6

For the next three days, Roman and I circled each other like wary predators. We spoke only out of necessity. He seemed to be working longer hours than normal. I was trapped in this cabin, withering away from boredom.

My anger and resentment rolled through highs and lows with no apparent rhyme or reason. One minute I'd be grateful I had a husband like Roman, a warden with powerful influence, a man who found amusement in Capra's mentality and didn't give a damn about enforcing the restrictive rules.

And then out of the blue, fury would spike through me. What was I being grateful for? That my brain wasn't being rewired to rewrite the truth? That my personality wasn't being wiped so I wouldn't give a fig about anything, including the truth? That I was allowed to remain myself after doing nothing more than seeing the truth?

Then I'd find myself watching Roman and I'd remember how hard I'd started falling for him…and why. The warmth of his rare smile sinking into my bones. The tingle of something wicked, maybe even dangerous, when the gray in his eyes glinted silver. All those times he referred to my father indulging me, when in truth, Roman was the one who habitually indulged my troublesome ways.

He was darkly beautiful, arrogant and mysterious, powerful and indulgent, serious and careless, a strangely charming contradiction in my world and a pillar of strength.

And then I'd remember the lies, and the restrictions built on those lies, and it felt like the Eastern Coalition was just a sophisticated cage and we were the animals doing tricks for those in authority, those in the know, those who'd created the original lie and those who'd perpetuated it over the decades.

It wasn't all Roman's fault.

Maybe none of it was Roman's fault.

But he was part of the lie.

That evening, I used the last onion and the last parcel of lamb mince for dinner. The kitchen cabinets were almost as bare as the day I'd moved into the cabin. Roman wasn't exactly domesticated, but since I wasn't allowed out to do the weekly shop, he'd have to step up.

When we sat down to supper, I served him my grocery list along with the shepherd's pie.

His brow creased as he unfolded the note and read.

I smirked. "You do know where the grocery store is, right?"

He sighed, refolded the note and set it aside. "I'll go in the morning."

"Wonderful." We fell into our usual silence as we ate.

He glanced at me a few times, looked as if he had something to say, but each time he merely put a forkful into his mouth instead.

The sentiment was there, though, and I decided it may be time to end the stalemate. I'd mostly calmed down, to the point where I was pretty sure we could engage without drawing blood.

"Have you said anything to my parents?" I asked, drawing his gaze to me. "About what's happened, I mean? My mom must be wondering why I haven't been around to visit. And Jessie. I'm surprised she hasn't stormed the barrier yet."

I smiled at that. It was a joke. Obviously Jessie would never storm the barrier, not even to see why her best friend had suddenly ghosted her. There was a reason the security wall around Parklands was only six foot high and easy to scale. This was the Council Residential District and no one was stupid enough to risk getting caught trespassing by a patrolling guard.

Roman had finished eating. He pushed his empty plate aside and planted an elbow on the table. "I've spoken to your father. He's aware that you're not available for the moment."

Despite my rebellious attitude toward the establishment, the thought of my father's disappointment in my reckless behavior carried a painful bite. "Does he know why?"

"I didn't volunteer the details and he didn't ask."

He wouldn't. He'd handed me into Roman's care at our graduation ceremony. I was now my husband's responsibility, my husband's property. If my husband believed I needed to be unavailable for a couple of weeks, he didn't need a reason. He didn't need to explain himself. He didn't need permission.

And just like that, my blood started to heat up again. I took a deep drink on my glass of water, giving myself a moment to cool down. "What about Jessie? Have you said anything to her?"

"She came around yesterday morning," Roman said, his gaze narrowing on me. "The guard at the kiosk logged the entry and sent her away."

"What reason did the guard give?" Jessie wasn't my father. She would have asked.

"That you were under an order of reprimand."

Humiliation burned through me. "So the guard at the kiosk knows I'm being disciplined by my husband? You couldn't have made up some other excuse?"

