Page 8 of The Honest Affair
Primi
Chapter One
November 2018
Nina
The doors closed on a whisper, not a bang.
Even so, I stumbled slightly as I exited the Rose M. Singer Detention Center—one of the eleven jails housed at Rikers Island—with the wobbly grace of a newborn foal on the heels I hadn’t worn in more than two weeks. Under my arm, I carried the purse I’d brought in with me, just before I’d been stripped down, searched, and forced to trade the demure Chanel shift dress and wool coat for a brown jumpsuit.
Despite having been kept in a storage locker for the mere fifteen days I’d endured of my forty-five-day sentence, all my clothes still smelled like the jail, like sweat and concrete and mildew and bleach. Like misery and anger. Hopelessness and despair. I’d burn them all as soon as I could find replacements. But for now, I just wanted off this godforsaken island.
I held up a hand to block the sun that was unnaturally bright for so late in November. Or was it just that I hadn’t seen it in over a week? Regardless, the light was blinding, and I squinted as I looked for the stop for the shuttle to the central hub of Rikers, from where I could call a car to take me…somewhere.
“Cos.”
My head snapped up at the sound of a familiar voice. I turned to find a tall blond man dressed in an impeccably cut navy suit, standing in front of a familiar BMW sedan.
“Eric?” I asked incredulously.
As my eyes adjusted to the light, I found I wasn’t just hearing things. It was my cousin—Eric de Vries, Chairman and CEO of De Vries Shipping Industries and one of the busiest men in New York—waiting patiently for my release.
“What—how do you—what are you doing here?”
“I came to pick you up,” he said as if it weren’t obvious.
I glanced around at the few vehicles in the lot. “I mean, how did they let you drive in here, though?” Already I had steeled myself for a ride through the complex on one of the crowded shuttles, then expected to call a cab or something similar to pick me up from the entrance to the facility.
“They’ll do a lot with a few well-placed donations to the complex. Here’s to your freedom, Nina. Welcome back.”
He leaned in with a smile to deliver a customary kiss to my cheek, but I immediately held up a hand.
“No, don’t,” I said. “I reek of that horrid soap.”
Eric made a face and backed up. “Oh, yeah. That stuff makes your skin feel like chalk. I remember.”
I pressed my lips together. My cousin had his own holiday in another jail on the island while being detained for insider trading. A farce, all of it. But it left a scar just the same.
“I suppose now being jailbirds runs in the family,” I said wryly.
Eric snorted. “Talk about a rite of passage. Come on. Let’s get out of this dump.”
I followed him into the back of the car, which was manned by his driver.
“How did you know?” I asked as we took off.
My cousin shrugged good-naturedly. “Barney told me after your parole hearing.”
I frowned. That he had spoken to my attorney wasn’t so strange—after all, Eric was bankrolling my criminal defense. “But you came?”
Eric’s face remained calm, but beneath that cool facade lurked a ripple of something darker. “I remember what it’s like. No one should come out of here alone.” His eyes widened as something else occurred to him. “You weren’t expecting someone else, were you?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I wasn’t. Thank you.”
I didn’t tell him that as I had walked outside, temporarily blinded by the sun, a part of me had in fact wondered if another might show. Someone with black hair and a rakish grin. Someone with a taste for vintage suits and old-fashioned fedoras. Someone I hadn’t seen in months, since I’d turned myself in for the very crime that had earned my lovely stay here at Rikers.
Matthew Zola. My heart’s enemy. And yet somehow still my heart.