She hadn’t planned to marry Connor. Quite the opposite. In her mind, this was going to last the summer. She’d be bored with him by September and let him down easy. Buy him a car or an apartment. Get him to sign an NDA. That was how Edward used to handle his women, and it had worked without fail.
That day in the office, after Nina voted her shares in favor of the Saudi deal, Hank delivered on his end. Connor was transferred out of PR and reassigned as her special assistant, effective immediately. While Connor cleaned out his desk, Nina sent Juliet to his apartment to pack a suitcase. The jet was on standby at Westchester Airport. They boarded in time for a late dinner and woke up in Italy. For the rest of the summer, they wandered where the spirit took them. Mount Fuji at dawn. A palm-fringed slip of white sand in the South Pacific. The Isle of Skye, where dusk lingered till midnight. Day and night, they were glued together, intertwined, touching, kissing, holding hands, making love, drinking too much, sleeping, Jet Skiing, working out, tiring of a place, moving on to the next one.
It wasn’t all play. That would’ve been tedious. She discovered that Connor was smart about business, much smarter than she’d given him credit for. She found his advice helpful enough that she let him read the materials that were sent to her. Deal memos, agreements, confidential cables. Inch by inch, she took him into her confidence. It was easy to rationalize. He was her assistant, hired by the company. He’d signed the required noncompete and nondisclosure forms. What trouble could he get up to when he didn’t even leave her sight? But now and then, even in bright sunshine, Nina would look at Connor and feel a chill.
Hank had a long history of smearing people, and the story of Connor’s missing college girlfriend matched that MO perfectly. There was no actual evidence. There were only insinuations too vague to be refuted. It was perfect that way. This girl and Connor had broken up when he dropped out of college, years before she disappeared. Her body had never been found. She might not be dead at all. But there was just enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth. They were both living in New York at the time of her disappearance. She’d been seen with a man matching his description not long before she went missing. In short, there was enough to make Nina worry that this time, it was for real—that her young lover might actually be a murderer.
She had to find out the truth.
Nina had brought Hank’s dossier on the trip, moving it from one safe to another, making sure Connor never laid eyes on it. She wanted to send it to her lawyer for follow-up, but the puzzle was how to do that securely. The information contained in the dossier was potentially damaging, not just to Connor but by association to Nina herself, and even to Levitt Global. She couldn’t risk scanning and emailing it or sending it via courier service. It needed to be hand-carried by someone she trusted. A few key members of Nina’s staff had accompanied her on this trip, keeping a discreet distance but there when she needed them. Juliet. Dawn Forest, her yoga instructor. And Steve Kovacs, her security consultant. Of the three, Juliet was most easily spared. Nina quietly dispatched Juliet back to the States to carry the dossier to her lawyer and instruct him to look into the allegations.
In the meantime, Nina and Connor continued with their travels. She was Nina Levitt, after all. If it pleased her to vagabond around the world with a gorgeous man who spoke French and Italian, knew wine, looked incredible in clothes and made love to her like a gigolo, then she’d do that. And it did please her, like nothing ever had.
In late August, Nina and Connor were lounging on the flybridge of Nina’s boat anchored off Monte Carlo, sipping pisco sours and watching the sunset, when the tender pulled up, and Juliet stepped off. She was carrying one of those slouchy, no-name leather bags that millennials bought for a hundred bucks off the internet. Seeing the bag, Nina felt a stab of fear, because she knew that the completed investigator’s report was inside. She looked at Connor, his handsome features bathed in golden light, and decided not to read it tonight. Juliet waved from the lower deck. Nina ignored her, burying her face in the warmth of Connor’s neck. Tomorrow was soon enough to face reality.
But she couldn’t sleep that night, worrying about what it might say. Connor slept like a rock, but Nina tossed and turned, anxiety weighing on her. What if he was a killer? Around four, unable to stand it any longer, she pulled on her red silk kimono and went knocking on the door of Juliet’s cabin.
Juliet opened the door within thirty seconds, eyes widening when she saw Nina.
“Oh. Mrs. Levitt.”
“Were you expecting someone else?” Nina asked.
Hair down, in a slip of a nightgown, Juliet looked pretty. You’d never know it, during the day.
“I wasn’t expecting anybody, ma’am. Please, come in.”
Juliet stepped back and let Nina into the cabin. While small compared with the lavish master suite that Nina and Connor occupied, it was elegantly decorated, with a king bed, a picture window hung with raw-silk drapes, and a small seating area with a single armchair and coffee table. Juliet gestured at the chair. Nina took a seat.
“Can I ring for coffee?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I assume you’d like to review the materials Mr. Barbash sent?”
Mark Barbash was Nina’s lawyer.
“Please.”
