Page 113 of Start With A Slap

Kara was watching them.

Instead of devils on the wall, there were three Karas with green skin. An old song was playing in another room.

“It wasn’t me,” Sever said in two voices, one of them female, as Ivy struggled to breathe. “I’m someone else tonight.”

Ivy’s eyes flew open and she sat up in bed, clutching her neck.

It took several deep breaths to calm herself down.

—It wasn’t me. Someone else

Her subconscious was trying to pardon him again. While the Wicked Witch of Westwood presided.

Ivy looked down at Jason, fast asleep beside her, and thought about the other change in her recurring dream: the song.Unchained Melody.

Maybe her subconscious was onto something.

Quietly, she crept to the living room.

As she scanned the evidence for clues, a scenario bloomed in her mind: Roxie and Sever have their usual ‘I hate you’ tryst that includes asphyxiation fun, this time with a strap. He leaves the room. Melody enters, looking for her husband, and finds Roxieasleep in his bed. Consumed by jealousy, Melody takes the strap that is still around her neck and twists...

Sever returns to the room, sees what she’s done. Ever the cold-blooded calculator, he spins the tragedy to his advantage: he’ll cover up the murder if Mark Enterprises can buy her family’s lucrative business for next to nothing. The deal goes through, they sign confidentiality agreements and ultimately part ways.

And yet...Why won’t you talk to me?His shaky supplications haunted her, forcing her to remember that he had real human feelings. Would he have let Melody get away with that?

“Babe?” Jason asked from the hallway, voice hoarse from sleep. “What are you doing out here? It’s four in the morning.”

His presence made her theory seem ludicrous. “I dreamt that Melody did it.”

Jason paused for a second, then chuckled. “She didn’t do it.”

Ivy countered with a defensive shrug, “Anything’s possible. Jealousy can make you do wacky things.”

“No, I—” He sighed, scratching his neck. “Mel was terrified of my mom. She wouldn’t go near her. Ever.” Gently, he pried the folder out of her hand. “C’mon. Come back to bed.”

Ivy relented. She had to accept, once and for all, that the man she’d risked her marriage for was a murderer.

And she would do whatever it took to help her husband prove it.

Jason had rescuedthe Cartier watch from the trash and put it aside for donation. She was glad he did that. Not only because it was a waste of thirty thousand dollars, but because of the accesscodes. There were two things in that mansion that might prove their case: the footage of Roxie and the existence of that secret room.

Would she go so far as to try to copy the flash drive? Take photographs of the dungeon? Pray he wouldn’t catch her in the act and strangle her to death?

Probably not. She wasn’t Catwoman. But it was worth having as a last ditch effort.

Bzzzzzt.

She’d come to dread the sound of her phone. Yet another message fromLe Mal. Like the others she’d gotten at work that day and all the days since he’d sent the surveillance photos, she immediately deleted it.

Before she could give herself any more time to think, she went to the kitchen to focus on a detailed, organized list for the grocery store, arranged by aisle.

The night had turnedcold and rainy. Ivy hadn’t brought a coat, and she’d parked way at the end of the busy lot. She braced for it and pushed her cart across the asphalt, head down.

The last time it rained like this in LA, she and Jason and Huey ran for cover under the Santa Monica boardwalk. They sat there in the sand for an hour, telling each other stories. It was magical.

The last time it rained like this in Paris, she made the worst mistake of her life.

Rolling the cart to a stop, Ivy popped the trunk and began to load it with grocery bags. An apple tumbled out of one, taunting her with its symbolism. And making her think of Sever’s post-sex fruit cravings.

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