The Mafia Wife's Revenge novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Palm

I held the microphone and let the room look at me.

"That's my handwriting," I said.

"I wrote those words with my hand, in a courtroom, while I was deaf and blind."

"I did not know what they said, and the man who did is standing at the foot of this stage."

A man in the third row laughed out loud.

"She says her husband tricked her," someone said, and the whole row rippled.

It sounded exactly as mad as it was.

I had no proof but my own mouth, and nobody believed a woman with a ruined eye and a scraped voice.

Damian sighed into his microphone.

"You see how it is," he told the room gently. "I'm so sorry."

Cillian's hand closed over my wrist, light as a bracelet.

"Helena," he said. "Not here."

It was the first time he had touched me, and he stopped the instant I looked down at it.

I let him walk me out.

The cameras followed us all the way to the street.

In the car I did not cry.

I put my forehead against the cold window and watched Manhattan slide past.

Nobody said anything until the bridge.

"They believed him," I said.

"They believed what they could see," Cillian said. "A good suit and a woman standing in front of a mic."

"I saw the blue thread."

"So did I."

I looked at the back of his head.

"Why did you come to that house the other night?" I asked.

"I was in the area."

"Cillian."

He took a breath.

"I go past that house every night," he said. "I have done it for three years."

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