Page 24 of The Expat Affair

After Thomas and the detective leave, I check on Sem, sound asleep in his bed, then go downstairs to an empty kitchen. Martina is long gone, which is good since that means I don’t have to see her worried face. She thinks these murders tie back to House of Prins, too. She thinks her job is in danger, and after that visit from the detective, I’m not sure how to reassure her.

I make myself a cup of chamomile tea, sit at the kitchen table, and try to think, really think about what it means that my bracelet was in Xander’s desk drawer. Even if the Cullinan in that bracelet was a lab-grown, it’s concerning that he set it in an exact replica of the bracelet. What was he planning to do, sell the bracelet on the black market? With a stone like the Cullinan as its centerpiece, he had to know the bracelet would get back to Thomas eventually. Now he knows there is a copy of the Cullinan floating around. He’ll be looking for them in other places, too.

Thomas was right about one thing, though: Xander was in cahoots with the Asian lab. He told me that night at his penthouse, in the same breath he said he could grow any stone I wanted. The six-carat Prins-cut dazzler in my engagement ring, for example, or the four-carat dangly teardrops in the earrings I was wearing that night. All Xander needed was a copy of the grading certificates, which he could use to grow a match so perfect, so exact that not even my husband would see the difference. That night at his penthouse, I asked him to grow me twelve.

Twelve lab-grown diamonds that are physically, chemically, and optically identical twins to twelve of the mined diamonds Thomas gave to me. More than fifty carats in all, and that’s excluding the Cullinan in the bracelet. That stone I promised to Xander.

It was sloppy of him, though, setting the lab-grown Cullinan in a replica of the bracelet, making it look like the real thing. A stone like the Cullinan isn’t exactly subtle, not even if he sold it on the black market. Now all those other lab-grown stones Xander was ordering from the Asian lab and selling under the table, Thomas will be looking for those, too.

It’s past two by the time headlights flash on the upstairs bedroom window, Thomas’s car turning into the driveway. He parks under the giant elm and idles there for long enough I kick off the covers. He’s been gone for almost seven hours now—the equivalent of an entire workday on top of the one he’d just finished—and I wonder how he’s filled all those hours. If he spent them all at the factory.

I step out of bed and to the big bay window, pressing my forehead to the freezing glass. Thomas is still sitting in his car just below. I see the inky smudge that’s the top of his head through the sunroof, lit up by the soft glow of a cellphone. Too far for me to see what he’s seeing, but I gather from the blobs of white and green that it’s WhatsApp. Thomas is messaging someone.

The interior light pops on, the door swings open, and I step back from the window before he can spot me spying. At the foot of the stairs, Ollie hears him, too. I catch his groan as he heaves himself to his feet, the excited click-click-click of his nails on the marble floor, heavy panting when Thomas comes through the door. I sink onto the edge of the bed and wait.

Thomas doesn’t notice me sitting in the dark, just breezes through the bedroom for the closet. He’s almost to the hallway that connects the two when I call out his name.

“Thomas.”

He jumps, his whole body twitching in surprise, in shock. He whirls around, his gaze searching out mine in the dim room. “Jesus Christ, . You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Long day,”

I say, pointing out the obvious. I have no idea what he’s thinking, can’t quite gauge his mood. He doesn’t look happy to find me waiting up for him, but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe he’s just not happy, period. “You look tired.”

He sighs, slumping against the wall. “Exhausted. The only thing I want is to get out of these clothes and into bed. Do you mind?”

He turns for the closet before I can ask him to wait.

I push off the bed and follow him down the hallway, coming into the closet as he’s stripping out of his sweater. He folds it and drops it in a drawer, then starts in on his belt while I clasp my hands tight on top of the marble island and force myself to just say it. To ask the question that has me standing here, watching him undress in a closet at 2:00 a.m., staring down the husband who won’t quite meet my eyes.

“Thomas, are you having an affair?”

He whirls around, the buckle on his belt rattling. “What?”

“You heard me. Are you having an affair? Is there someone else?”

He steps out of his pants and shakes them out, holding them at the hem. “No, . There’s no one else.”

Liar.

A shiver of something unpleasant shimmies its way down my spine. Jealousy? Panic? I push it aside and plow on.

“Then who were you out there messaging? Because I saw you in the car. You were on your phone.”

“Offices are open in Asia. Those messages were for work.”

It’s a convenient answer, especially in light of the bracelet bombshell Detective Boomsma dropped earlier, one that doesn’t feel that far off base. Thomas works seven days a week, and when he is home, he’ll step away from everything—meal times with me and Sem, a rare moment relaxing on the couch, a game of catch in the backyard—to take a call or answer an email. He sleeps with his phone next to the bed, for crap’s sake. Why wouldn’t those messages be for work?

“And the necklace?”

