Page 63 of Thorns of Deceit
It wasn’t that I hadn’t imagined this moment before. I had. In fact, I’d played various scenarios of run-ins with my husband countless times, in the safety of my mind, where I could control the outcome. But real life didn’t come with warnings or soft landings.
For five years, I’d trained myself to exist, not to live. To blend into the background, to build a life that wouldn’t draw attention. Paris became my cage and my sanctuary all at once, crowded enough to disappear, distant enough to keep the ghosts away.
Most days, I convinced myself I was safe.
I finished university, worked hard, and learned to smile at strangers without really seeing them. But tonight… tonight I stepped outside that small circle I’d drawn around myself. I did it to support my best friend.
Maybe fate finally lost its patience—and shoved me right into Aiden’s path.
My husband, who belonged to the world I’d buried. Aiden, who made all my careful years of running feel meaningless.
I wasn’t prepared, because I’d stopped believing I’d ever have to be.
And now, I had to come up with a plan, and quickly.
My brain scrambled through the options in a frantic, useless loop. I could run, somehow hoping I could outrun him, but the likelihood of escape was slim to none.
I could scream until someone heard and called the police, but the world that Aiden belonged to didn’t follow the law and often used it to their own benefit. Even if by some miracle the police would detain him, he’d follow me like a hound once he was out.
Besides, the idea of calling for help shredded me with shame: dragging someone else into my ghosts felt like a betrayal I couldn’t risk.
I thought about begging my husband for mercy, about bluffing my way out with lies, but every lie I might tell would only buy me seconds at best.
I searched my surroundings and the streets we passed with fevered eyes for something to give me an idea, but I came up empty.
My chest tightened with a cold recognition: bravery wouldn’t save me tonight. Brute strength wouldn’t. Cleverness alone could not undo five years of running or erase my existence from this man.
I felt the old, familiar terror—small, practical, unforgiving—settle over me. Survival had always demanded compromise and one thought, sickening and simple, kept surfacing.
Delilah had undone Samson with a touch and a promise. She’d used the wiles—or assets—of a woman to take him down. The story tasted bitter on my tongue, but its logic was brutal and clear.
If I couldn’t outrun him, couldn’t outfight him, perhaps I could outmaneuver him the only way left open to me: using intimacy as armor, performance as a weapon. It felt like a betrayal of myself, of the memory of my mother, of everything I pretended I still believed I was, but it was also a path that might lead me to my freedom.
There was only one idea that kept coming into my head, the one that made my stomach fall and my hands shake with its inevitability: have sex with my husband and use it to reclaim a fraction of control.
I hated myself for even thinking it. I hated myself even more for feeling a tinge of arousal at the thought of it. But hating it didn’t change that desperation.
The plan was as dangerous as it was exciting. My experience with sex was limited to fooling around with Aiden five years ago and Athena’s smut books.
On the downside, I might have to improvise and likely wouldn’t blow my husband’s mind. On the upside, I’d get laid tonight, and honestly, who better than my actual husband to give me pleasure and take my virginity? It was high time I lost my cursed hymen.
Then, when morning came, I’d disappear. Again.
I couldn’t shake off the awareness that this whole ordeal would backfire. Not that I had any other alternatives when he’d practically dragged me out of the club and rushed me into his fancy vehicle.
He pulled out in front of the Diamant sur le parc, a renovated residential building once owned by Pierre Balmain. It reminded me of the set fromEmily in Pariswith Opera Garnier situated a mere street opposite it and a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the far distance.
He exited the car and rounded it, his gaze never leaving me as he opened the passenger door.
“Worried I’ll disappear?” I asked wryly.
He smiled tightly and offered his hand. “More like I don’t want you getting the idea that youcanrun, wife.”
“Oh, how you wound me with your lack of faith,” I retorted wryly, gritting my teeth as I stepped onto the cobblestone. “And stop calling me that.”
I didn’t want to admit to myself—never mind him—that every time he called me his wife, guilt gnawed at me.
He smiled coldly. “You’re my wife, and I’ll call you that for as long as we both shall live, despite the fact that for the past five years you fooled me into believing you were already dead.”
