Chapter 12: Shield

Danielle walked to the elevator with eight people watching her go.

She didn't look back.

I stood in the middle of the vendor accounts room with my phone still warm in my hand.

Then I turned around and looked at my husband.

Damiano was still leaning in the doorway.

He'd stopped looking bored.

"Outside," I said.

We went down fourteen floors without speaking.

Bruna rode with us and stared at the elevator buttons.

Out on Wacker Drive the wind was coming off the river, cold for late May.

I walked to the railing and turned around.

"What did Rhett say at your card table?"

Damiano glanced at his sister.

"Don't look at me," Bruna said. "I told you in April to tell her."

"In April she was in love with him."

"She's married to you now. Tell her."

He put his hands on the railing beside me and looked at the water instead of at me.

"He was drunk," he said. "Down two and a half million and still betting."

"One of my men told him it was time to talk about how he'd pay."

"And?"

"And he laughed. He said it didn't matter. He said he was marrying Odessa Kinnear in June."

My stomach turned over.

"He said your father would sign anything to save the company," Damiano went on, very evenly.

"He said you were soft and a little fragile, and by Christmas he'd have a doctor say so on paper."

The wind pulled my hair across my face.

I didn't push it back.

"He said he'd have you in a clinic by Christmas," Damiano said.

"Then he and his girlfriend would have the company, and I'd get paid out of it. He toasted me."

I couldn't breathe properly.

In my first life, it hadn't been by Christmas.

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