“Listening to you talking to him like that was harder than I thought.”She heaved out a breath.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”I hated how much the recording was dredging up our torrid past for her.I’d known our dark and complicated history would require attention, and probably years of therapy, but I’d hoped we could at least create more happier memories before we needed to rake over the terrible minutiae of what we’d left behind.“I didn’t mean any of it.The last thing I want to do is return to him.”
“I know.”Tears brimmed in her eyes.“It’s just difficult, you know, hearing you belittle yourself for him.”
Anger amplified in her voice, but the emotion was lost to the tears cascading down her face.Beckoning her toward me, I rose from the chair and cradled her head when she began to sob.
“He’s a selfish little man with no apparent capacity for charm or compassion.”Stroking her hair, I tried to soothe her.Ian was all of those things.I just hoped she knew I was doing my best to be none of them.“You and I both know that, but I’ll call him my god if it gets us one step closer to seeing him in handcuffs.”
My focus flitted to my wrist, recalling how those metal bracelets had felt around my skin.If there was any kind of justice under the sun, then I prayed Ian would know that feeling soon, too—the emptiness of arrest, and the suffocating hopelessness of imprisonment.If the French could expedite the ICC’s warrant, he’d be on his own, well beyond the reach of Lucy, his poor downtrodden wife, and the tiny sycophants who cowered to him in London.No one would be there to support him.
“But it’s just one thing after another.”
She buried her face against me, crying all over the shirt I’d borrowed from Laurent.The judge was slightly shorter than me, but I’d made do with the offering, just wanting the damn video recorded.The sooner the content was published, the faster we’d know if there was any prospect of Ian taking my bait.
“It’s okay.I’m here.”
I rubbed the small of her back, my focus flitting to the glass, although my attention was rooted in the words I couldn’t yet guarantee.I was there for her in that moment, but if the ICC remained dissatisfied, I couldn’t promise how long that would be true.
I tried not to dwell on the idea of doing time for the things I’d done, just as I refused to focus on the ignominious things I’d said or the way I denigrated myself for Ian’s entertainment.Lingering on those losses wouldn’t serve us.I only hoped Tom and his team would decide the video quality was good enough to publish and get the trial of waiting started.
Holding Caroline tightly, I turned my attention to the waning daylight beyond the vast windows.The sun was setting earlier with each passing day, abandoning the city to the looming shroud of night.Watching the sun’s descent, I had to hope the incoming darkness wasn’t an omen of things to come.
Chapter Seventeen
Caroline
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THE HOURS BLURRED INTOdays, those days becoming difficult to decipher once the video had been published.Somewhere along the line, Harper’s doctor had wanted to discharge him, but he’d managed to persuade her and Elsa to allow him to stay at the expensive hospital until, he assumed, he needed to leave for the English Channel.
Discharge would have meant the two of us being separated back into Swiss custody again, and both he and I were resolved to do everything possible to avoid that.Whatever was going to happen would only be manageable if the two of us stayed together for as long as we could.
Between meetings with hospital staff, the police, and the ICC’s pretrial judges, I marveled at how easily Harper was able to influence the people around us.When he’d first suggested us remaining there in the small room he’d come to occupy, I’d been certain there was no chance the authorities would agree.Why would they?Why allow an alleged war criminal to spend time with his asylum-seeking girlfriend in a medical facility when the services the institution provided were no longer required for his health?
Why do anything more to help us?
