prins, it’s that money opens all sorts of doors. Even illegal ones.”

I stand, shoving my arms into the sleeves of my coat. “Actually, especially those.”