Chapter 157
157
The next day, Alistair confirmed that a ‘Lars Andersen’ had been released from San Vittore prison just a few days before.
“That was why we couldn’t find him!” my fiancé explained like it was all a harmless mix-up. “He was using an assumed name p>
“You didn’t check for aliases?!” I asked, aghast at his incompetence.
“What was I supposed to do, check every blond-haired male in the entire fucking world, dead or alive?! He was convicted under a fake name – that should tell you something p>
“What’s it supposed to tell me, exactly p>
“That he was doing something illegal, and he would rather go to prison under a fake name than let them know his real one! That’s something a spy would do – ”
“Are you going to start bleating about the Chinese again?” I asked coldly.
“If you ever find out who he was working for,” Alistair sneered, “do let me know. Oh, wait – I forgot, he won’t tell you! I wonder why p>
“Bastard,” I snarled.
“At least I’m not a fucking traitor like your former lover p>
I stormed out of the room.
I refused to talk to him for the rest of the day, even when he tried to apologize.
Things only got worse from there.
We probably wouldn’t have slept together anyways – sex with Alistair was only something I was interested in under the best of conditions, and these were far from the best of conditions – but I began to find myself physically repulsed by him. I couldn’t stand his touch, his smell, his very presence.
Every time he tried to come up behind me and kiss my neck, my body reacted as though someone had rubbed a slug across my skin.
I think it was because of the incessant little voice that kept whispering in the back of my mind:
Did he even TRY to find Lars?
Did he even LOOK?
And the most horrible of all:
Could Alistair have actually FOUND Lars if he’d tried – but instead, he took advantage of having his rival removed?
I told myself I was being paranoid. Of course Alistair had looked. He cared about me. He wanted my happiness more than anything.
…right?
At any rate, Alistair didn’t care for me rejecting his advances.
He put up with it for a week – and then he began to beg.
“Please, darling… I miss you so much… it would bring us closer together p>
After a few days of that not working, he tried to badger me.
“We’ve never gone this long without making love p>
Then guilt me.
“Are you really going to let this come between us p>
And then he turned nasty.
“What, your traitor ex-boyfriend gets out of prison, and now all you can do is think about fucking him?” he raged one night when he had a couple of drinks in him.
I had ignored most of Alistair’s passive-aggressive bullshit and incessant whining – But the last comment broke the camel’s back.
“You need to shut your fucking mouth and stay away from me,” I snarled. “In fact, get out of my house – NOW p>
“But I’ve been drinking,” he whined. “I can’t drive – I’m the Director of Operations! If I got arrested – ”
“So call a fucking Uber p>
When he wouldn’t go voluntarily, I used a little pain compliance. I twisted his arm behind him, shoved him out the front door, threw his phone out after him, and told him to fuck off.
In the moment, it was enormously satisfying. And the quiet afterwards was heavenly.
In the long term, though, it proved disastrous.