Darker Shades of Elise novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Don't Pay

We sat in her car with the heater on and the doors locked.

She didn't give me her name, and I didn't ask for it.

"I paid him ninety thousand dollars over ten months," she said.

"Ninety?"

"First forty, then five thousand a month."

"I sold my mother's ring."

"I told my husband the money went to a roof."

She watched the rain run down the windshield.

"And one night in March, his law firm threw a party at a rooftop bar."

"A man I'd never met walked up to my husband with a phone."

I didn't ask what was on the phone.

"So paying doesn't stop him," I said.

She turned and looked at me for the first time.

"He sends it when he gets bored."

"That's the whole secret."

"You pay and you pay, and one day you stop being interesting."

"Then why come here tonight?"

"Because I saw you go in at one," she said.

"I've been parked here since midnight, and you're the first one who walked out looking like you wanted to hurt him."

I almost laughed.

"I'm just a housewife who happens to own half of a building company."

"Are you going to pay him?"

"No."

I hadn't known that until I said it.

"Good," she said. "Because I counted the faces on his wall."

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