Chapter 15 - Maxim

Pearl sits in bed next to me the morning after our wedding, wearing nothing but one of my old shirts. The collar hangs loose around her slender shoulders. The hem falls to the middle of her thigh. Her hair is a mess, looking like my hands have run through it a million times.

I don't think she's ever looked more beautiful.

She scrolls on her phone, reading something. Not once does her gaze dart over to me as I shift over and put my hand on her thigh.

"What are you reading?" I ask, my voice scratchy with sleep. I clear my throat and sit up beside her, leaning back against the headboard.

"A medical journal that was just published last night has to do with the medications to looking at controlling diabetes with and the technology they're using to measure blood sugar."

Not for the first time, I'm struck with how brilliant she is. I still don't know what a woman like her was doing working as an escort.

There are still so many pieces of the puzzle missing, and she's as secretive as ever.

I study her for a moment, looking at the sloping line of her neck and the small button nose. "Your name isn't Wilson."

She fumbles the phone dropping it into her lap, her eyes narrowing, and she looks at me. "It's not."

"When were you planning on telling me?"

"We're married now. I didn't think I need to tell you my last name ever again. It's Orlov now, isn't it?"

"Trying to be a smartass isn't going to get you out of lying to me. What's your real last name?"

"What does it matter? The man whose name I carried when I was younger is dead. And so is his last name."

The pain in her eyes sends a sharp piercing ache to my heart. I know she's avoiding my questions about her past, trying to slither her way out like a snake. But I'm as stubborn as they come, and I won't let her get away, not this time.

"You went to live in a group home at fifteen? Why?" I cross my arms, fixating her eyes, making sure she can't look away, watching for any sign that she's lying to me.

The background check I did on her said, she had arrived without any prior documents out of the blue. I don't know how true that is. If she has connections to hide that kind of information, it would be easy to fabricate the reports. Based on the fact that she spent the last several years working as an escort, I'm sure that she has altered some crucial details.

Pearl sighs, locking her phone and setting it on the nightstand beside her. "I told you that my parents are dead. Well, Mom left, and my dad died. After he passed, the social worker tried to contact my mother, but nobody could find her. There was nowhere else to go. They put me in the group home. Gave me the last name Wilson."

"So, it's not the only one you've known. Stop lying to me. Why don't you try telling me the truth for once?" I ask, tone sharp and cutting as I get out of bed, tossing the sheets back and picking my boxers off the floor.

Where other people would have been afraid, Pearl juts out her jaw, glaring at me. "I lost the only family I had ever known. I'm not the person I was before my dad died. Wilson is the only name I've known for the last seven years. It's the only one I continue to know."

"And where were you before the orphanage? Where were you and your father? Who is your father?"

"Why does a dead man matter to you?"

"Don't you think that your husband should know?" I pace back and forth across the floor like a caged animal. "I ran a background check on you. There's a whole lot of information missing in your stories."

Pearl draws her knees to her chest, her arms wrapping around her shins, her eyes glistening with tears. They don't fall though. Instead, she looks at me with an icy cold glare.

She is angry, angry that I'm pressing on an old wound, holding my thumb to it, and hoping she bleeds more. If that's what it takes to get her to finally tell me the fucking truth, that's what I'm going to do. She may be my wife, but I'm not interested in a marriage filled with lies and secrets.

Ivan is the one who wanted me to get married. I had no intention of doing it the night I met Pearl at the charity event. And now I'm looking at my entire life with her. One where the woman in front of me is like a fucking book. I flip one page, think I know the plot, and then another red herring is thrown in.

"If this is one of your weird games to keep me intrigued," I say. I stop pacing, standing at the foot of the bed, leaning over with my hands on the board at the bottom. I raise my voice, "then you better stop fucking playing it. I'm tired of your bullshit. I want to know the truth. Your fucking truth!"

She gets out of bed, padding across the floor to the bathroom, and slams the door shut behind her.

I spin, crossing the room fast, pounding my fist into the door. "You open this door right now, I'm so sick of your fucking attitude toward me."

"You want to play private investigator? You want to run background checks on me like some common criminal? You can fucking stay on the other side of the door. Keep poking around Mr. Sherlock and see what you can find out. I'm done talking."

Another man would punish his wife for speaking to him that way. I slam on the door again. It rattles in its frame, but it doesn't budge.

Pearl scoffs on the other side of the door. "Is that supposed to intimidate me? You won't do anything to me. You need me. You need a marriage and children, and we both know that you don't find any other woman as interesting as me. If you did, I wouldn't have been your first choice for a wife."

I hate that she has me figured out. It may not be a large part, but she's discovered the core of what's kept me chasing after her for so long.

I push away from the door, spinning around, stalking out of the room, down the hall into my study. Rummaging through the drawers, I look for the file I have on her before throwing it on the desk, papers scattering to the side.

She hasn't even told me who the person is she's looking for. She didn't tell me that she made up an entirely new identity.

Right now, I'm having a tough time believing that anything she's ever told me is true. If I didn't have the file to prove the fact that she's been in a group home and that her father is dead—whoever her father is—I wouldn't believe it.

I open the liquor cabinet at the far corner of my office, pull out the bottle of whiskey, and sit down in the suede chair, opening the top of the decanter, swigging some before sending the bottle to the side and staring at her file.

There has to be something I'm missing. And if there is, I'm going to find it.