Page 61 of The Expat Affair

“Uh-oh,” Lars says. “What’s wrong?”

Willow

After Thomas and the detective leave, I check on Sem, sound asleep in his bed, then go downstairs to an empty kitchen. Martina is long gone, which is good since that means I don’t have to see her worried face. She thinks these murders tie back to House of Prins, too. She thinks her job is in danger, and after that visit from the detective, I’m not sure how to reassure her.

I make myself a cup of chamomile tea, sit at the kitchen table, and try to think,reallythink about what it means that my bracelet was in Xander’s desk drawer. Even if the Cullinan in that bracelet was a lab-grown, it’s concerning that he set it in an exact replica of the bracelet. What was he planning to do, sell the bracelet on the black market? With a stone like the Cullinan as its centerpiece, he had to know the bracelet would get back to Thomas eventually. Now he knows there is a copy of the Cullinan floating around. He’ll be looking for them in other places, too.

Thomas was right about one thing, though: Xander was in cahoots with the Asian lab. He told me that night at his penthouse, in the same breath he said he could grow any stone I wanted. The six-carat Prins-cut dazzler in my engagement ring, for example, or the four-carat dangly teardrops in the earrings I was wearing that night. All Xander needed was a copy of the grading certificates, which he could use to grow a match so perfect, so exact that not even my husband would see the difference. That night at his penthouse, I asked him to grow me twelve.

Twelve lab-grown diamonds that are physically, chemically, and optically identical twins to twelve of the mined diamonds Thomas gave to me. More than fifty carats in all, and that’s excluding the Cullinan in the bracelet. That stone I promised to Xander.

It was sloppy of him, though, setting the lab-grown Cullinan in a replica of the bracelet, making it look like the real thing. A stone like the Cullinan isn’t exactly subtle, not even if he sold it on the black market. Now all those other lab-grown stones Xander was ordering from the Asian lab and selling under the table, Thomas will be looking for those, too.

It’s past two by the time headlights flash on the upstairs bedroom window, Thomas’s car turning into the driveway. He parks under the giant elm and idles there for long enough I kick off the covers. He’s been gone for almost seven hours now—the equivalent of an entire workday on top of the one he’d just finished—and I wonder how he’s filled all those hours. If he spent them all at the factory.

I step out of bed and to the big bay window, pressing my forehead to the freezing glass. Thomas is still sitting in his car just below. I see the inky smudge that’s the top of his head through the sunroof, lit up by the soft glow of a cellphone. Too far for me to see what he’s seeing, but I gather from the blobs of white and green that it’s WhatsApp. Thomas is messaging someone.

The interior light pops on, the door swings open, and I step back from the window before he can spot me spying. At the foot of the stairs, Ollie hears him, too. I catch his groan as he heaves himself to his feet, the excited click-click-click of his nails on the marble floor, heavy panting when Thomas comes through the door. I sink onto the edge of the bed and wait.

Thomas doesn’t notice me sitting in the dark, just breezes through the bedroom for the closet. He’s almost to the hallway that connects the two when I call out his name.

“Thomas.”

He jumps, his whole body twitching in surprise, in shock. He whirls around, his gaze searching out mine in the dim room. “Jesus Christ, Willow. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“Long day,” I say, pointing out the obvious. I have no idea what he’s thinking, can’t quite gauge his mood. He doesn’t look happy to find me waiting up for him, but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe he’s just not happy, period. “You look tired.”

He sighs, slumping against the wall. “Exhausted. The only thing I want is to get out of these clothes and into bed. Do you mind?” He turns for the closet before I can ask him to wait.

I push off the bed and follow him down the hallway, coming into the closet as he’s stripping out of his sweater. He folds it and drops it in a drawer, then starts in on his belt while I clasp my hands tight on top of the marble island and force myself to just say it. To ask the question that has me standing here, watching him undress in a closet at 2:00 a.m., staring down the husband who won’t quite meet my eyes.

“Thomas, are you having an affair?”

He whirls around, the buckle on his belt rattling. “What?”

“You heard me. Are you having an affair? Is there someone else?”

He steps out of his pants and shakes them out, holding them at the hem. “No, Willow. There’s no one else.”

Liar.

A shiver of something unpleasant shimmies its way down my spine. Jealousy? Panic? I push it aside and plow on.

“Then who were you out there messaging? Because I saw you in the car. You were on your phone.”

“Offices are open in Asia. Those messages were for work.”

It’s a convenient answer, especially in light of the bracelet bombshell Detective Boomsma dropped earlier, one that doesn’t feel that far off base. Thomas works seven days a week, and when he is home, he’ll step away from everything—meal times with meand Sem, a rare moment relaxing on the couch, a game of catch in the backyard—to take a call or answer an email. He sleeps with his phone next to the bed, for crap’s sake. Why wouldn’t those messages be for work?

“And the necklace?”

He peels off his socks and tosses them in the hamper. “What necklace?” He pads to the bathroom in his boxers, and with a sigh, I follow behind.

“The one you bought at Rive Gauche.”

At the last two words, Thomas experiences a full-body reaction. He stops in the middle of the bathroom, his bare back stiffening before he turns on a heel.

“You werefollowingme?” The same thing Rayna said to me, only this time, I don’t deny it. His tone is heavy with disbelief, with insult, and so is his expression.

---