I have never taken my wife against her will. Not properly anyway. But she has never pulled away from me like this. Anger wells inside me and I want to hurt her, to make her actually feel something for once. My voice is low, breath tickling her ear as I whisper, “Are you trying to make me angry?” She tries to pull away from me again and before I can stop myself, my hand is wrapping round her braid and I’m pulling her hair so hard her neck is exposed to the ceiling. A tiny whimper escapes her lips, and my heart beats faster. I slam my hips against her, pressing her bodily against the lip of the countertop. The silverware in the drawer beneath us rattles and I slam her again. Part of me wishes to open the drawer a little and see what potential weapon my hand comes to rest on. The other part holds back; I can’t mark her, not yet at least. Instead, the hand that isn’t wrapped round her braid creeps down, following the curve of her hip and upper thigh. She squirms against my touch and I let a bubble of a giggle loose. Under the hem of her skirt my fingers spider, slowly scrambling up the inside of her thigh. She is holding her breath, stiff and unyielding. I release my hold on her braid to wipe a tear from her cheek.

I won’t do it, however much I want to. That is the line I have drawn for myself, and I refuse to cross it. Instead, I leave her sobbing in the kitchen and go to my office. On one screen I watch her via a CCTV camera I’ve hidden among the jars of spices she never bothers to use. On the other screen I pull up the feed from another camera, a piece of spyware installed on to a smart TV so I can keep an eye on someone as he paces his living room.

Tom is worried. And so he fucking should be.

Chapter Seventeen

I had promised Megan she would never be tied to the murder, and I am going to keep my word. But there is one rather significant problem. You cannot just declare someone dead if they are merely missing. Not for an exceptionally long time. At least seven years, and it can be even longer if the deceased has a large estate to be discharged. There is no way I’m waiting that long for what I am due. I’ve already waited long enough.

Luckily for me, I’ve been laying the groundwork for a while. After all, Leah always had to die. The patsy had been chosen months ago, someone just hanging out in the wings, ready to step forward if needed. Everyone knows it’s always the husband or the boyfriend.

The affable ginger twat was someone who Leah would definitely have been attracted to. She’d always had this idea about dating higher, above her own class. I think that somewhere inside her had been this fairy-tale idea of the poor girl with the villainous family being rescued by the dashing Prince Charming. She didn’t need his money, but she hankered for the respectability a bit of a title would lend her. The legitimisation of her own wealth, which had been bought off the back of a scandal and the double-crossing of her own sister. Plus there was that strange agency she worked for who had transferred a few very large payments in the days after she was spotted out with the son of a man with interesting affiliations. I wondered what he had really paid her for. If it was just her time, or if she had bolstered her income serving up a few “extras.” Not that I could judge her too harshly; it’s not like I’ve never charged for my time.