Page 52 of The Arrangement

“So, if she knew he was gay, I guess I don’t understand. Why is she leaving him now?”

“Because of you, Ainsley. Because he hurt you. Because I hurt you. If there’s one thing she could never forgive, it’s anyone hurting you.”

I thought back to what she’d said on the phone, remembering her tears coming as she’d said she didn’t want to lie to me or hurt me. Realization swept through me as every piece of the puzzle clicked into place. It was my turn to put my face in my hands, trying to pull myself together.

“Oh my God…” I whispered breathlessly. No other phrase seemed to fit the way I was feeling.

“She said you told her you’d leave me if I cheated on you,” Peter whispered, touching my arm.

“That is what I said,” I told him, nodding in my hands.

“Is that still the truth? Do you want to leave me?”

“I just…need time, Peter. You can’t ask me that right now.”

“Please, Ainsley. Please don’t do this. I love you.” I looked up, watching a tear drip off the end of his nose. “Please. This is it. This is our moment of total honesty. We get all our secrets out, and then we move on. We can do it. I know we can. We have to. I can’t lose you.”

I moved to stand up. “I can’t, Peter. I can’t do this right now. I need to go see Glennon. I need to be with her. I need to make sense of this all.”

He reached for my hand. “Wait.” His grip tightened.

“Let me go!” I cried, jerking it away from him at the exact moment I heard a knock on the door.

Both our eyes widened as we looked toward the sound. Peter walked past me, wiping his eyes and putting a hand up to keep me back as he pulled open the door. “Can I help you?” he asked.

I walked around him until I could see who was standing there, surprised to see the officers had come back. Maybe Peter had been right after all… With Illiana gone, would they start looking at us again? Maybe they’d never stopped.

“Are you Peter Green—” As Officer Chad recognized me, he stopped short. “Good evening, Mrs. Greenburg. Did we catch you at a bad time?”

I sniffled and ran a finger under my eyes. “No, of course not. Officers, this is my husband, Peter,” I said, a lump of fear forming in my chest. “Please, come in.”

They stepped over the threshold, but this time, they didn’t sit down when I gestured that they should. Instead, Officer Chad nodded at Peter, then at me, and began to speak. “I’m sorry to bother you all. We won’t be staying long. We came by because I’m afraid we have some unfortunate news…”

I squared my shoulders, bracing myself for whatever was coming.

“As you may have heard, Illiana De Luca has gone missing.”

“We did hear, yeah,” I confirmed when he paused. “It was on the news.”

“Good. Okay, well, what I’m about to tell you hasn’t been released to the public yet, but we wanted to give you a heads-up before it is.” He sighed, looking around the room. “Are your children home?”

“They are, but they’re in their rooms. Do I need to get them?” My heart fluttered at the thought. I didn’t want to involve them. Were they going to arrest us? Would the kids need to go to CPS? I wrung my hands together in front of my waist.

“No, it’s better that they’re not here. They don’t need to hear what I’m about to tell you. It’s not…it’s not the kind of news we like to give.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said. Beside me, Peter was being quiet, for which I was grateful. I had built a rapport with the officers, I could tell. They trusted me somewhat. They held eye contact with me whenever they spoke.

“Ma’am, there’s no easy way to say this. We have reason to believe Stefan De Luca is a serial rapist.”

I took a sharp breath, stepping backward, my knees nearly giving out under me. “He wh—”

“Inside his truck, we found a bag filled with several pairs of women’s underwear. We’re making an attempt to identify them, but we also found a rope that matches the ligature marks we’ve found on numerous victims over the past several years. It has a distinctive pattern of small, metal rings around it… In every case, the victim’s underwear had been removed. We’ve believed for quite some time that the perpetrator had been collecting them.”

“Collecting…” I bent down, trying to steady myself as I processed what they were telling us.

“I realize this is hard to hear, ma’am. We’re only telling you because we wanted to be sure Officer De Luca didn’t do anything inappropriate during your time together. We know that he’s a fellow officer, but please don’t think that will mean we won’t prosecute him to the full extent of the law when we find him, or that we won’t take your accusations seriously. I know you said he was kind to you on your date, but if you’d been lying for any reason, now’s the time to tell us. It could mean the difference in saving a life.”

I shook my head.

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