"The Guard reports to the council, Georga. It's imperative they know exactly why you're not receiving visitors. Or would you rather they decide I wasn't fully committed to rehabilitating you at home?"

Of course not. That didn't make any of this any more palatable. "When were you planning on telling me that Jessie had tried to visit?"

"I wasn't," he said honestly. "You've been in such a crabby mood, I didn't think either of us needed additional aggravation. Do you?"

His calm voice, the intensity of his gaze as he watched me—looking for what?—lit the fire I'd been trying to dampen.

"Jeez, I wonder why I'm in such a crabby mood," I muttered sarcastically.

"Georga, I'm trying to do—"

"No!" My fork landed on my plate with a clang as I dropped it and stood, so abruptly, my chair rocked over. I caught it, my fingers gripping the back so tightly, my knuckles whitened. "I have just learned that my entire world is a lie and you decide to placate my crabby mood by keeping more secrets from me?"

Roman stood with me, his fingers pressed to the table. "Your whole world is not a lie. Certain information has been withheld, I agree, but that doesn't change anything."

"It changes everything," I hissed through gritted teeth. "The Outerlands isn't a dead, empty wasteland. There are people there, men and women and children. Children, Roman! Those men and women aren't citizens who were removed from society. They're conceiving children."

That was the impossibility of it all. The crumbling beneath my feet. The big lie that the Eastern Coalition was founded on.

Roman shoved a hand through his hair. "It isn't what you think."

"You have no idea what I think." I had no idea what I thought. The lie was too big for my thoughts to reach around. Too big for any kind of comprehension.

But I did know this. "Those women are chattel, cattle for breeding, that's what you said," I told him. "Children are being born out there."

He put a hand up, as if to calm my rising storm. "I promised I would explain everything, and I will."

I'd forced that promise out of him. I'd refused to leave Sector Five until he swore he'd tell me everything.

I stared at him, stared into his stone-cold eyes, and my heart pinched. Roman had touched me in a way no other man ever had. Not a physical touch, although I didn't—couldn't—discount that one kiss that was barely even a kiss, just a brush of his mouth over mine. The kiss was over almost before it began. The devastating affect still shadowed my pulse whenever I thought about it.

But whatever Roman was to me, an indulgent husband, a flutter of butterflies, a man who defied my doubts again and again—he may be all that, but he was still a stranger. He was part of the lie.

I glanced passed him to the room where he kept his secrets under lock and key. "I don't want your truths."

"What the hell does that mean?"

I looked at him and said sadly, "I don't want you to explain anything to me, because I wouldn't know if I could believe a word of it."

His features darkened. "I have never lied to you."

"You have kept truths from me, though," I said. "Maybe you think there's a difference, but I don't. You could answer all my questions without a single lie, and still it wouldn't necessarily be the truth."

"That is a harsh judgment."

Without another word, he left the table, left me standing there, staring at the locked door that kept his secrets.

I heard him move around, then I heard the water running in the bathroom, and I tried to imagine what the rest of my life—our lives—would look like.

I couldn't.

Not like this.

His windbreaker was hanging on the coat hook by the front entrance. A quick search yielded his key fob in an inner pocket.

Doubt riddled me as I used the small silver key to unlock the door to his study. If I did this, it could not be undone.

A small part of me wished I could wind back time, not hide inside that box on Roman's truck. A small part of me could so easily see that life, me and Roman sliding into a safe, steady marriage. I was attracted to him, and I strongly suspected he wasn't completely immune to me. The reason his betrayal had cut me to the core was because I'd started falling for him. I could see a time where we could have been happy—or perhaps content.

But I had hid inside that box and I couldn't un-see the Outerlanders. I couldn't un-know what I now knew.

I'd started down this path and I had to follow it through to the end, no matter where it led.

