Page 67 of Heartless Enemy

“It’s, uhm…” He ran a hand over his neck, tugging at his hair. “Marla.”

“Has something happened to Marla?”

“No, it’s… Well, yes. She…” Desperation flooded his eyes as he stared back at me with such a helpless look that I could almost feel it pulsing through the air. “She’s divorcing me.”

Feigning shock, I drew back slightly and stared at him. “What? Why? I didn’t know that you two were having problems.”

“We weren’t. Wearen’t. But she thinks I cheated on her and she says she has proof so…” He trailed off and shook his head in confusion. “I don’t even know what happened. One day, we were fine. The next, she’s slamming divorce papers down on my desk.”

It took every ounce of my self-control to stop a wicked grin from spreading across my face.Told you I would ruin your life.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said with very convincing sympathy. “Is there anything I can do?”

Apart from planting the idea in Marla’s mind that I had seen Ulric on the south side and then bribing a woman in a pleasure house into telling Marla that she had indeed been sleeping with Ulric, of course. However, I kept all of that firmly off my tongue as I instead looked back at Ulric with brows knitted in concern.

“No, no, just… Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out.” Clearing his throat, he stood up straighter. “You’d better go up to Chief’s office.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

With great effort, I kept the grin off my face until I was out in the corridor and had closed the door behind me. Then I practically skipped all the way down to the nearest stairwell.

Ha. Now the bastard knew firsthand just how much one lie could turn a person’s life upside down. And we were just getting started.

Once I reached the top floor, I schooled my features back into an appropriately remorseful expression before starting down the hallway towards Chief Anderson’s grand office. There was no one else up here at the moment, and the door to the office was closed, but I was certain that the chief himself was indeed here. With the invasion drawing closer, he would spend as much time at the office as possible.

Raising my hand, I knocked on the sturdy door. The sound of it echoed down the deserted corridor.

“Come,” Chief Anderson called from inside.

I drew in a deep breath, bracing myself, and then stepped into his office.

Eric Anderson was sitting behind his massive desk, and there were papers strewn across the tabletop that he had presumably been reading. But the moment I walked across the threshold, his sharp blue eyes locked on me. They hardened instantly, and he clenched his jaw, making the scar across it stand out even more against his skin. His gray hair looked like steel in the morning sunlight that fell in through the windows.

“Sterling,” he said in a tight voice. “Finally decided to make an appearance?”

“Yes, sir.” I stopped a few steps in front of his desk and clasped my hands behind my back. “I was—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Closing my mouth again, I looked back at him in silence instead.

The stare he leveled on me was so cold that I swore I could almost see ice spreading across the floor. This was not going to be pleasant.

“We’re done,” he announced.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“As of this moment, you are dismissed from the constable force.”

“Dismissed?” I raised my eyebrows. “You’refiringme?”

“Yes. Clear out your desk, go home and change, and then return your uniform by the end of the day.”

“You can’t fire me!”

He slammed his hands down on the desk, making the pens scattered there jump in alarm. His chair scraped against the floor as he slowly stood up, his palms still pressed against the tabletop, while he locked hard eyes on me. “I can do whatever I want. I am the Chief Constable of Malgrave and you have turned out to be an untrustworthy, disloyal, incompetent—”

“Disloyal?” I interrupted, throwing my arms out in a show of frustration. “I was practically raised by the Captain of the South Side Department, for Current’s sake!”

---