They stepped through the front doors arm in arm, Marcus in a trim black suit, Marcella in a gold dress. She caught sight of a plainclothes cop lounging in the lobby, and shot him a toying wink. Half the Merit PD was in Hutch’s pocket. The other half couldn’t get close enough to do a damn thing.
The inside of the elevator was polished to a high shine, and as it rose, Marcella leaned against Marcus and considered their reflection. She loved the way they looked together. She loved his strong jaw and his rough hands, loved his steely blue eyes and the way he moaned her name. They were partners in crime. A perfect pair.
“Hello, handsome,” she said, catching his eye.
He smiled. “Hello, gorgeous.”
Yes, she loved her husband.
Probably more than she should.
The elevator doors opened onto a rooftop covered in lights, and music, and laughter. Hutch always knew how to throw a party. Gauzy canopies and sofas piled with cushions, low gold-and-glass tables, servers slipping through the crowd with champagne flutes and canapés, but what drew Marcella’s eye more than any of it was the city beyond. The view was incredible, the National high enough up that it seemed to look down on all of Merit.
Marcus led her through the bustling crowd.
As they moved, she felt the eyes of every man, and half the women, slide over her. Marcella’s dress—made of a thousand pale gold scales—hugged her every curve and shimmered with each step. Her heels and nails were the same pale gold, as was the matching net of wire woven through her black hair, lacing tiny white-gold beads through the glossy updo. The only spots of color were her eyes, a vivid blue framed by black lashes, and her lips, which she’d painted crimson.
Marcus had told her to dress up.
“What’s the point of having beautiful things,” he’d said, “if you don’t put them on display?”
Now he led her to the very center of the roof, to the marble star inlaid in the floor where the boss himself was holding court.
Antony Hutch.
He wasn’t unattractive—lean and strong, with warm brown hair and a constant summer tan—but there was something about him that made Marcella’s skin crawl.
“Tony, you’ve met my wife, Marcella.”
Hutch’s attention, when it landed on her, felt like a damp hand on bare flesh.
“Jesus, Marc,” he said, “does she come with a warning label?”
“She does not,” quipped Marcella.
But Hutch only smiled. “Seriously, though, how could I forget such a beauty?”
He stepped closer. “Is Marc here treating you well? You need anything, you just let me know.”
“Why?” asked Marcella with a smirk. “Are you in the market for a wife?”
Hutch chuckled, and spread his arms. “Unfortunately, I like catching girls more than keeping them.”
“That simply means,” said Marcella, “you haven’t found the right one.”
Hutch laughed, and turned toward Marcus. “You got yourself a keeper.”
Marcus looped his arms around her waist and kissed her temple. “Don’t I know it?”
But his body was already twisting away from her, and soon Marcella found herself pushed to the outside of the circle as the group of men began to talk business.
“We’re looking to expand our hold on the south side.”
“Territory moves are always dangerous.”
“Caprese’s eyes are bigger than his stomach.”
“You could squeeze him out more subtly,” offered Marcella. “Pick up the blocks around him. It wouldn’t be a direct attack—no grounds for retaliation—but the message is clear.”
The conversation crumbled. The men went quiet.
After a pained moment, Marcus simply smiled. “My wife, the business major,” he said blandly.
Marcella felt herself flush as the other men shared a knowing chuckle. Hutch looked at her, his own laugh slack, hollow. “Marcella, we must be boring you. I’m sure you’d be happier with the other wives.”
Marcella’s answer was already poised on her lips, but Marcus cut in first. “Go on, Marce,” he said, kissing her cheek. “Let the men talk.”
She wanted to grab his jaw, dig her nails in until they drew blood. Instead, she smiled. Arranged her face into a mask of serenity. Appearance was everything.
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll leave you boys to it.”
She turned away, plucked a champagne flute from a passing server, held the glass so tight her fingers hurt. She felt their eyes follow her across the roof.
What’s the point of having beautiful things, if you don’t put them on display?
She hadn’t realized, at the time, that Marcus had referred to her as a thing. The comment had slid off like a silk gown, pretty and weightless, but—
“Marcella!” called a woman in a familiar singsong voice. Her heels were pushing six inches, which was probably why she was sitting down, holding court in a dark red gown. It was the perfect color—Grace was blond, and fair, and the dress stood out like blood on skin.
“Have you been evicted?” asked Theresa, seated as well and sipping a large drink.
“God no,” said Marcella, “they were boring me to tears.”
“Too much shop talk,” said Bethany, bangles clanging as she flicked her wrist. More beauty than brains in that one, thought Marcella, not for the first time.
“They may think they’re kings,” said Grace, “but we’re the power behind the throne.”
A tinkle of laughter sounded nearby.
There was a second group of women, clustered in another corner of the roof, in higher heels and shorter dresses. The girlfriends. The second and third wives. The side pieces. Newer models, Grace would say.
“How’s Marcus?” asked Bethany. “I hope you’re keeping him on a leash.”
“Oh,” she said, sipping her champagne, “he’d never cheat.”
“What makes you so sure?” asked Theresa.
