Page 35 of The Expat Affair

November 17th, 10:54 p.m.

The tour ends in Xander’s study, a dark and moody man cave decorated within an inch of its life. He points me to his sleek desk and I step to one of the chairs, but I don’t sit down. Not yet. The bracelet Thomas gave me weighs heavy on my arm.

Nice bling—that’s what Xander said when he slid into Thomas’s chair at Ciel Bleu, the restaurant on the top floor of the Hotel Okura. Thomas and I were halfway through the fish course when the call came in—yet another after-hours summons from the factory, yet another diamond emergency that no one could handle but him. As usual, Thomas obliged, but not before clasping on my anniversary gift, a platinum cuff smothered in diamonds, including the last surviving Cullinan.

Two minutes later, in walked Xander. Almost like it was planned.

Which it was, of course. I knew it the second his gaze zeroed in on the bracelet.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen one of them in person,” he said.

Them, as in a Cullinan, the eleven-carat whopper that served as the bracelet’s centerpiece. It was like one of those rotating spirals, hypnotizing him, drawing him in. Xander couldn’t keep his eyes off it. He still can’t. All the friendly chitchat, all the flirting and teasing—it was leading to this, to getting the bracelet off my arm.

I cover the bracelet with a palm. “You could have just asked Thomas. I assume he’s been working with the stone for weeks now.”

Not one of the House’s designers. Thomas. He made the bracelet himself, with his own hands. A labor of love. His words, not mine, and a fifth anniversary calls for something special. Inscribed in his handwriting on the inside.For my wifeon the occasion ofour fifth anniversary.

All that effort, and the best he could do wasfor my wife. Notfor the woman of my dreams.Notfor the woman who holds my heart. Not evenfor Willow. For my wife, which I can’t help but assume he thought would be mighty convenient if he ever wants to find a different one.

Xander shrugs. “The Cullinans are a bit of a sensitive topic with the Prinses these days. No one who isn’t a Prins is allowed within fifty feet.”

An exaggeration, maybe, but he’s probably not all that far off base. Now that the other Cullinans are gone, the value of the one on my wrist has quadrupled. Even here, in the safety of Xander’s penthouse at the top of a well-secured building, the thought makes me jumpy.

“I want to feel the weight of the stone, to look at it under a scope with lights, optical scanners.”

“You gemologists and your rocks,” I say now with a roll of my eyes. It’s a fascination I will never understand. “And here I thought your thing was lab-growns.”

“It is. They are. I want to lab-grow the shit out of that Cullinan.” He settles onto the chair across the desk, quirking a brow. “Are you going to sit down?”

I ignore his question, answering with some of my own. “Can you do that? Grow a close copy?”

“No. I can grow anexactone. Exact same weight, exact same cut and color, exact same microscopic occlusions. If I engrave the Cullinan’s cert number on the girdle, not even your husband would be able to tell the difference, not unless he put the stone through a diamond detector, and even then...” He trails off, bobbing a shoulder.

It’s one of the industry’s dirty little secrets, that despite machines meant to identify the origins of the stone, lab-growns still slip into the mined supply all the time. Depending on who you believe, as much as thirty percent. That’s one third of all those buyers shelling out two months of their hard-earned salary for what theythinkare mined diamonds, getting duped with rocks grown in a lab.

“You don’t have to take the bracelet off, Willow, but do sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

In hindsight, this is the moment that could’ve changed so much. Before all the craziness started, before I added yet another secret to the stockpile. Before I took a step down a road I couldn’t return back from.

But then I think about the phone call that interrupted our anniversary dinner, of Thomas running off and leaving me all alone, of him choosing diamonds yet again over me, of the hurt and the champagne still bubbling around in my veins.

Of Xander, a man on a mission that could complement mine.

I sink onto the chair.

Rayna

I spend the rest of Wednesday tiptoeing around the apartment and Ingrid. I help her right her room, stuffing her duvet into a freshly washed cover and offering to fold her laundry. I wipe dark smudges of fingerprint dust from her doorknob, her wardrobe, her chest of drawers, and her walls. I suggest we order the sushi neither of us had the stomach for the night before, my treat.

For Ingrid, it’s the last straw. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?”

She sighs, stuffing her arms into her coat, and her makeup can’t disguise the shadows under her eyes. Neither one of us got much sleep last night.

“Like this is somehow your fault, because it’s not. My hiding spots weren’t all that original. The thief didn’t have to look that hard.”

“Yeah, but—”

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