So Wrong It's Right

by Julie Johnson

  “Let me get this out, okay?” I swallow to clear the lump in my throat. “I was an insecure kid who grew into an even more insecure woman. I got married too young, to the first man who ever told me I was beautiful, because he checked all the right boxes of what I thought I was supposed to find in a husband. Good job, good provider, good head on his shoulders. He built me a home and gave me the support I needed to finally feel secure in my own skin. And, after a childhood spent as the chubby girl with mousy brown hair and highly critical parents… it was amazing to have someone who finally loved me for exactly who I was.” I pause and suck in a steadying breath. “But… a few years passed. I got older. I started to grow into a real person. A real woman, not the naive girl he married, with new interests and new friends and new aspirations. New confidence in myself. And… Paul didn’t like that so much. He didn’t like me so much. And he showed me. With his words. With his fists, too, when things got really bad.”

  Conor makes a low sound of anger.

  “You see, he wanted me to stay in that little box marked wife. To keep cutting myself down, inch by inch, until I fit the role he’d carved out for me.” My eyes have started watering. It’s a struggle to hold the tears at bay, so I tilt my head toward the ceiling. “And for a while, I tried. I let him keep me small. I let him keep me timid. I allowed him to take away my control, my autonomy, my dreams, telling myself it was for the sake of saving my marriage. But eventually… I couldn’t do it anymore.” My voice breaks. “Eventually, I realized I shouldn’t have to shrink to fit a relationship I’ve outgrown. A man I’ve outgrown. I shouldn’t have to make myself smaller just so he doesn’t feel insignificant when he’s standing beside me.”

  A rogue tear escapes down my cheek. Before I can reach up to brush it away, Conor’s hand is there — cupping my face, warm and strong, his thumb stroking so gently it makes my breath catch. He doesn’t pull away, even when the tear is gone.

  I hold his eyes and force myself to tell him the rest.

  “These past few months… and especially these past few days… I don’t feel small. I don’t feel powerless. I don’t feel like I have to diminish parts of myself to make anyone else comfortable. For the first time in my life… I feel like me.”

  He pulls in a sharp breath. “Shelby…”

  “You saw me crying when they led Paul away. Again when I learned the Evanoffs had taken him. I know you think that means I was upset, or heartbroken, or grieving the loss of a man I still love… but the truth is, I was relieved. Relieved that, without Paul in my life anymore, I can finally move on. Can finally be free.” I crack a small smile, through my tears. “Free to set my own course. Free to be the person I’d like to be. And, maybe someday… free to be with someone else. Someone who understands me. Someone who actually does love me for exactly the person I am.”

  The air goes still as I trail off. There’s a poignant beat of hesitation while I wait for his reaction. While I wait to see if letting him get a glimpse behind my walls is enough to send him running for the hills, or bring him back into the circle of my arms.

  “Shelby,” he says simply.

  And then he’s kissing me. Kissing me so fiercely, it makes me want to cry and scream and sing. Kissing me like I’m the air he needs to live, a vital ingredient for his means of survival.

  “I’m sorry,” he breathes against my lips when he finally pulls away. “I’m sorry for what I said, for jumping to conclusions… for all of it.”

  I remember the first time I saw him, thinking he was a man who didn’t know how to apologize. That he’d never in a million years take responsibility for his actions, even when he made a mistake.

  I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.

  “You know…” I bump my nose against his. “I believe you promised me that if we fought today, there would be hot makeup sex afterward. A package deal, if you will.”

  His eyes gleam. “I think that can be arranged…”

  Chapter Thirteen

  BAD EGG

  I can’t sleep — my brain is far too crowded with thoughts to power down for the night, despite the fact that Conor is snoring softly beside me. His face is the picture of exhaustion. There are deep circles beneath his eyes and a tension that never fully leaves him, even in sleep.

  Not wanting to disturb him with my restless tossing and turning, I slowly untangle my naked limbs from his and slip out of bed. I grab his shirt off the floor and tug it over my head, smiling as his scent washes over me. Breathing it in like a drug. I smile even wider as I remember the moment I ripped it off his body earlier, when we stumbled into the bedroom after dinner.

  He made for a delicious dessert course…

  I walk out of the bedroom and shut the door behind me with a soft click, grinning at the thought. Passing through the dark living room, I make my way to the kitchen and flick on a light. My eyes widen when I see the state of it.

