Page 47 of Until You

“There are only two answers you can give. Yes, you are an informant. Or yes, you stole product from me,” Kaleo says and chuckles as he takes a step closer. “And neither of them makes me a happy man.”

My hands are over my ears and my body tucked behind the railing when the third shot rings out. But I still jolt at its sound. This can’t be happening. My husband can not be a . . . killer. He’s Kaleo Makani. From a long line of Makanis.

Shipping.

Kaleo deals in shipping goods. Products. Merchandise. Customers who receive them.

But that bag? The white powder? Those are drugs.

There are drugs on the boat. A lot of drugs.

Does everyone on the boat know or just a select few?

Did they hear the gunshots, or with the other cabins being at the other end of the boat, were they too far?

This can’t be real.

I’ve . . . I’ve lived with this man, I’ve loved this man, I thought I knew this man better than I knew myself and I’ve . . . been wrong.

It’s all . . . all been a lie?

I stagger to the stateroom as my ears ring and my stomach pitches until I empty the contents of it into the toilet.

I’m in a fog. My thoughts are hazy. Disjointed. Never-ending in an eddy of disbelief.

The truth . . . I can’t avoid it as much as I want to, and now that it’s out there, it’s so very different than the “truth” I believed.

It’s all been a lie.

Who I married. The man he is. What he does. The money that supports the life I live.

All a lie that I’ve been too blinded and now feel so stupid that I didn’t see. Or maybe I haven’t been, and I’ve just ignored the truth because it was easier to turn a blind eye.

It takes forever for the tears to subside, for my body to stop shaking, for my mind to stop running in loops on how to get off this boat. On how anyone would believe I didn’t know what was going on right under my nose. On what to do.

If Kaleo somehow finds out that I saw—that I know—will I end up like the men whose blood is staining the deck below?

The thought sends another fresh round of fear through me as the early morning hours slowly wear on.

I don’t know what time it is when the door to the stateroom opens. When I hear the man I thought I knew sigh into the silence of the room after his hard night, and slowly begins to undress. The sound of shoes dropping. The slide of his tie through his collar as he takes it off. The snap of his slacks as he straightens them before laying them over the back of the chair.

If the lights were on, would I see blood splattered on those items now on the floor? On the skin of the man who wore them?

Each second feels like an hour.

The shower turns on.

Each minute feels like an eternity.

It turns off soon thereafter.

I have to brace myself when the bed dips. I steel myself not to jerk away when he reaches for me. When those hands of his that just killed seek to touch me.

His lips feel like poison on mine as I squeeze back the tears burning behind my closed eyes. As I try to turn my mind off and pretend I didn’t just see him murder three people in cold blood. As I try to reconcile the fact that my husband is a drug lord probably using his shipping company to launder the profits.

And if my brain couldn’t betray me anymore, my body does. Pleasure is a traitorous bitch even when it’s for self-preservation.

That only makes me hate myself more.