Page 145 of The Black Trilogy

Bradley tried to smile, but his lip quivered. My mind flicked to the Walther I’d put back in its hiding place.

“Karma’s gonna bite that woman in the butt one day, and when it does, the Kruger Clos d’Ambonnay is coming out of the wine cellar.”

This time, he grinned properly.

“Karma can hardly miss, can it? Miriam’s butt is the size of Texas. Dustin threatened to put a pitchfork up it if she didn’t leave.”

Dustin was the groom who looked after my horse, Stan, and he’d just earned himself a bonus. “Was that what got her to go?”

“No, her husband was with her.”

Nine years had passed since Miriam got married, and the poor man deserved a medal for bravery. Or stupidity. “How did that help?”

“I told him I had a very special relationship with a member of the local press, who’d find her insults over my sexual preference about as funny as I did. Then I suggested he might want to get her out of here pronto if he didn’t want her arrest for disorderly conduct to be splashed across the front page of the Richmond Times.”

“Well done, Bradley, I’ve taught you well.” I gave him a high-five, laughing.

“When I was trying to get rid of her, I just thought ‘What would Emmy do?’”

“Yeah, I’d have totally done that. Except I’d have given her a couple of glasses of wine first so she made it into the drunk tank.”

“She won’t get this house, will she?”

“Not a chance, so you can stop worrying. This place is one hundred percent mine.”

True, but what I didn’t tell Bradley was that I fully expected her to stir up a real hornets’ nest before she admitted defeat. Miriam was one stubborn woman.

But so was I.

The fifteen-thousand square feet of Little Riverley had always been in my name, although my husband had gifted me the land it was built on.

“Let’s take a walk,” he’d told me on the morning of my alleged twenty-fourth birthday.

“What kind of walk?”

Last time he’d suggested a pleasant amble in the countryside, I’d ended up in running gear, carrying a rifle for twenty miles while he jogged effortlessly beside me.

“You’ll see.”

“Do I need sweatbands and electrolytes?”

“Not today, Diamond.”

We started from his house, Riverley Hall, and set off across the estate. I thought we’d stop when we got to the boundary, but he carried on, over the chain-link fence and through the forest belonging to the property next door. It was smaller than Riverley, but wildly overgrown, and an eerie stillness surrounded us as we crept through the tendrils of mist that lingered from a chilly night. The place had been empty the whole time I’d lived at Riverley Hall, although that hadn’t stopped me from exploring. I knew we were heading towards the old house.

He pulled me to a stop in front of it, and I gazed up at the drooping facade. A fire had raged through the building many years ago, and between that and the storms that followed, the roof was left sagging at one end while charred timbers poked out of a hole at the other. Only two windows remained intact, the rest jagged shards of glass glinting in the morning sun. It was a sad shell of what had once been a majestic mansion. Like a wounded animal, it needed to be put out of its misery.

My husband put his arms around my shoulders and whispered in my ear, “Happy birthday, Diamond.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I bought it. For you. I know Riverley’s never been your dream home, so now you can design your own place.”

“Oh.”

Had he finally got sick of me living with him? Was this a really big hint that I should move out? Sure, our relationship had always been a little unusual, but I was happy sharing his house.

He took a step back. “Uh oh, don’t give me that look. What have I done?”

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