  When I suggested cooking dinner together earlier, I figured it would be a fun way to pass the time while waiting for an update on the Petrov situation. I did not foresee our foray into homemade pasta-making would descend into a full-on food fight, complete with spattered egg yolk grenades and hurled handfuls of flour — most of which has now congealed into a sticky, lumpy mess that coats the floor, the countertops, the walls. Even some of the ceiling.

  What a mess.

  It’s going to take a small eternity to clean. Still… it was worth it. I laughed more today with Conor than I did in a decade with Paul. And after our fight this afternoon, it was refreshingly normal to simply hang out. Like a real, actual couple, rather than two people thrown together in a high-stakes game of Russian roulette, running for our lives. It was almost as if the gods smiled upon us, as though someone up there decided to grant us a one-day-furlough from the madness of our situation.

  Thank you, I toss vaguely upward into the great unknown, not even sure who I’m speaking to. For giving us today. And… for giving me him.

  Shaking my head at my uncharacteristic show of faith, I grab a roll of paper towels and a bottle of bleach spray, then set to work scrubbing down the disaster zone that used to be a kitchen.

  By the time the kitchen is clean, it’s well past midnight and my arms are aching from hours of swabbing the decks. I collapse onto the couch in the living room with a deep sigh. I don’t want to risk waking Conor by turning on the TV, but I know any attempts at sleep will be useless.

  I’m still too wired.

  My curious eyes slide to the files on the table. Before I can talk myself out of it, I pull one into my lap and start to read. And thus begins my proper education on the life of Alexei Petrov.

  I read about his childhood in an orphanage outside Moscow, where he and his sister Ekaterina were placed together after the death of their parents. I read about his wild teenage years on the street, how he fought his way up from a skinny runt of the litter to the top dog of the most notorious gang in the city. I read about his first forays into the criminal underworld, running drugs and weapons over the Ukrainian border for an aspiring mafia boss he would one day surpass in both power and ruthlessness.

  From what I can tell, his rise through the underbelly of the Bratva was damn near meteoric. By the time he was thirty, Alexei Petrov — a street rat from the gutters of Moscow — was the most feared man in all of the city. Maybe all of Russia. His lack of anything resembling a conscience was well-documented and highly effective when it came to eliminating his existing enemies and preventing new ones from cropping up. Few challenged him for control of his ever-expanding crime syndicate… and those who did were simply never heard from again.

  Honestly, it has all the makings of a classic coming-of-age novel. An origin story for one of the world’s biggest super-villains.

  Keep your pretentious Russian literature, your Tolstoy and your Dostoevsky… the story of Alexei Petrov is far more interesting than anything I’ve read in ages.

  My eyes devour file after file, stunned by the level of detail. It’s excruciatingly t
horough. Decades worth of research. A million facts and figures and anecdotes, all at my fingertips.

  It’s the ultimate binge-read.

  And I’m undeniably hooked.

  I learn about Alexei’s propensity for expensive prostitutes and fancy hotels. I even learn about his favorite food — borscht, how very proletariat of you, Alexei — and his favorite place to vacation — a villa on the Baltic Sea — and the name of his first two wives — both, coincidentally, called Natasha.

  By the time I reach for one of the last folders in the stack, my eyes are drooping closed. Deciding to call it quits and head to bed before I go blind, I toss the folder back onto the table. Thanks to my halfhearted aim, it skids off the top of the pile and hits the floor instead, exploding in a flurry of papers and photographs.

  Damn it to hell.

  Heaving a heavy sigh, I bend to pick up the scattered contents and start shoving them haphazardly back into the folder, vowing to reorganize them first thing in the morning using more care. I’m rising to my feet when I see one last sheaf has fluttered to a stop beneath the legs of the coffee table.

  Dropping back to my hands and knees, my fingers close around a glossy black and white photograph. I glance fleetingly at the picture as I prepare to shove it away, expecting yet another image of a suspected mob-hit, some bloody crime scene or gruesome murder.

  Instead, I see something highly unexpected.

  Something that sends my pulse spiking like a seismograph in the middle of an earthquake. Something that makes absolutely no sense at all… and yet, somehow, provides the exact solution I’ve been searching for all this time. The answer to the question we’ve been asking ourselves over and over and over for the past week, like a riddle with no remedy.

