Page 117 of Secrets, Lies and Love

“No. We need to bring her back. It’s because of me he took her. Cecily is my woman. It doesn’t matter that I acted like a proud idiot who only thought about his own ass. I want her back. Her place is by my side.”

“Do you think it was out of revenge for putting him under investigation that Cage took her?” Ares asks.

“No,” Zeus says. “It’s too risky for a job. There is much more to this story that we don’t know.”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll find out later. The important thing now is to save Cecily,” I say, trying to hide the despair of imagining my wife at the mercy of that son of a bitch.

“The fastest way would be a helicopter, but it would also be the riskiest. He would hear it. Let’s go by car. We’ll gather some security guards. He is alone. He won’t be able to escape.” Ares says.

“Shouldn’t we call the police?” I ask.

“Not for the time being. The police need warrants, authorizations, a whole fucking bureaucracy from which we are exempt. We do it our way, and when Cecily is safe, we turn that piece of shit over to the authorities,” Zeus says, but I can see from Odin’s expression that he would like to resolve this another way.

I know well what his methods are, and to be honest, I don’t give a damn what Cage’s fate will be afterwards, as long as he pays for daring to take my bride.

“I can’t lose her.”

“You won’t,” Ares guarantees. “Let’s save her, brother.”

Cecily

“Yes, I called her,” I say, because it’s very risky to lie. I have no idea how much he knows about what happened that night.

“And what else?”

“We met at a roadside motel. We talked. I was really worried about the baby. Sue wasn’t worried about him at all. Joseph wasonly a few months old, and I felt sorry for him. I’m not all bad, Cage.”

Does he believe me? I pray to God that he does.

“No one is just bad, sweetie. We all have two sides. As for Sue, she didn’t want to get pregnant in the first place, but she knew that the boy was necessary to complete the image of an abandoned and needy young woman that Dionysus had of her.”

I nod and have to try hard to contain the bile rising in my throat. “Sue was angry that I sought her out. She told me to get out of her way or she would call the police. I knew she was bluffing. I wasn’t sure what had happened to Keith. I had no idea that she had killed him, but I was convinced that she had not told the whole story to her new husband and that she did not want to attract attention by calling the authorities.”

“She was married to a rich Greek. If your concern was for the boy, you got your answer. The child would be fine, right?”

I think carefully about what to say next. Negotiating with a madman who has bouts of lucidity from time to time is like playing chess. “Yes, at that point, I knew the baby would be fine, but I thought she could help me too. I didn’t want to go back to Kansas.”

“And then?”

“She refused. She didn’t care about me. She said she would have Dionysus arrest me if I insisted. At the time, I pretended to accept, but I wasn’t willing to give up. I said goodbye and left. I had to return the rental car. At that time, I didn’t have the means to stay in New York State,” I lie, “but I knew it was possible. With what I knew about her past, based on what Keith told me about her being ambitious and cruel, Sue would give me whatever I wanted. Apparently, she guessed my intentions. Came after me down the road. Chased me.”

“The accident that killed her . . . You were there . . .” He looks genuinely surprised.

“Yes.”

“How is it possible that they didn’t link you to her death?”

“Sue tried to run me off the road. Push me into a ravine. I’m a good driver, so I managed to escape the worst, but she didn’t. In the rearview mirror, I saw her car falling into the void.” I truly shudder as I remember the terror I felt when, that night, I saw that the crazy woman really intended to kill me. “I continued driving for a few more kilometers, but it was very dark, and being nervous, I went into the wrong lane. I hit a wall head-on. I almost died too. They never connected the two accidents."

“Fuck, that sounds like a scene from a movie! I could totally visualize the two of you fighting for survival. You got that bitch right. You have my admiration.”

“Aren’t you mad at me?”

“Angry? Why would I be? Sue messed up. She just needed to play it straight and we would have been fine, but no. The whore fell in love with the Greek and wanted to ditch me.”

“Had you given up on the coup, then?”

“She tried to give up, yes, but I never did. I threatened to hand her over to the police, and in a split second, all her pride disappeared. She went back to being the usual docile slut and gave me an insurance policy.”

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