Page 94 of Honey Cut
Sometimes I don’t even know that he feels anything at all.
“I know your uncle would be upset if something happened to the Holy Father,” Mark says blandly. “For everyone’s sake, I hope his health improves.”
I break the stare and look at my plate with a nod of polite agreement. My uncle has always been rather neutral about the papacy—as a spymaster, his loyalty is to the Vatican as a whole, not to any one leader, and he was dismissive when he mentioned the pope’s health last time we talked. But it wouldn’t be seemly to admit that.
We eat as Mark and Andrea finish reading their papers, and then after Mark sets down his empty cappuccino cup, I learn why she’s here.
“We’ll need to leave now if we want to make it to the boat in time,” Andrea says, standing up. “Are you ready?”
I stand as Mark does, meeting him as he steps around the table. I need to set up my alibi for tonight, yes, but also…
Also I don’t want him to leave just yet. I want a moment alone with him. I want to kneel for him. I want to see his forgiveness made explicit. I want him to beat me at chess and then fuck my throat and then pull me against his chest where even his cold heart feels warm.
He looks down at me, lifting his hand to take my jaw in his hand. It’s not bruising, not like it would be in a scene, but I feel the trembling restraint in his touch. I think if Andrea weren’t here, if he didn’t have some place to be, I’d be bent over that table with my dress hiked up, and all that suppressed fury would be vented on my body.
I want that more than I can say. Honesty. Atonement.
Him.
“Andrea and I are visiting the club member on their riverboat,” he says. “We’ll be traveling some ways down the Danube, so we’ll be gone all day.”
“We’ll be sailing almost to Romania and back, so the member’s PA told us to expect to be back after midnight,” Andrea clarifies. She presses the elevator button, and it opens immediately, and she steps inside with adon’t take longkind of look at Mark.
“I have to work,” I say, pointlessly, after the elevator doors close again. It’s hard to talk with his hand on my jaw, but I don’t mind.
Mark nods. “Your bowl. I remember.” He leans in and carefully kisses my forehead and then my mouth, angling my face so he can more easily press his lips to mine. This kiss is closed-off and cold, but it is hard, and my eyelids hood as my body recognizes it. Like the apostle Paul in the book of Romans, it is the sin that dwells within me that craves this evil; there is no goodness in me left to crave what’s right.
“Mark,” I say. I hear the hesitation in my voice. Mark pulls back but leaves his hand on my jaw. “Before you go off alone with Andrea, you should know that I think she might be connected to Drobny…somehow. A colleague of mine told me that the club Jadranka took her to is a favorite haunt of Drobny’s.”
I keep the necessary lie about the colleague simple—I can’t tell Mark how I know about Drobny’s connections, and I also don’t want to diminish the very real warning I’m trying to give him with too much falsehood.
Mark’s expression is impossible to parse. “This club you speak of,” he says. “I believe you’ve been there also, have you not?”
I can’t deny it. Not when he has video evidence that I have.
I nod, his fingers still on my face.
“Then I might have the grounds to make the same claim about you. Are you connected to my would-be murderer, Isolde? Is Tristan?”
“Mark,please,” I entreat. “I don’t think you can trust her!”
Mark studies me and then says, quietly, “I would be careful about how you speak of trust to me.”
The elevator doors open to reveal a sweaty Tristan in athletic shorts and a long-sleeved shirt, pulling the earbuds from his ears.
Something shifts in my husband’s gaze. After a minute, he says, “I trust you won’t fuck the bodyguard while I’m away,” and drops his hand from my jaw.
“Sir,” I whisper, stung, a painful knot cinching abruptly in my throat, but he’s already turning away to go to the elevator, and within a few seconds, he’s gone.
* * *
After workingat the table for an hour or so, listening to the sound of Tristan shower and move around his room, I go to my room and get the small packet I’d collected from the museum basement after it was left for me there.
I debate whether to do this now or later in the day, but I settle on now because I don’t want him to sleep too late. Ideally he’d be able to vouch for my being at the penthouse tonight, although I doubt it will come to that. My involvement in a death has never been suspected, much less investigated, and I do my best to keep it that way.
Except when I knock on Tristan’s door and then open it, a cup of hot coffee in my hand, I find him stretched out on his bed, fast asleep already. No drugs, no Trojan horse coffee. Just on his back, completely naked with his arm flung over his face, black-and-silver ring glinting from the first finger of his left hand. His bath towel is on the bed next to him along with an empty water bottle, like he got out of the shower and told himself he was going to take a drink and then lie down forjust a minute.
“Tristan,” I say, going over and nudging his foot. He doesn’t stir, his ribs and stomach moving in slow, steady breaths, his beautiful mouth slack and open.
