A minute or two later a reply came through. Check your email.

Caleb had his email open, so he watched as a new message popped up in his in-box.

Attached was a scanned copy of some sort of document. He felt wrong, guilty, like he was stomping all over Kelly’s privacy, as he clicked it to pull it up.

But he still did it.

It was an adoption record. Kelly’s adoption record, which had somehow been hidden from all of his searches.

The Watsons had adopted her when she’d been almost eleven. He stared down at the names of her biological parents.

He recognized her father’s name. There was no way he would miss it.

It took a full five minutes for the reality to process.

When it finally did, the document, his computer screen, his monitor, his whole office blurred in front of his eyes.

He was shaking all the way from his teeth down to his feet. He couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t process it. It left him cold and numb.

Her father had worked for Vendella as a research scientist. Caleb had been his boss. He thought he might have even seen her as a little girl once at a company picnic, although the memory was too vague now to retrieve.

Her father had been murdered. Her mother had been sure Vendella had been responsible. And now Kelly was here—with him, hiding what she absolutely must have known.

The picture came together slowly, but it clicked into place with perfect precision.

She was here on purpose. She thought he had killed her father. She wanted him to pay. There was no Albanian gangster. Nothing about what they’d had together was real.

All of it—all of it—nothing but the worst kind of lies.

He’d loved her, but she didn’t love him.

She must hate him. She must absolutely, utterly hate him to have done what she’d done, used him so heartlessly, not even cared when he’d fallen head-over-heels in love with her.

He was shaking so much now that his teeth were chattering, so he stifled it, held it back.

Tried to hold everything back.

All his life he had been smart and careful. All his life he’d protected his heart. Never in his life had he been a fool.

Until now.

It hurt so much he couldn’t even feel it anymore, but he kept holding it back until he thought he might actually be sick.

Then his phone vibrated with a text and he reached for it blindly, taking a full minute before he could focus enough to read the words.

I’m coming over now. Kelly. Coming to him. Acting like nothing had changed. Like they were really in love.

When they weren’t. They just weren’t.

Caleb finally lost it. With a roar of anguished rage, he grabbed his sleek, high-end computer monitor, yanked it away from the cords, and hurled it across the room to slam against the far wall.

The monitor broke into pieces with a resounding crash, smashed remnants littering the polished floor.

He stared at what he’d destroyed, trying to feel relief and satisfaction at this embodiment of his feelings.

He couldn’t. It hadn’t worked.

Because his heart was just as broken as that monitor.

—

He saw her car pull up less than an hour later.

He wasn’t any more controlled than he’d been before, and he had no idea what he would say when he saw her.

There was nothing he could do. Nothing that would come close to equaling the damage she’d done to him.

So he waited in a numb stupor, assuming the answer would come to him when he saw her.

He hadn’t left his office, and Breah must have told her where he was, because Kelly tapped on the door and opened it a few minutes later.

“Caleb?” she asked, coming into the room, looking fresh and lovely and as untouched as she’d ever been. Completely innocent. Completely a lie. “Are you—?” Her eyes landed on his face, and she must have seen something there. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

She came over toward him, but then she obviously saw the wreck of the monitor, which was still in pieces on the other side of the room. “God, what happened, Caleb? Are you okay?”

He stood up because that was how one faced an enemy.

He couldn’t take a step, though. Couldn’t speak.

She hurried over to him, reaching out to cling to his shirt. “Caleb, sweetie, what’s the matter? What happened?”

Her eyes were wide and worried and tender, and he still—even now—could swear that she meant it, that she cared for him, that she was scared for him, that she wanted to take care of him.

And it hurt more than anything ever had.

Because he still—almost—believed her.

“Please, Caleb.” She reached up to take his face in her hands. “Tell me what happened.”

Then suddenly he was hit with an inspiration—blinding, cold, and exactly right. “It’s…” He cleared his throat to make his voice work. “It’s…just work. One of my projects fell through. I spent four years on it.”

Her face twisted with sympathy. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. You should have called, and I would have come back right away.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s nothing to worry about.”

He was lying to her now, the way she’d always lied to him. If she could do it to him, then he could do it back.

He could play this game just as well as she could. She wasn’t the master here.

“Don’t lie to me, sweetie.” She wrapped her arms around him and held him. An hour ago he would have needed the embrace, he would have taken such comfort in it.

Now he wrapped his arms around her too, and he pretended that nothing had changed.

She thought she could break him, but she couldn’t.

He was going to find out what was really going on here. By the time this thing was over, he would have broken her.

Chapter 7

Kelly took Ralph, Caleb’s German shepherd, for a walk the following morning.

She’d spent the night with him last night because he’d wanted her to, although they hadn’t had sex before bed. He’d evidently had an emotional blow from a failure at work, so she’d known he needed support, and maybe her presence was enough to make a difference. Then she’d woken up early—much earlier than normal—and she’d checked her phone to see a text from Jack that said simply, Call me ASAP.

She’d sent him the file from the storage room—she’d had to put it in the mail because she couldn’t risk arranging an in-person meeting—and she’d been surprised not to hear anything back from him until now.

She had no options other than to wait to get a response from him, though, so that was what she’d been doing.

But as soon as she saw the message, she felt a surge of impatience that couldn’t be denied. There was no way she could wait for Caleb to get dressed and leave the house before she talked to Jack, so she’d decided to take Ralph on an early walk through the extensive acreage that made up Caleb’s property.

As soon as she was beyond the walls that surrounded the house proper, she pulled out her phone to call Jack.

It wasn’t even six in the morning yet, but he’d said to call as soon as possible, and she wasn’t going to wait any longer.

She should have heard from him before now anyway.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, connecting the call.

“It’s Kelly.”

“Kelly.” His voice sounded more alert, as if he had woken up. “What time is it?”

“It’s early. Sorry. I just got your message.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” He paused, and she could picture him sitting up in bed. “What the hell did you do?”

She blinked, stopping on a hill where she could see the sun rising behind thick gray clouds. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what the fuck did you do? Did you break into the storage room on your own? After I told you it was too dangerous?”