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An Excerpt From Forgive Me

Chapter One

Marcus Huxley-Browne looked up from the warning call he’d just received on his mobile phone. His handsome face was showing none of its usual boredom or arrogance, or the self-satisfaction that came from having so much go right in his life: being born into a wealthy family, having all the right contacts, besting someone at a deal (as he so often did). Instead it was taut with a level of fear and anger that his wife had never witnessed in him before.

It frightened her, although she wasn’t sure why—yet.

“They’re coming for me,” he muttered. He wasn’t looking at her, maybe he wasn’t even speaking to her.

“Who?” she asked.

His deep gray eyes focused and sparked with ire. “You know nothing,” he instructed her viciously. “You’ve seen nothing. You’ve heard nothing. Have you got that?”

His fists clenched. Was he going to hit her, blame her, or something worse?

Who was coming?

She knew better than to ask a second time, and stepped aside as he headed out of the room, across the hall, and into his study.

“Come here!” he shouted.

Obediently, she hastened after him and stopped on the threshold of the room she was rarely invited into. He was standing behind his desk, a Huxley-Browne heirloom, one of many others that cluttered the house with stately gloom. He looked haunted now, agitated—hunted—as if not knowing where to turn or what to do. Had things been different she might have felt sorry for him.

“You don’t speak to anyone,” he told her gruffly.

She nodded. She’d had this instruction before, but usually he didn’t take any chances; he’d whisk her upstairs and lock her in one of the top floor rooms.

She used to fight it, but she’d learned not to.

She often heard things from up there, but she never saw the comings and goings outside—cars pulling up, people entering or leaving the house—as the windows were too high. However, voices carried, even if she couldn’t make out who they belonged to, or what was being said.

She knew what kind of people came.

They were his set: the all-male network that he and others of his ilk had created at university, in the city, in private clubs, in various capitals—to trade information, or to start rumors, or to import and export insider knowledge. Girls came too, for the after-parties, lots of them, paid well, she imagined—and the dealers in mood- and sexual-performance enhancers came too. Shady, sinister characters from an underworld she could barely imagine.

On the nights Marcus didn’t come home she guessed someone else was hosting proceedings. She never asked, and he never told her, but she’d come to recognize a comedown when it was in front of her.

There were other nights—lots of them—when he behaved like a regular family man, sober, a little tired, but happy and feeling generous at the end of a long, productive day. She could easily mistake him then for the man who’d comforted and befriended her after the tragedy of her first husband’s death. She still felt strangely attached to that man and the way he’d spoken so softly to her during that terrible time—smiling into her eyes as if he couldn’t believe how fortunate he was to have found her. He’d never been frightening then, just loving, attentive, interested. She’d married him believing he loved her and feeling certain it was the right thing to do—for herself and for her daughter, still devastated by the loss of her father.

Now here they were, or here she was, watching him frantically snatching files from his desk and stuffing them into an old-fashioned attaché case. She hadn’t seen it before. It was a gladstone, the kind of bag visiting doctors used, or traveling salesmen.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t just stand there,” he raged. “Get that cabinet away from the wall.”

Quickly she moved to do as she was told, but the cabinet was too heavy.

He shoved her aside and did it himself, grunting, sweating, swearing . . . Was he crying? Beads of sweat? How much did she care? How afraid was she?

She wasn’t surprised to see the safe behind the cabinet. She’d known it was there, but this was the first time he’d opened it in front of her.

She couldn’t calculate how much cash was stacked on the five shelves inside, but it surely ran into hundreds of thousands, all neatly bundled until it was chaotically rammed into the case along with the files. Too much to fit in, but he was going to make it happen . . .

Someone knocked at the front door. Three heavy raps.

He froze. A beat later he turned to the window. Beyond was the back garden and she wondered if he was about to throw himself out onto the lawn and make a run for it.

With lightning speed, he rammed the case into the safe, spun the combination lock, and heaved the cabinet back into place.

Their visitor—or visitors—tried the bell.

Police? Drug dealers? Who else would he be so afraid of?

She gasped as he grabbed her by the neck with one hand and pressed her against the wall. “Remember, you know nothing,” he hissed into her face, “you’ve seen nothing, and you’ve heard nothing.”

She nodded, gasping for breath, clawing at his hand.

He let her go and pointed along the hall to the door. “Answer it, but if you even think about betraying me . . .” His eyes bored into hers; he didn’t have to tell her that it wouldn’t end well, she already knew.

She started to move, hardly knowing who or what to expect when she opened the door.

“Stop!” he seethed under his breath.

She turned around. “I don’t know where this is going to end,” he growled, “but just in case you get any ideas about leaving me, you’ll be watched. You won’t get away, and if you try, I’ll find you and by then you’ll wish I hadn’t.”

She didn’t doubt him; she never had. She knew what he was capable of, and as he turned to the door, she found herself hoping with all her heart and soul that he was about to be taken out, not taken away.