Marcella met Marcus’s eyes across the roof.
“Because,” she said, raising her glass, “he knows I’d kill him first.”
* * *
“DID you have a nice night?” Marcella asked later as the car pulled away from the party.
Marcus was all energy. “It went off without a hitch. Or a hutch.” He chuckled at his own joke. Marcella didn’t. “He’s taken a liking to me, I can tell. Said he’d call me in the morning. Something new. Something big.” He pulled her close. “You were right.”
“I’m always right,” she said absently, looking out the window. “Let’s stay in the city tonight.”
“Good idea,” said Marcus. He knocked on the partition, gave the driver the address of their place at the Heights, told him to hurry. And then he sat back, pressing against her. “They couldn’t take their eyes off you. I don’t blame them. Neither could I.”
“Not here,” she said, trying to force a little humor in her voice. “You’ll ruin my dress.”
“Fuck your dress,” he breathed in her ear. “I want you.”
But Marcella pushed him away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Marcella’s gaze flicked toward him. “My wife, the business major?”
He rolled his eyes. “Marce.”
“Let the men talk?”
“Oh, come on.”
“You made a fool of me.”
He made a sound too close to a laugh. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
Marcella gritted her teeth. “You’re very lucky I didn’t react at the time.”
Marcus soured. “This isn’t a good look on you, Marce.”
The car pulled up in front of the Heights, and Marcella resisted the urge to storm out. She flicked open the door and rose, smoothing the gold scales on her dress as she waited for Marcus to round the car.
“Good evening,” said the concierge. “Nice night?”
“Flawless,” said Marcella, stepping briskly into the elevator, Marcus in her wake. He waited until the door
s were closed, then sighed, shook his head.
“You know what those guys are like,” he muttered. “Old guard. Old money. Old values. You wanted this. You wanted me to do this.”
“With me,” she snapped. “I wanted us to do this, together.” He tried to cut in, but she didn’t let him. “I’m not a fucking coat, Marcus. You don’t get to check me at the door.”
The elevator stopped, and she strode out into the hall, heels clicking on the marble floor. She reached their door, but Marcus caught her hand and pinned her back against the wood. On a normal night, she would have thrilled at the swift display of strength, would have arched against him. But she wasn’t in the mood.
Let the men talk.
“Marcella.”
The laugh. The patronizing smiles.
“Marcella,” said Marcus, drawing her face toward his. Her gaze toward his. And then she saw it—or maybe she just wanted to see it—there, beyond the flat, dark blue. A glimpse of the Marcus she’d met, young and hungry and utterly in love with her. The Marcus who wanted her, needed her.
His mouth hovered a breath from hers as he spoke.
“Where I go, you go,” he said. “We’re in this together. Step for step.”
Marcella wanted to believe him, needed to believe him, because she wasn’t willing to let go, wasn’t going to lose him, everything she’d built.
They never seem to realize.
We’re the power behind the throne.
Marcella leaned forward and kissed him long, and slow, and deep.
“Show me,” she said, leading him inside.
VI
FOUR WEEKS AGO
MERIT SUBURBS
MARCUS Andover Riggins had always been a man of routines.
An espresso in the morning, a bourbon before bed. Every Monday after breakfast, he got a massage, and every Wednesday at lunch, he swam laps, and every Friday night, rain or shine, from dusk until dawn, he played poker. Four or five members of Tony Hutch’s crew all got together weekly at Sam McGuire’s place, since Sam was single—or at least, he wasn’t married. He had a rotation of sorts, a new girl every week, but none of them stuck.
Sam’s was a nice place—they were all nice places—but he had a bad habit of leaving the back door unlocked instead of giving any of his short-term girls a key. Marcella had warned him a dozen times—someone could walk right in. But Sam would just smile, and say that no man would walk in on one of Tony Hutch’s crew.
Perhaps, but Marcella Riggins was no man.
She let herself inside.
The back door gave onto the kitchen, where Marcella found a girl doubled over, ass in the air and head in the freezer, as she rummaged for ice. She wobbled in too-high heels, bangles clanging against the freezer, but the first thing Marcella noticed was the girl’s dress. Dark blue silk, with a short rippling skirt—the same one that had hung for more than a year in Marcella’s own closet at the Heights.
The girl straightened, and turned, her mouth forming a perfect pink circle.
Bethany.
Bethany, who had twice as many tits as thoughts.
Bethany, who asked about Marcus every time they met.
Bethany, who looked like a cheap knockoff of Marcella in those diamond earrings, that stolen dress, which wasn’t stolen, of course, because the apartment in town had also been kept for her.
Bethany’s eyes went wide. “Marcella?”
“Did you always know,” she’d asked Marcus once, undoing the buttons on a blood-stained shirt, “that you had what it took to end a life?”
“Not until the gun was in my hand,” he’d said. “I thought it would be hard, but in that moment, nothing was easier.”
He was right.
But there was, it turned out, a crucial difference between destroying things and destroying people.
People screamed.
Or at least they tried. Bethany certainly would have, if Marcella hadn’t already grabbed her by the throat, hadn’t eroded through her vocal cords before anything more than a short, futile gasp could escape.
