Chương 1
"The first thing I heard when I came looking for seasickness tablets was my husband explaining how he planned to kill me before midnight.
“Two pills after dinner, then a little extra in her soup,” Florent said from the lower lounge, his voice almost lost beneath the soft clink of ice in a glass.
I stopped halfway down the staircase, one hand wrapped around the brass railing because the yacht had suddenly tilted beneath me.
Except it had not tilted.
My knees had.
“By midnight she won’t be able to stand,” Florent continued.
A man cleared his throat.
I recognized Antoine, Florent’s father, before he spoke.
“And you’re certain the crew won’t see anything?”
“They’ll be inside when the squall comes through.”
The back of my tongue tasted bitter.
Three nights of white tablets.
Three nights of Florent smiling as he pressed a glass of water into my hand and told me the Caribbean always made first-time sailors miserable.
Three mornings of waking after ten with my limbs heavy and my thoughts moving as if underwater.
I tightened my grip on the railing.
Below me, someone laughed.
Florence.
My mother-in-law.
She had kissed both my cheeks before breakfast and complained that I was too thin.
“A gust of wind, poor visibility, a confused woman who’s been sick for days,” she said.
Her voice carried the brisk satisfaction she usually reserved for correcting a waiter.
“People fall overboard.”
My stomach contracted.
I covered my mouth.
For one horrifying second I thought I would vomit directly onto the polished teak stairs and announce myself to the three people discussing my death.
Instead, I swallowed until my throat hurt.
Antoine said, “And the money?”
There was a pause.
I could picture Florent leaning back with his ankle across his knee.
He did that whenever the conversation turned to money, as though wealth bored him even when he was asking me for access to it.
“The power of attorney is already signed,” he said.
My fingers went numb.
“What about the trust restrictions?”
“Not a problem once she’s legally presumed dead.”
“Presumed dead isn’t immediate.”
“No, but control is.”
Florent sounded irritated now.
“Her father built the structure to protect her from strangers, not from her husband.”
Antoine gave a short laugh.
“That old bastard never liked you.”
“No,” Florent said.
“He was right not to.”
They all laughed at that.
I stood motionless above them while something inside me changed shape.
Not shattered.
That would have been easier.
Shattering suggested a clean break.
This was slower.
A rearrangement.
Every affectionate memory of the last eighteen months remained where it was, but each one acquired a second possible meaning.
Florent bringing me tea during my father’s surgery.
Florent refusing to discuss a prenup until I insisted.
Florent telling me he loved that I never cared about appearing rich.
Florent proposing on the Pont Neuf in the rain because I had once told him I hated public proposals.
Had he remembered because he loved me, or because he studied me?
Florence said, “And after?”
“We go back to Paris.”
“With the investigation?”
“I’ll be the grieving husband.”
The words came easily.
Too easily.
“I’ll cooperate with everyone.”
“And Camille?”
My body went cold for a second time.
I knew only one Camille in Florent’s life.
His former assistant.
Twenty-nine, dark-haired, efficient, supposedly engaged to a banker in Lyon.
She had attended our wedding wearing green silk and had cried during our first dance.
Florent lowered his voice, but not enough.
“She’ll stay out of sight until things settle.”
Florence sighed with theatrical impatience.
“I still think keeping a mistress during the engagement was reckless.”
“It wasn’t reckless.”
“You were seen together.”
“By whom?”
“People see everything.”
“People see what they expect.”
The sentence settled into me more deeply than the murder plan.
People see what they expect.
I had expected a husband.
So I had seen one.
Antoine asked something I could not hear.
Florent answered, “Three hundred million euros is worth a difficult year.”
The ocean slapped against the hull.
My vision blurred around the edges.
The drug was still inside me.
That fact frightened me more than the conversation.
They did not need to overpower me.
They had already started.
I eased one foot backward.
The stair creaked.
Every voice below stopped.
I stopped breathing.
“Did you hear that?” Florence asked.
A chair scraped.
My heart struck once, hard enough to hurt.
Then a burst of laughter came from the galley corridor as two crew members passed somewhere beyond the lounge.
One of them called something in Spanish.
Another answered.
Florent said, “Probably Matteo.”
The chair scraped again.
Conversation resumed.
I backed up one step at a time.
My left heel caught the edge of the runner.
I nearly fell.
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood.
By the time I reached the upper corridor, sweat had soaked the back of my linen dress.
My cabin was twenty feet away.
It looked impossibly far.
I walked normally because terror had already taught me its first useful lesson.
Running would make noise.
I entered the suite, closed the door without locking it, and stood with my hand still on the handle.
The room looked exactly as it had twenty minutes earlier.
Florent’s navy blazer hung over the desk chair.
My sandals lay beneath the bed.
A half-finished glass of mineral water sat beside a paperback I had been pretending to read.
Nothing in the room acknowledged that my marriage had ended on a staircase.
I crossed to the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Not because I wanted one.
Because Florent might come looking for me, and a running shower explained why I had not answered immediately.
Then I opened the medicine cabinet.
The seasickness tablets were there.
So were the little white pills Florent had been giving me.
No label.
He had taken them from a silver travel case each night.
May you like
I stared at them.
My first impulse was to flush them all.
