“You’ll get five with the paddle for your cheek,” she says. “And another five for swearing and rolling your eyes at me. Count and be grateful. We have an audience, after all.”
Slap.
“One, thank you, Mistress.”
As I said, one day, I’ll murder her. One day.
Kat
“What’s that?” Lilian asks as I hand her the envelope. She glances into my eyes with her mesmerizing ice-blue ones. I will never get enough of looking into those eyes.
“Your reward,” I say as I pull away from all the people in the bar. We walk out onto the terrace, offering a beautiful view of the ocean.
“Reward for what?”
“Everything. You. You being here. You marrying me. In front of everyone.”
“It’s what people do, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but you aren’t the people.”
“True,” she says and opens the envelope.
“I don’t understand,” she says as her eyes flash over it.
“It’s a dossier. Of me. Everything I have done. And when the day you want to murder me comes, I allow you to use it against me.”
She stares at it, at me, back to it.
“That’s a lot of names,” she says.
I laugh.
“I kept myself busy,” I say. “Many people with dark secrets, you know.”
She holds the dossier to the candle on the table next to us, and says, “I don’t want to know.” The longer it burns, the wider my smile grows.
Lilian snips the last piece into the candle and leans onto the railing. For a moment, I simply watch her in this amazing half-suit, half-dress she has chosen for today. It shows exactly who she is. Bossy for everyone else, soft for me. Me alone. My wife.
Never, ever, in my life have I imagined myself getting married. Nor loving anyone enough to divulge my secrets to.
But I do.
The woman I should have killed.
The woman who wants to kill me every day.
I wrap my arms around her from behind, and we both watch the sun set, dipping the ocean and sky in a deep orange.
“Hey, you two lovebirds,” shouts Hannigan from the door. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”
I sigh as we push ourselves off the railing.
Hannigan holds the door open for us, and I punch him in the chest.
“Next time you interrupt us, I’ll murder you next.” He laughs. The number of death threats he has received from my mouth in the past two years probably outnumber the ones I got from Lilian.
We get inside, and I see Lilian’s father in a heated discussion with the girl he brought; she’s crying, and my eyes narrow as my body tenses.