And even then, the men in the other room might have heard, if they hadn’t been laughing so loudly.
It didn’t take long.
One second Bethany’s mouth was open in a perfect O of surprise and the next her plump skin had shriveled, her face twisting into a rictus grin that quickly pulled away to reveal the skull beneath, and then even that turned to ash, as all that was left of Bethany crumbled to the kitchen floor.
It was over so fast—there was hardly any time for Marcella to savor what she’d done, and no time to think about all the things she should be feeling, given the circumstances, or even to wonder at their peculiar absence.
It was just so easy.
As if everything had wanted to come apart.
There was probably some law about that.
Order giving way to chaos.
Marcella took up a dishcloth and wiped the dust from her fingers as another raucous laugh cut through the house. Then a familiar voice called out.
“Doll, where’s that drink?”
Marcella followed the voice down the short hall that ran between the kitchen and the den where the men were playing.
“Where the fuck is my drink?” bellowed Marcus, chair scraping back. He was on his feet when she walked in.
“Hello, boys.”
Marcus didn’t have to feign surprise, since he’d expected her to be dead. His face drained of all color—what was the phrase, oh yes: as if he’d just seen a ghost. The other four men squinted through the haze of liquor and cigar smoke.
“Marce?” said her husband, voice laced with shock.
Oh, how she longed to kill him, but she wanted to use her bare hands, and there was a table between them, and Marcus was holding his ground, looking at her with a mixture of suspicion and worry, and Marcella knew what she had to do. She began to cry. It was easy—all she had to do was think of her life, the one she’d worked so hard for, going up in flames.
“I’ve been so worried,” she said, breath hitching. “I woke up in a hospital, and you weren’t there. The cops said there’d been a fire and I thought—I was afraid—they wouldn’t tell me if you’d been hurt in it. They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
His expression flickered, suddenly uncertain. He took a step toward her. “I thought you were dead.” A forced stammer, a mockery of emotion. “The cops wouldn’t let me see your . . . I thought maybe you . . . what do you remember, baby?”
Still the pet names.
Marcella shook her head. “I remember making dinner. Everything after that is a blur.”
She caught a glimpse of hope in his eyes—amazement, that he would get away with it, that he could have the best of both worlds: killing his wife and getting her back.
But instead of coming to her, he sank down into his chair. “By the time I got home,” he said, “the fire trucks were there, the house was up in flames. They wouldn’t let me in.” Marcus slumped back, as if reliving the trauma. The grief. As if ten minutes earlier he hadn’t been playing poker and waiting for his mistress—her one-time friend—to bring him his drink.
Marcella went to her husband, circled behind his chair, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’m just so glad . . .”
He took up her hand, pressed his lips against her wrist. “I’m all right, doll.”
She nestled her face into his collar. Felt Marcus actually relax, muscles unwinding as he realized he was in the clear.
“Guys,” said Marcus, “game’s over.”
The other men shuffled, about to rise.
“No,” she whispered in her sweetest voice. “Stay. This won’t take long.”
Marcus tipped his head back, a furrow between his brows.
Marcella smiled. “You never were one to dwell on the past, Marcus. I loved that about you, the way things always just rolled off.”
She lifted an empty glass from the table.
“To my husband,” she said, right before the ruin rushed t
o her fingers in a blossom of red light. The glass dissolved, sand raining onto the felt poker table. A ripple of shock went through the table, and Marcus jerked forward, as if to rise, but Marcella had no intentions of letting go.
“We’ve had a good run,” she whispered in his ear as the anger and hurt and hatred rose like heat.
She let it all out.
Her husband had told her a hundred stories about the way men died. No one ever held their tongue, not in the end. In the end, they begged and pleaded, sobbed and screamed.
Marcus was no exception.
It didn’t last long—not out of some sudden mercy, Marcella simply lacked the control to draw it out. She really would have liked to savor it. Would have liked the chance to memorize his horrified face, but alas—that was the first thing to go.
She had to settle instead for the shock and terror on the faces of the other men.
Of course, that didn’t last very long either.
Two of them—Sam, of course, and another man she didn’t recognize—were scrambling to their feet.
Marcella sighed, her husband’s remains collapsing as she knocked them aside and caught Sam’s sleeve.
“Going so soon?” she asked, ruin surging to her fingers. He staggered, fell, his body breaking by the time it hit the floor. The other man drew a knife from a hidden fold of his coat, but when he lunged toward Marcella, she wrapped one glowing hand around the blade. It decayed and crumbled, ruin spreading in an instant from metal to hilt and then up the man’s arm. He began to scream and pulled away, but the rot was already going through him like a wildfire, his body falling apart even as he tried to escape.
The last two men stayed seated at the card table, their hands up and their faces frozen. All Marcella’s life, men had looked at her with lust, desire. But this was different.
This was fear.
And it felt good.
She took her husband’s seat, settling in among his still-warm ashes. She used a kerchief to clear a streak of him from the poker table.
“Well?” said Marcella after a long moment. “Deal me in.”
VII