The stack of books on the bookshelf looked exactly as I'd last left them. Using the desk chair to help me reach the higher shelves, I slid out the thick, hardcover A4 notebook with the incredibly talented drawings. Roman's artist. Amelia? I didn't know. There was so much I didn't know about Roman—and never would.

I sat cross-legged on the floor, set the notepad down in front of me and slowly turned the pages. The lead drawings were stark, a dark window into a rotten, dying world and yet there was a beauty in the art, if not the subject.

I turned the page to the portrait of a younger Roman, a man with a half-smile that reached his eyes. A man not yet touched by the hardness that now masked his features. A pang of…something, hit me in the chest. Not jealousy. Not envy that what this artist had captured on the page was so elusive to me in real life.

I couldn't define the grip of pain in the region of my heart, but I felt it with every inch of my being.

The water in the bathroom turned off and I sucked in a long, slow breath to steady my nerves.

If I scrambled like a bat out of hell, there was still time to abort this mad mission.

Instead I took another calming breath and turned more pages until I reached the square hole cut into the bottom half of the notebook.

I removed the fold of papers and the photographs and spread them out on the floor, was just unfolding Miriam Edgar's admission document when I sensed Roman's presence.

Sure enough, my gaze flicked to the doorway and found him caught there, rigid still.

The shock didn't last more than a couple of seconds, then his expression iced.

"I offered for you, and you accepted. That makes you my wife." He took one step into the room. "That makes you my responsibility."

I swallowed with difficulty as I watched his next step, so measured, so restrained.

"That does not, however, invite you into every intimate aspect of my life," he said in a cold voice.

"I know, and I'm sorry." As he neared, I had to crane my neck back to hold his gaze. "I shouldn't have breached your privacy, but I was curious, and I did."

I picked up the photos of Councilman Thorpe, one with the olive-skinned beauty wrapped in his arms, another with a stunning brunette. "You took these. Or appropriated them from someone, from somewhere… This is incriminating evidence of adultery against Councilman Thorpe. And this…"

I placed a hand over the document. "The admission form of Miriam Edgar to the Center for Reform and Rehabilitation. Julian signed it. From what I've gathered, he's the one who admitted her. She was incarcerated for six weeks, at his request, and it was never made public. That wouldn't look good for the councilman, would it? Incriminating evidence."

Roman hunched down before me and took the photos from me. Then the admission document. Then he collected the A4 notepad and straightened, his movements precise and careful, almost mechanical. "What, exactly, are you accusing me of?"

"I'm not accusing you of anything." I pushed to my feet and folded my arms. "I broke into your study a while ago. I crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed and I really am sorry. That's why I'm telling you what I did, and showing you what I found."

"And what is it you think you've found?"

I had my suspicions. Roman was ambitious and once he was promoted to senior Warden, he needed the council's vote if he wanted to be elected to High Warden. He had enough material here to blackmail two councilmen. And he had a couple of years before the next election to gather evidence against the other council members. That was one way to ensure their vote.

I said nothing of this to Roman. "I don't know and I don't care."

"You've gone to a lot of trouble for someone who doesn't care."

"I care about the truth, Roman, and when I said I couldn't believe you to give me the full truth earlier, I wasn't judging you. I was just stating facts."

His brows arrowed. "I never realized your opinion of me was so low."

"On the contrary," I corrected. "You are steadfast, honorable and duty-bound. But that's in your world, and in your world, I'm the sin. I'm the thorn that pricks your loyalty. Our lives are entrenched in secrets. You have yours and I have mine. I would never have learned about the Outerlanders unless I'd acted on my own accord and seen it for myself. Can you honestly say I'm wrong?"

He didn't refute my statement.

As hard and cold as the look in his eyes was, it somehow became harder, colder, the intensity deepening as he stared at me. After what felt like an eternity, his gaze eventually cut away from me.

I took that as my cue to leave.

I had no idea what came next, what he'd do with whatever had just happened here, but at least there was now one less secret—one less lie—between us. I did not regret that.