He peels off his socks and tosses them in the hamper. “What necklace?”

He pads to the bathroom in his boxers, and with a sigh, I follow behind.

“The one you bought at Rive Gauche.”

At the last two words, Thomas experiences a full-body reaction. He stops in the middle of the bathroom, his bare back stiffening before he turns on a heel.

“You were following me?”

The same thing Rayna said to me, only this time, I don’t deny it. His tone is heavy with disbelief, with insult, and so is his expression.

“No, Thomas. No. You do not get to turn this around. Who did you buy the necklace for? Whose bike did you hang it on?”

A mottled shadow darkens his face like a bruise. “Jesus, , seriously? You were following me. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you.”

I give an angry shake of my head. “Whose bike, Thomas?”

He steps to the sink and rummages through the drawer for the toothpaste, squirting a neat line of blue goo onto his brush. “No one’s. The necklace was a piece of junk. I don’t know who the bike belonged to. I chose it at random.”

“You chose a random person to give a cheap necklace?”

“I figured somebody would want it. It would be a shame to just throw it away.”

The frugality is so very Dutch. Thomas has all the money in the world and yet he can’t bear wasting a single penny.

“That makes no sense! Why buy a necklace and hang it on a rusty bike?”

Frustration rises in my chest, spilling over into my voice. “If there’s someone else, Thomas, if you’ve . . . changed your mind about me—about us—just say it. Because I’m not one of those women who tries harder when there’s a challenge. I’m not attracted to someone who’s not attracted to me.”

Especially when I’m pretty sure you never loved me the way a man is supposed to love his wife. These are the words I can’t quite force over my lips, no matter how much I need to know the answer.

It’s a question I should have asked ages ago, back when his workdays first started to extend into the evenings, back when this chasm between us was still barely a crack. Before I let the hurt pile up and up and up, so high I can no longer see a way to glue us back together. Long before I decided to find solutions in a man like Xander.

But what the hell do I know about marriage? About love? What do I know about commitment? My father took off before I was born. My mother was too focused on the parade of worthless men to pay a lick of attention to me, her only child. Sixteen is an awfully early age to learn that you’re barely a side note in your own parent’s life, but this is the legacy of my upbringing, that I crave stability. When Thomas dropped to his knee, offering a life as a Prins and all that entails, I grabbed on with both hands—not just for me, but for Sem.

But it was my mother, with her fickle nature and endless supply of men waiting in the wings, who taught me to always have a backup plan.

Thomas flips on the water, holding his toothbrush under the stream. “No, . There’s no one else. I already told you. And I haven’t changed my mind.”

“I saw you, Thomas. Coming out of the Conservatorium.”

He pauses, barely a split second, but long enough that I see it. “When? Which day? Because I’m working on a line of lab-growns exclusive to the boutique there. I’m in that building once a week, sometimes more.”

“Tuesday. The day you were supposed to be in Antwerp for the conference.”

“I was in Antwerp. I took the helicopter.”

He shoves the toothbrush in his mouth, speaking around the bristles. “Should I have my assistant forward the receipt?”

Yes. I sigh. Fold my arms across my chest. “And the necklace?”

“The necklace.”

He does a lightning-quick brush of his teeth then spits into the sink, rinsing his toothbrush and chucking it in the drawer with a huff. “The PI told me that store was a front. He said they have a back room where they deal in black market diamonds. I went there to . . . I don’t know, take a look around.”

It takes me a couple of seconds to switch gears and then a few more to rearrange the puzzle pieces in my head. The PI, the private investigator Thomas hired after the Cullinan theft, when the police had hit their last dead end. All those leads that led to nowhere, no closer to finding the Cullinans after months of investigation than they were when they vanished into thin air. The cops volleyed the case back to the insurance company, where it’s stalled out yet again.

The insurance company is already being difficult enough, Willem said at last Sunday’s supper. He was talking about Xander’s death, insisting Thomas make sure it not get tied up in the theft. The last thing we need is another reason for them to delay the payout. Those Cullinans were insured for hundreds of millions of euros, money the family still hasn’t seen.

“You thought Rive Gauche would sell you a Cullinan?” I say.

“I thought they’d sell me something, but the saleswoman either didn’t know about the back room or she was playing me. When I said I was willing to pay for a piece with real stones, she gave me the address for a store down the street. A legit store. I know the owner.”

“Maybe the saleswoman recognized you.”

It’s certainly possible. Asscher, Coster, Gassan, Prins. These are the names that dominate the diamond market here, and Thomas’s picture is plastered at least once a week on a newspaper, a website, a social media post. Especially if it’s true that Rive Gauche is selling stolen diamonds in back rooms, that saleswoman would have clocked Thomas as a Prins the second he walked through the door.

