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Then, next door, very faintly, somebody clears his throat and suggests they take a short break.

Manon starts to laugh underneath me. Silent at first, then not.

"You told them fifteen minutes," she says.

I lift my head and look at the watch on my wrist beside her face.

"They'll wait." I kiss the back of her neck, right where another man once put his hand and died for it. "I did."

CHAPTER 24

Manon

I shift on the chair at Daphne’s desk, with a view of the corpse of an eighty-year-old woman, and wondering if I will have the opportunity to sit on Laszlo's face in between my shifts. My mind keeps wandering to yesterday afternoon, to that part when I had to leave his office to get to the hospital, because I was late.

God, the state of me when I left that building. If anyone else would have taken a good look at me, they’d have said I’d been ravaged by a posse of men all afternoon. Well, it was just one, and it wasn’t all afternoon.

Laszlo told his associates that he needed fifteen minutes, but it took him an hour to properly and utterly ruin me. My shirt was missing a button; it’s probably somewhere under that walnut table. I had to walk past Renata at the reception looking like that. The woman couldn't look me in the eye when we left the conference room. She just stared at her screen while Laszlo said something about resuming the meeting, completely calm, not a hair out of place, because of course he had a way of looking immaculate no matter what. He wasn’t the least bit embarrassed because he's incapable of it, while my face was so hot I could have cooked an egg on it.

I heard the conference room door opening, then voices, and I swear to God I have never moved so fast in my entire life. I rushed outside while Laszlo was calling for me, but I just shouted that I was late for my shift. There was no way I could have stayed and made small talk with a dozen men who had just heard me get an orgasm.

I was useless for my whole shift after, so much that a nurse asked if I was coming down with something. I said yes, because what was I supposed to say? ‘No, Priya, no fever. It’s just that my husband narrated a murder to me like a bedtime story and then proceeded to fuck me over a conference table until I found God, his angels, and every saint, while his business associates took notes through the wall.’

"You've been staring at Mrs. Ingle for ten minutes," Daphne says without looking up from her clipboard. "She's not going to get any deader."

"I'm paying my respects."

"You're a million miles away." She puts the clipboard down and peels her gloves off, then turns around and stares at me like she already figured that I had the best sex of my life yesterday. "So. Tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"Manon. How was it?"

"How was what?"

"The sex. You finally had sex with your hot husband."

I open my mouth to deny it, then catch my reflection in the fridge door and shut it again, because I'm smiling. I've been smiling this entire time. I've been sitting here next to a dead pensioner grinning like a lunatic, and I didn't even notice. I need to get myself checked in.

"Oh my God," Daphne says. "Your face. Look at your face."

"Stop it."

"That good?"

"Daphne, there were people in the next room. Business associates of Laszlo’s from Chicago and my father’s people, too…"

"NO."

"They heard everything. I had to rush out of the building like a burglar escaping a bank. Now all these people went home knowing things about me."

She's laughing so hard she has to hold on to the trolley, and Mrs. Ingle jiggles a little, which shouldn't be funny but it is. Now I'm howling too, and I can't remember the last time I was this carefree. Actually I can. It was before my brother decided to stab one of Laszlo’s men in his club, so it’s been a very long time.

"Domestic relations, baby," she manages, wiping under her eye with her wrist. "You're strengthening ties with Illinois."

"I hate you."

"Shut up. You love me. Let’s go out for drinks.” She winks. “I know we’ve never really done it but isn’t it time? I want every single detail and I'm not hearing them in front of Mrs. Ingle. She's had enough excitement for one lifetime."