Page 8 of The Sin

I ignored him, heading for the master bedroom. My bedroom. Roman slept in the spare room.Thatwas the state of our marriage. Maybe I’d been deluded from the very start, to think we were actually building anything here.

He followed on my heels. “We need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Then you can listen,” he said sharply, authority stamped into his tone.

I whirled about to face him and folded my arms. My chin lifted in stubborn defiance, but I said nothing.

I waited to listen.

With a little practice, I could be just as cold and callous as Roman West. When it came to him, I would be an emotional wasteland, a place where bitterness, fury, hate, love and hurt all withered before it could touch me.

Roman sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Do you honestly think I wanted to turn you over to the Guard? That putting you into that nightmare was my first choice?”

I hadn’t noticed the dark circles beneath his eyes before now. He looked almost as weary as I felt, and that gave me pause.

“Then why did you do it?” I asked.

“To keep you safe,” he said. “It was the best option with the least risk, once Branson realized who you are.”

Branson, the warden who’d confronted us in the parking garage at Sector Five. “I thought you were friends.”

“We are, and he’ll respect my request to handle the situation, but I know the guy, Georga, and he’s a stickler for the rules. He didn’t take you in for processing, but he will log the incident, if he hasn’t already done so. The Guard would have taken you into custody, and they’d know I’d tried to cover it up.”

“So turning me in was best foryou,” I snorted.

“It put me on the right side of Capra’s laws, which meant I was in a stronger position to keep you safe.” His voice was thinning with frustration. Or maybe irritation. “How the hell do you think I managed to convince them to hand you into my care instead of sending you off to rehab? Although you’re supposedly unaware you were ever beyond the walls, the fact remains that you were, and the charge against you was declared a Class A offence.”

He retreated into the lounge and, after a moment, I followed.

“What does that mean? Treason?” A fresh chill rolled down my spine. “And that’s a risk you were comfortable taking on my behalf? Turning me in and hoping you could talk your way around them?”

“Not treason, but an unacceptable security breach and high-risk behavior. Sergeant Mackintosh insisted on full rehabilitation.” Roman grabbed two glasses and the bottle of whiskey from the sidebar. “I called in some favors with the council, but I couldn’t get a majority vote there so I went to the High Wardens and an agreement was reached. There was never any risk, Georga. I was always going to keep you safe.”

The way he said it, that dead-sure certainty, shaved off some of my frigid, hard edges. He honestly believed that, and it wasn’t over-inflated ego.

He had plenty of ammunition to use on the council.

The photographs of Councilman Thorpe engaged in some kind of intimate liaisons with women outside of his marriage. The admission form of Councilman Edgar’s wife to the Center for Reform and Rehabilitation. All hidden in a cut-out pocket of an artist’s drawing book in Roman’s study.

I was pretty sure he was saving that blackmail to further his own ambitions, but he would have pulled the trigger early, to help me, if the High Wardens hadn’t come through for him. That realization blew some of the heat out of my volatile sails.

I perched on the arm of the leather couch. “Why would the High Wardens get involved? Why would they care about me?”

“I’m a warden and you’re my wife,” Roman said. “That makes you warden business and if there’s one thing they do care about, it’s keeping the council’s nose out of warden affairs.”

He crossed to the kitchen table and poured a healthy measure of whiskey into each glass.

“I don’t want any,” I said.

Ignoring me, he brought back two glasses and pushed one into my hands. “To take the edge off.”

My edges were already softened. But I wrapped my hands around the tumbler, digesting everything I’d heard as Roman went to sit in the recliner across from me.

“You should have warned me about the change of plans,” I said. “Instead you sent me into that cell blind.”

“There wasn’t time,” he explained. “The whole ride back from Sector Five, I was determined to find another solution, one that didn’t involve turning you in. I wasn’t going to do it, but then I pulled up to the checkpoint and my gut instinct kicked in. It’s always better to act than react after the shit hits the fan.”

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