Juliet touched a panel in the built-in dresser, which sprang open to reveal a hidden safe. She punched in a combination, retrieved an official-looking manila envelope, and brought it to Nina. The envelope was marked CONFIDENTIAL and sealed with tape, but was otherwise blank, with neither address nor sender noted.
“Have you read it?” Nina asked.
Juliet’s mouth dropped into an O of surprise. “Uh—was I supposed to? It’s sealed.”
“Just checking.”
Nina hesitated with her hand over the flap of the envelope, throwing Juliet a meaningful look. The assistant grabbed her bathrobe and phone.
“I’ll give you some privacy. Text me when you’d like me to return.”
Once alone, Nina opened the envelope. Her hands were shaking. There were two files inside, one labeled INVESTIGATIVE REPORT, the other PRENUPTIAL AGREEMENT. She opened the file containing the report.
The first page was a summary, stating that the investigator had verified Connor’s involvement with a young woman named Lissa Davila during his first two years of college, and Lissa’s subsequent disappearance under mysterious circumstances eight years after their relationship ended. No evidence was found linking Connor to her disappearance. While the police case remained open, and the NYPD considered it unsolved, the investigator had uncovered new evidence suggesting that Lissa Davila had moved overseas, meaning that her “disappearance” had an innocent explanation.
Nina breathed out in relief. Everything was fine. She could have stopped reading right then. But curiosity got the better of her.
The next item in the file was a transcript of an interview with Lissa’s college roommate, Sharla Jenkins. Sharla described Lissa as brilliant but troubled. Lissa had grown up in foster homes and had finally been adopted in her teens. The adoptive mom had died, and Lissa had no other family that Sharla knew of. Sharla stated that Lissa and Connor had an “obsessive” and “unhealthy” relationship that interfered with Lissa’s friendships and schoolwork. When Connor dropped out of school, Lissa attempted suicide. She was hospitalized and withdrew from school. Sharla tried to keep in touch, but Lissa cut off contact.
Further investigation indicated that, by the time Connor ended his leave of absence and returned to college, Lissa had dropped out. According to the college records office, Lissa never returned, and never filed the request for her transcript that would have been needed had she transferred elsewhere. The conclusion was that she had not finished college.
Eight years after she left college, Lissa was reported missing by her landlord in New York City. The investigator determined that Lissa had been living alone in a small studio in a large Manhattan apartment building. The date of birth and Social Security number matched—this was definitely the same girl who’d dated Connor in college. When Lissa failed to pay her rent, the real-estate company tried to contact her, but her cell phone was out of service. They inquired with the doorman, who said he hadn’t seen her in weeks. The building super then entered her apartment with a master key, and what he found was eerie. It was as if Lissa had vanished into thin air. There was a coat of dust on the furniture, clothing hanging in the closet; Lissa’s wallet and keys were on the kitchen table. The landlord contacted the police, who opened a missing-person case. The police followed up with the employer Lissa had listed on her rental application, an import-export firm called Protocol Shipping Solutions, with a Midtown address. But the address turned out to be a mail-drop, and there was no evidence that the company actually existed.
Lissa Davila was a ghost.
The police tried to find Lissa’s family, without success. Her adoptive mother, who’d lived in Maryland, had died years earlier. And the Maryland Department of Human Services was unable to locate Lissa’s file to provide a birth certificate or the names of any living biological relatives. The only lead was that the doorman reported seeing Lissa with a visitor shortly before she disappeared—a man, tall and good-looking, with dark hair. There was no security camera in the building, but the police were able to pull footage from a camera mounted on the exterior of the bank next door. They found one grainy surveillance photo that the doorman said looked to him like Lissa and her visitor. That photo was included in the file.
Nina stared at it.
The man and woman walked hand in hand. The woman’s face was a white blur, visible only in profile. The man’s face wasn’t visible at all. She studied it for a long time, gazing at the man. At the set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head, the texture of his hair. It was quite like Connor. Enough that it could be him. She leafed through the rest of the folder looking for more photos. There were none, not even a yearbook photo of Lissa, or any photo that showed her face. That seemed like an omission. Then again, Hank’s original smear dossier hadn’t included a photo of Lissa, so maybe there just wasn’t one. If there was, you’d think Hank would’ve come up with it. While it seemed odd in this day and age, the truth was, not everyone had a social media presence, or even a driver’s license. Some people left very little trace.
The lack of a photo bothered Nina. So did the name of the import-export firm where Lissa had worked. Protocol Shipping Solutions. She’d heard that name somewhere before, she was certain. She pressed her fingers to her temples, chasing the memory, but it remained stubbornly out of reach.
