Page 107 of Fallen Crown

My phone goes off on the nightstand with a text message, and I contemplate ignoring it. Between Denmark, Maren’s illness, and my stupidly busy work schedule, I haven’t had many moments like I’m getting right now with my lady love. But I also know that Jag wouldn’t text this late if it wasn’t important.

I roll over and snatch my phone off the nightstand. After scanning the message twice, I write back to let him know I received it. Then I take a deep breath.

“Jag’s friend in Boston uncovered a few things, and he’s flying to the island tomorrow to go through his results with us.”

“Oh,” Maren says, and it sounds like a mixture of surprise and disappointment. How one word can be so loaded, I’m not sure, but it is.

“Tomorrow,” I say, “we’ll find out what Enzo has been up to in Boston for the last year.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to handle it.” Maren cuddles back into my side and rests her head on my chest.

“You won’t be handling it alone,” I say. “That much I can guarantee. Whatever you find out, I’ll be with you every step of the way.” I just hope that whatever is revealed doesn’t make her question her instincts where men are concerned. My gut tells me that whatever Enzo was up to, Maren is going to feel blindsided, and that’s never a good feeling.

I draw her tight against me, and I kiss the top of her head. No matter what, I’m not letting her lump me into the same category as Enzo. His choices will never be mine. I understand that what I’ve got with Tucker is rare and precious, and I’d never do anything to jeopardize her faith in me. Whatever we learn tomorrow, I hope she’s able to keep it in perspective.

Chapter Forty-Six

Maren

The private detective concludes his slideshow of all the pictures and evidence he gathered of Enzo’s deceit, and I’m numb. It feels like I’ve been dropped into someone else’s life or a nightmare. Brice is beside me, holding my hand, but I can’t wrap my brain around what I’ve just been told.

“He did not cover his tracks very well.” Caitlin sits opposite me, and she rocks back and forth in her chair. “Good for us. Makes the divorce and settlement with Bellerive’s laws a lot cleaner.”

“Explains why he went to the divorce lawyers in Boston and then contacted some here too,” Brice says. “He must have been trying to figure out how badly he’d screwed himself.”

“And he must have believed those leaked photos of you and Maren together at the race were a gold mine. Suddenly, he could prove she’d been the one cheating all along.”

“I feel really dumb,” I whisper into the room, not sure who I want to respond.

“As I said,” the private detective says, “from what I could discover, it appears as though he was faithful for the first three years of your relationship. But over the last two years, he broke his vows repeatedly.”

The private detective had text message exchanges, emails, and even photos and videos of Enzo’s indiscretions. The timeline makes some sense, but I’m not sure which came first. There was definitely an increasing amount of distance between us even before my accident.

“He told me about this one,” I say, picking up the final photo, which shows him kissing a bartender at a bar just after the separation papers were delivered. “Why would he admit that if there was so much more to discover?”

“Happens more often than you’d think. Confess to a small crime and hope no one discovers the one that’s much worse,” Caitlin says.

“Why would he want to stay married with all this?” I ask. Though I should be familiar with the concept since my father did the same thing with my mother. But while I was building walls between me and Brice and resisting our growing closeness, Enzo was getting close to anyone and everyone he could in Boston.

“Finances,” the private investigator says, sliding a file across the table to me. “His are a mess. He’s spent recklessly, and he doesn’t have a penny to his name. Without you, he’s practically homeless.”

“I suspect that’s why he came to the island after talking to lawyers,” Caitlin says. “He found out he couldn’t break the prenup easily, and he risked his own activities being discovered by going after spousal support. The photos of you and Brice must have seemed like a gift. Come back and either guilt or blackmail you into staying together.”

I can’t discount my own privilege because money has never been a concern, but I can’t imagine resigning myself to a relationship I don’t respect for financial reasons. At least with Brice, I’ll never have to worry that he’s with me for my money.

“All this evidence means Enzo gets nothing, right?” I check with Caitlin, and Brice squeezes my hand.

“According to Bellerive law, when a spouse is found cheating, they cannot seek spousal support. You didn’t have joint bank accounts, so that’s good. The monthly sum you’d been floating him will be cut off. He’ll get half of any profits from the sale of the marital home, but that’s it. No other settlements or spousal support will be awarded, no matter how long he fights. None of our laws work in his favor.”

“Do I need to meet with Enzo to go over all this with our lawyers?”

“No,” Caitlin says. “Not unless you really want to be there. I can meet with him and his lawyer and clue them into how this is going to go.”

Although I’d insisted on the prenup and the cheating clause when we got married, I never thought I’d need it. Even when he was gone for almost a year, I never suspected he was cheating. The Enzo I met in college was a flirt and a tease, but he knew how much my parents’ relationship had screwed me up. As the years went on, we drifted pretty far from the people who met in that campus bar. I guess he evolved into the type of man who could do those things, and I didn’t notice.

“Do you think he would have stayed married to me and off island forever if I’d let him?” A terrible thought, but it’s there in the back of my brain. Every conversation we had, he assured me he’d be coming back eventually. How long would I have let him drag that out? His opinions on my racing almost had me miss out on the Fiji trip.

“You gave him a very long leash,” Caitlin says. “And he chose to hang himself. That’s not your fault. You were far more understanding than I’d ever be.”