“I thought of that, too. But I’m not the only one who tried. Everybody I’ve sent over there has struck out, too.”

“So the PI was wrong?”

“Sure looks like it. Anyway, can we talk about this tomorrow? I have a meeting at the factory at nine.”

A short six hours and some change from now.

Thomas disappears down the hall, back through the closet and into the bedroom. I flick off the lights and follow behind.

He’s already under the covers by the time I catch up. His glasses lie on the nightstand, next to his phone on the wireless charger, lit up with a soft green glow displaying the time. I slip into bed, and his hand finds mine under the comforter. A gesture that used to be so normal, so tender and full of love, that it now feels like punishment, a consolation prize swathed in pity. His fingers are warm and dry as they close around mine.

“I’m sorry,”

he says, his voice so low I have to strain to hear. “I know I’ve been really . . . absent lately.”

Scream at me. Rip off my clothes and fuck me. Tell me you hate me and want a divorce. Anything other than this quiet desertion.

I lie here for a long moment, staring up at the dark ceiling, trying to figure out a way to say it. Instead, I land on, “If there’s something you need to tell me, Thomas, please just do it. I’m a big girl. I can handle the truth.”

I hate the way my voice sounds, thin and pleading, but it must do something to him because he’s quiet for a long time. I hear his slow, steady breaths, feel the low hum of his muscles vibrating under the sheets. This is it, I think. Here it comes. I hold my breath, my whole body waiting.

“There’s nothing to say,”

he says finally. “Everything’s fine.”

He releases my hand and rolls onto his side, and that’s that. Conversation over. Whatever problems we have, not solved but left to fester. I lie here in the dark, telling myself I have every luxury I could have ever dreamed of. Diamonds. The Prins name. This palace and access to a bank account with more money than I could ever spend.

But I meant what I said to Rayna a few days ago. A wife knows when there’s another woman in her husband’s bed, or worse—in his head.

I stare into the dark, thinking I’ll wait all night if I have to. I have absolutely nothing better to do than count my husband’s exhales and wait for them to even out.

Thomas’s body is a deadweight on the mattress, his breaths regular puffs of soft air. I stare at the ceiling for fifteen minutes more, and then I lift the covers and slip out of bed.

Silently, I creep around to his side of the bed, lift his cellphone from the charger, and hurry with it into the bathroom. Thomas has never given me his passcode, has never actually handed me his phone and said those numbers out loud, but I’ve watched him punch them in enough times that I know what they are. I tick them in now, and the screen dissolves into a WhatsApp conversation.

At the top of the screen, a woman’s name, Cécile, and I roll my eyes in the dim room. Cécile is Thomas’s assistant, a drab woman with close-set eyes and hair as shapeless as her body. His secretary, how cliché.

I scroll through the texts, reading them in reverse. Good night, my love. I wish it was you I was coming home to. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I must see you, must see for myself that you’re okay. I didn’t tell him anything, I swear. I wouldn’t do that to you. Please be careful. Please stay safe. I couldn’t bear if what happened to Frederik happened to you, too. ILY forever, xx.

It’s funny, all these months I’ve spent agonizing about where Thomas has been and who he’s been with, I thought when the truth finally cracked open that I’d feel more. My husband is in love with another woman. He wishes it was her he was coming home to. He’s not just a liar but a coward.

Even though I was expecting this—honestly, I’ve known it for some time now—seeing those words on Thomas’s screen doesn’t hurt me as much as it ignites something under my skin. A simmering fury that he doesn’t have the balls to tell me, a nervous kind of energy to hold the phone in front of his face and slap him awake. I think of Thomas in the next room, snoring soundly in the bed we share, and I wonder if that’s what he’s dreaming about, this dirty little secret with Cécile.

My gaze snags on the words at the top of the screen. Please be careful. Please stay safe. He’s scared Frederik’s killer is still out there, that he might be coming for Cécile. It makes sense, I guess, that Thomas has latched on to this. Yet another distressed damsel for him to save, yet another wounded puppy for him to adopt. Thomas didn’t walk away from his upbringing unscathed, either. He loves nothing more than feeling needed.

I stand there, the marble cool under my feet, and breathe through another wave of anger—at Thomas, but mostly at myself. For believing he meant it when he promised to take away my worries, for letting myself fall for his lies, for not being prepared for a woman like Cécile sneaking in the back door.

I leave the screen exactly how I found it, with Thomas’s last text at the bottom of the chat, then sneak back into the bedroom and settle the phone back on the charger. Cécile can have my husband’s lying, cheating ass—but not yet. I’m not letting him go just yet. Let him live in agony a little while longer.

I don’t need Thomas. I don’t need his lies and dodges and empty promises.

But those twelve diamonds Xander grew for me? The ones he stashed in his safe?

Those, I need. I need them now more than ever.