Page 4 of The Honest Affair

Knowing all of this, I scowled as Nina greeted Vamos like a friend. Kisses to the cheek. Smiles and touches. The whole deal.

I wanted to punch a hole through the concrete walls surrounding us.

“Pause it.” Nina’s voice was a soft-spoken command, but a command nonetheless.

Scowling, I obeyed and stopped the video. “What?”

“Matthew,” she said, and this time her voice cracked. “How could you not know?”

I stared at the video, which, for all intents and purposes, still showed a woman that looked exactly like Nina. I honestly didn’t know what she meant.

“How could I think otherwise?” I answered, feeling like my throat was constricting as I looked back up and felt the hurt and pain in her eyes.

God, I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe she had nothing to do with this. That this woman, this beautiful siren who had warmed my cold, callous heart over the last six months wasn’t capable of conspiring to sell women like cattle into sex slavery.

And yet, there she was, clear as day, wearing those sleek high heels, at least three inches high that tapered into deadly stilettos, smoothed over her feet in waterfall-colored leather. The exact same shoes she had been wearing the night we met. The same shoes she was wearing now.

The legs of her chair screeched on the concrete floor as Nina pushed back from the table. She strode to the door, then turned to stand in the frame.

“Stand up, please?”

I frowned, still staring at the screen with blood boiling in my chest. Still, I did as she asked, shoving my chair hard enough back that it practically screamed through the small room.

“What?” I snarled as I stepped closer. “You want to look me in the eye when you’re lying, sweetheart?”

“Look at him,” she said calmly as if I wasn’t spitting like an alley cat in heat. “And look at her. Then look at me now.”

I did as she asked. And then did it again. And on the third time, I started when her meaning was suddenly crystal clear.

The doorway next to us was about average—maybe eighty inches tall, just four inches over my height of six-two. The man in the video—whom we had also seen face-to-face at her house in Newton—was much shorter, maybe five-ten in boots. His barrel chest and thick middle perhaps gave an illusion that he was larger than he was, but I remembered it clearly.

I stared at the video. The Nina in it barely came up to the guy’s forehead, even in these same heels. Both of their heads were at least eight or more inches below the entryway to the house. But here with me, in the exact same shoes, Nina’s eyes were perfectly level with mine. She had, as always, the grace of a gazelle…but the height of someone much, much taller than the woman talking to Vamos.

“Oh, fuck,” I whispered. “Nina, I…” I shook my head again and again.

“I said it wasn’t me,” she said sadly. “But you didn’t believe me.” She closed her hand over the phone, silently bidding me to put it away. “Why didn’t you believe me, Matthew?”

My mouth just opened and closed like a damn fish, my heart pounding so loud I could practically hear it banging like a drum. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

“If you had waited a few more moments. Answered any of my calls, we could have figured it out together. But you left. You ran away. And now…” She drifted off, as hopeless as I felt.

I blinked again and again between her and the photo. “So, it’s…”

“That is my friend,” she said quietly. “And someone you know…intimately. Her maiden name is ‘Caitlyn Calvert,’ although I believe she goes by Shaw now. Some people, myself included, have been known to call her Cait.” She raised a sleek blonde brow. “I have wondered if that might correspond to another Kate you’ve been looking for. She’s from Paterson too, you know.”

I blinked. Derek had said as much on the phone when he called me here, but I hadn’t really believed it. Not until now. And I hadn’t even thought to ask Caitlyn herself about her relationship with Nina’s husband—fucking idiotic, considering she had been right in front of me less than two weeks ago in the Hamptons. Given our history, I had spent most of that day trying to avoid someone I saw as an obnoxious, desperate try-hard, but it was clear now what Caitlyn was trying so hard to be. She wasn’t just attempting to become a member of Nina’s class and station. She was actually attempting to be Nina de Vries herself.

And this was why.

“Jesus,” I murmured.

“Convincing, isn’t she?”

“So…I don’t get it,” I said. “What are you doing here, then? If that’s not you, what are you turning yourself in for?”

Nina tipped her head, eyes full of resolution. “Because I still know things, Matthew. It’s still my name on the deeds. On the company. Is it not?”

“You said yourself those weren’t yours. Caitlyn was obviously the one who showed up to sign those papers, Nina. It’s identity fraud, not your conspiracy.”

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