Don't play dumb with me!

“Your wish,” Kan said, and turned all his attention to his phone to send the video out to his media connections. 

It worked for him either way. Sending this to the media was the biggest way to humiliate that arrogant Tucker, and he lived for that.

“What do you think you are doing?” Mrs Tucker reached around him, trying to pull the phone out of his hands.

“Hey lady. Don’t rub up on me now, I am happily married.” He shrugged her off, and turned around to see that if this woman was an animal she would have bitten his head off clean already.

She looked so puffed up with rage he wondered how she had not blown up in a bloody mass of meat.

“This is funny to you? You think you are being cute fighting for a woman who does not care about you?” She almost yelled at him.

He shrugged and slipped his phone back into his pocket. 

Those words would have bothered him in the past, but not anymore. He knew now that Ariel liked him.

Maybe not as much as he loved her, or even as much as she did when they just got married, but she liked him enough to want to get back to that place with him.

And that is all that mattered.

“What’s it going to be, lady? You will appear on the news either way. Do you want to at least have some control or not?”

“I love Blaine and want to keep him for myself,” she said. 

He frowned, his head snapping back. “Happy for him. But how is that my business?”

“Who the hell do you think will hold him back from chasing your wife if you get rid of me?”

“Me.” His voice was confident.

“That’s rich coming from a man who has no idea what his wife is up to right now.” She sneered at him.

Her sneer almost looked like a smile, like she was smiling with malice.

“You know, the English call this gossip. I know you are obsessed with my wife, but can we stop talking behind her back? It’s not very classy for people of our status.

“YOUR WIFE,” she stressed, “Is locked in an elevator at this minute with my husband, doing God knows what.”

Kan chuckled, amused. “You should write a book.” He laughed even louder now, shaking his head. “You are really good. You came up with that on the spot? Le, you really should do something in the arts.”

“Be the jester all you want, but if you call anyone right now in Mõshon, they will tell you the exec elevator is out of order, and no one is allowed on the top floor.”

For the first time, Kan’s confidence swayed. 

Could this woman be right? Why would she lie with such conviction in her eyes?

“I don’t like you.” She spat. “Blast the day a Turner would come to like a Sullivan. But for now we have a common goal. Keep your wife away from my husband so we can both enjoy our marriages in peace,” she said.

“And what I do with my sexual life is none of your freaking business. I’m sure if I cared to dig around I would find the identity of the womna they say you were f*cking, leaving my husband to save your gold-digging wife!”

Kan grabbed her by the neck, and held her still. 

She did not struggle, neither was there a hint of fear in her eyes. She just smiled like a lunatic even when he squeezed tighter.

“How many more times do I have to tell you not to call my wife names?” he yelled in her face.

“This is useless for me,” her voice came out in a wheeze, “Go show Ariel this masculinity.”

“It’s a pity Tucker cannot keep his wife on a leach, leaving the rest of us the dirty work of disciplining you.”

“You are one to talk.” She smiled mockingly, and her eyes were all red now from her throat being constricted. 

But she did not struggle or even try to fight.

Kan raised his hand to strike her, but stopped. 

They were still at the police station, and if he was detained here, he would not have the time to go chop Tucker's dick off, so there was no motivation to continue chasing his wife.

He let her go, tossing her far away from himself. 

She stumbled against a car, and the security alarm of the car went off as she leaned down, trying to breathe.

The wheezing sound reminded him of that ugly night at Elora’s apartment, and his eyes traveled to his car where he knew she was sitting, and probably watching them from behind the tinted glass.

He turned to Tucker's wife with hate and disgust. The bitch! She had the nerve to be cocky with him.

“The forty-eight hours still stand,” he said, walking past her towards his car again, although he did not feel much conviction in his heart.

But f*ck it, he was not going to start conspiring with a woman like some sissy. 

He would put a bullet through Tucker's head if that was the only way to get the man away from his wife.

“Is it true?” He asked as soon as he sat beside Eleanor again in the car, and the chauffeur began to pull away.

“Is WHAT true?” She said, and from his side vision he saw she did not even look up. 

Her head was still bent to her tablet as her manicured nails tapped, tapped, and tapped the screen, until he thought the sound would drive him mad.

“Don’t play dumb with me!” He turned around to yell at her. And she startled, finally looking up.

“You are never behind on any news. Is what I hear is happening right now in Mõshon true?” he could not even believe he was repeating the ridiculousness he had just heard from Tucker's wife.

How was that possible? 

How would Ariel let herself be locked up with a man she loathed? 

How did that happen and none of those guards he paid an outrageous annual salary did nothing to stop it.