Jeffrey’s chest tightened at the sound of Luca’s voice.
Luca remained on the bed, his eyelids only partially open, and his irises straining to regain focus. He fanned out his fingers and bent them at the knuckles, trying to pull his way up towards the pillow. He was too weak to continue.
‘What happened?’ Luca slurred again. ‘My head is killing me.’
Jeffrey froze. ‘You’re not well,’ he said. ‘Stay where you are.’
But, before Jeffrey could move Noah any further from view, Luca tilted his head in the direction of his husband, face down and spread out across the floor.
‘Noah?’ he asked slowly. ‘Is that you?’ He turned to Jeffrey. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘There’s . . . there’s been an accident. He fell and hurt himself.’
‘Is he bleeding?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Jesus, have you called an ambulance?’
‘Not yet. I was about to.’
‘You need to help him.’
‘It’s too late, Luca. I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He’s dead, Luca. Noah is dead.’
The blood drained from Luca’s face as he processed Jeffrey’s words. He tried again to move, slowly inching himself across the bed and towards Noah. The closer he came, the more his arms weakened and he lost his balance, falling off the bed and onto the floor. A reanimated Jeffrey dropped Noah and helped to prop Luca up against the side of a wardrobe. He watched carefully as Luca attempted to pair what Jeffrey was telling him with his husband’s bloody body.
This wasn’t how Jeffrey had envisaged his evening to end. Earlier, Luca hadn’t needed to verbalize his feelings for Jeffrey to understand how he felt. His body language and non-verbal communication had revealed an unequivocal romantic interest. Jeffrey had no choice but to act quickly and seize the moment. That meant rendering Luca immobile so that he could bring about a swift end to his client’s marriage.Short-term pain for a long-term gain, he’d told himself.
‘Noah, wake up,’ Luca pleaded. ‘Please, babe. Tell Jeffrey he’s wrong.’
‘It was an accident,’ Jeffrey continued. ‘But it will be okay.
I promise to make sure you don’t get the blame.’
‘Why? What did I do?’
‘He came home and you got into an argument, you were fighting and you both fell,’ Jeffrey said. ‘Noah hit his head and stopped breathing.’
‘I hurt him?’ Luca asked, horrified. Jeffrey nodded. He watched as Luca’s eyes welled up as he racked his brains, trying to recall the events of the night. ‘No, that can’t be right. Why don’t I remember?’
‘We’d been drinking. But I’m going to help you.’
‘If it was an accident then you can tell the police what you saw.’
‘I can’t. I was downstairs when it happened. You said he was strangling you and you were trying to protect yourself. It’s going to be your word against a man with a fatal head wound. Let me take care of it. I’ll move Noah somewhere until we can decide what to do.’
‘Noah wouldn’t lay a finger on me,’ Luca wept. ‘He can’t be dead.’
‘I won’t let you throw your life away for someone who doesn’t deserve it. He wasn’t in love with you any more, Luca; he came into the house and told you he was going to divorce you because he’d found someone else.’
‘No, no, I’m sure that didn’t happen. We love each other, he’s my world.’
Jeffrey tried to ignore Luca’s declaration. ‘It’s when you began to argue . . . it became violent. Look at your neck, Luca. There are red marks from where he was trying to strangle you.
