“Go on then,” I say with a shrug. “I don’t really care about anything you say, but if you insist on—”
“My real name is not Nate Simons.”
Okay, fine, he wins.
That one-liner is a killer, so of course I need him to explain, which he does, and unfortunately for me, everything he says...
He was under witness protection when we met?
The Feds called him on our wedding day?
Because El Carnicero had escaped and that put me in danger?
And that’s why it’s taken him eighteen years to come back?
Because he had to make sure El Carnicero wouldn’t be able to escape a second time?
OH, COME ON NOW.
Does he really think I’m still the same idiot he married? Does he really think I’m going to fall for that? What’s he going to tell me next? That he’s amafiabillionaire—
"My real name is Nicolo Sestini."
ARGH.
That...that does it!
I start typing on my phone, intending to look that name up on the Internet—
$%#@!&!
“Juniper—”
“Give me a second, please.” I grab the remote control from the console and nearly poke holes into it as I start pushing buttons. I’m just so, so mad. I can’t believe how dumb he thinks I am, to really believe he’s the Sestini heir who went from missing to resurfaced just days ago. He probably thinks I haven’t changed, that I’m still the girl who loves fiction more than reality, and it’s why he’s feeding me all this crap. He doesn’t know that I work in the courthouse now, and so of course I make it my business to know all about the bad guys or, in this case, the sons of former bad guys—
“Nicolo Sestini is now stepping out with his lawyer...”
Aha!
I stop channel surfing when I finally find a news channel that will help me prove he’s a liar.
“Are you saying—” I point to the TV screen. “You’re that—” Nate looks at the TV, and so do I. “Nicolo...Sestini...”
No no no no no no no no no no no.
Why is my evil husband’s face on the TV?
I rub my eyes, hoping I’m just imagining things—
“It really is me, Juniper.”
But when I look at the TV again—
The man I married eighteen years ago...is the same man on the TV.
“Juniper?”
I look at him, but I’m not really seeing him because I’m still mentally reeling.