Did it matter, so long as there was an innocent explanation? Nina turned to the final page of the report, bearing the heading “Lissa Davila Possibly Living Overseas.” The page summarized the findings of a second private investigator, hired by Mark Barbash to follow up on the information in Hank’s dossier. That investigator had discovered evidence of a woman with the name Lissa Davila, and the correct birth date and Social Security number, working as an office manager for a company in Dubai called Gulf Ex-Im as recently as two years ago. There was no explanation for how Lissa had ended up in Dubai, or how the investigator had found her. The investigator had attempted to reach out to Lissa at Gulf Ex-Im in order to establish conclusively that she was the same person, but was unable to make contact. The business appeared to have closed. Still, the investigator wrote, given the identical birth date and SS number, the evidence supported the conclusion that it was her, and that therefore, she’d been alive and well and living overseas after going missing from New York.
Well. If it was good enough for the PI, it was good enough for Nina. Connor wasn’t a killer. That was just a Hank smear, designed to control her, and interfere with her happiness. And she was happy. Happy in a relationship for the first time in her life. Happy with things just how they were. So, why change anything? Why—specifically—get married?
After Edward died, Nina thought she’d never marry again. Not because she was so grief-stricken. Oh, she put on a show of grieving, but the fact was, Edward had treated her like shit for most of their marriage. She stayed—and stayed faithful—for the money. Her prenup said that if Edward left her, she got a hefty settlement. But if she left him, she got nothing.
She worried constantly that Connor would cheat on her, like Edward had. That worry was based more on her past experience than on anything Connor had actually done or said. And it was possible she was being unfair to him. Maybe Connor wasn’t like Edward. There was no way to know for sure. This was early days. Connor was on his best behavior. And besides, they’d been together nonstop since meeting at her July Fourth party, so he’d had no opportunity.
But summer was coming to an end. In the fall, they’d return to New York. He’d go back to work at Levitt Global, where Lauren was still head of PR. Lauren, whose divorce from Hank was now final, and who had a vendetta against Nina. Lauren believed that Nina had stolen two men from her. That wasn’t true, but truth didn’t matter. Lauren believed it, and what better revenge could there be than luring Connor back?
Nina watched him around the women they’d interacted with in the past two months, trying to gauge how susceptible he was. With Juliet, he was polite and friendly. With Dawn, her yoga instructor, who traveled with them, and who for some reason had taken a dislike to him, he was distant. With Nina’s friend Anna, whose castle they’d stayed at in Scotland, and who was a terrible flirt, he’d been flirtatious. In each instance, the woman’s conduct seemed to determine Connor’s response. That wasn’t very reassuring.
After what she’d been through with Edward, Nina would lie awake at night, watching Connor sleep, imagining him in bed with other women. She told him that if he ever cheated, they were through. He claimed he never would, but all men said that. How could she keep him faithful? Her mind kept coming back to the prenup Edward held over Nina’s head for years.
She opened the second file now and read what her lawyer had drafted. Upon divorce, each party took from the marriage only the assets they’d brought to it, with the following exceptions. If Nina divorced Connor for any reason within the first five years of marriage, he got a one-time ten-million-dollar payout. After five years, he received an additional five million dollars for each year they remained married up to ten years. After ten years, the marriage vested, and Connor would receive half of Nina’s assets upon divorce by Nina. But—if Connor initiated the divorce, or, if Nina could prove that he’d been unfaithful, or lied about a relationship with another woman, he forfeited all payouts. He got nothing.
The prenup was much more persuasive than a mere threat to end the relationship. It contained incentives and disincentives. It attached numbers—a cost—to leaving, or cheating. It was one thing for him to think, If I get caught doing this, she might kick me out. Another entirely to say, If I cheat, I lose ten million dollars.
Yes. The prenup just might work. The only problem was, you only signed a prenup if you were getting married.
Nina texted Juliet to return to the stateroom. When she got there, Nina handed her the investigator’s report.
“Destroy this. Don’t read it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Nina went back to the master, where Connor lay tangled in the blankets, fast asleep. She threw off her kimono and got in beside him, her hands snaking under the covers to find his naked body. His eyes opened, and he smiled drowsily.
“Hey, gorgeous,” he said.
She stroked him under the covers until he got hard. He grabbed her and pulled her underneath him. The sex was intense, like always, and she was sad when it ended. Life would feel empty if they weren’t together. She relied on him—in her bed at night, walking into a crowded room, muting the phone on a conference call to make fun of something somebody said. Her long, difficult marriage had made her unsentimental about love. She didn’t quite believe in it. Yet, here she was, in love with Connor.
“Hey,” she said, nuzzling against his neck, breathing in his scent. “You remember that song you sang to me the night we met?”
He raised himself on his elbow, brow furrowed. He didn’t remember. How was that possible?
“Oh, yes, right,” he said, nodding.
He’d scared her there for a minute, but now he started to hum the tune into her ear.
“The one about the carpenter who asked the lady if she’d marry him? That one?”
“Yes. I love that song.” She paused. “So, what do you think? Should we get married?”