  Here is the remedy.

  Right here in my hands.

  I stare at the black and white image more intently.

  Not a crime scene.

  Not a mug shot.

  An egg.

  A golden egg, to be precise, inlaid with dozens of sparkling sapphires and brilliant rubies and glittering emeralds. I know this to be the case, even though the photograph shows no color at all. Because I’ve seen this egg before. I’ve held it in my hands, turned it over in my fingers with disdain before tossing it away in the bottom of a jewelry box, thinking it no more than some cheap bauble made from synthesized crystal that Paul picked up on a whim. Just one more gift in the long series he sent, trying to win me back.

  But this…

  This is no cheap bauble.

  No useless trinket.

  No inexpensive paperweight.

  This is…

  “A Fabergé egg,” I marvel aloud, feeling like my head might explode. I wait one, two, three long seconds before I set the photograph carefully on the table, suck in a deep breath, and bellow at the top of my lungs.

  “CONOR!”

  “A Fabergé Egg,” I say, pacing like a madwoman across the living room. “He stole a Fabergé Egg.”

  “I know, Hunt. You’ve said it six times, now.”

  “Not just any Fabergé Egg, either. A freaking Tsar Imperial Fabergé Egg.”

  Conor sighs.

  “And not just any Tsar Imperial Fabergé Egg. One of the long lost Tsar Imperial Fabergé Eggs.”

  “Hunt—”

  I shake my head. “I should’ve figured it out the other night, when he started speaking French. Paul doesn’t speak French! And yet, I didn’t blink a freaking eye when he kept saying ‘nécessaire’ like a damn sommelier.” I pause. “Of course, at the time, I thought he was telling me it was necessary to run. I didn’t know Nécessaire was the name of the damn Egg. An Egg no one has seen, by the way, since 1952. At least, according to the brief Google search I conducted ten minutes ago while you were on the phone with Evelson.”

  “Not sure you’re in the right state of mind to be Googling anything at the moment, Hunt.”

  I ignore him.“Surprise, surprise! Nécessaire is not lost to history after all. Unless by history you’re referring to three months ago, when I tossed it in the bottom of a jewelry box like it was a freaking pair of fifteen dollar earrings.”

  “Hunt—”

  “Did you hear me? I threw it. I actually threw a Fabergé Egg. A freaking relic.”

  “Shelby. Breathe.”

  I whirl to look at him. “Breathe?! How can I breathe, Conor? My no-good, dirty-rotten, lying, cheating ex decided it would be a good idea to steal a priceless object from his uncle, then sent it to me — presumably to keep it hidden for him until he could find a way to get the Evanoffs off his tail and come collect it again. Like I’m his own personal, illegal artifact storage facility. A drug mule, if you will. Except I’m more of an egg mule. Which isn’t a thing. At least, so far as I know.” My head tilts. “There could be a black market for eggs, I suppose. Free-range, organic, cage-free, Cadbury, Easter, over-easy…”

  “Hunt.” His lips are twitching. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or if you’ve had a stroke.”

  “Me neither, to be honest.” My voice breaks. “I just didn’t see this happening.”

  “Your newfound obsession with egg varieties?”

  “No. Unknowingly possessing a priceless object that’s made me the target for several Russian hitmen. And, for the record, when I say priceless I don’t mean it in the, ‘Aw, shucks, look at that family having a picnic, what a priceless moment’ sort of way. I mean it in the very literal, ‘you cannot put a price tag on this item because it is irreplaceable’ sense of the word.” I pause. “Though, if you could put a price tag on it, it would probably say something in the $20 million range.”

  “You’re freaking out.”

  “Of course I’m freaking out! Why aren’t you freaking out?”

  “Not really my style.”

  “Well, it’s not usually mine either, but I’m making an exception in this particular case.” I blow out a breath. “Did you know that there were only fifty-two of these Eggs ever made? And that this one was made for the Tsar of Russia, as a gift for his wife?”

  “Google tell you that factoid?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s it. I’m restricting your internet privileges.”

  “Too late! The damage is done. I already memorized the Wikipedia page. I am a freaking fount of knowledge. Ask me anything.”

  He stares at me blankly.

  “Go on! Ask me something.”

  “You want some whiskey?”

  “I meant something about the Eggs.”

  He shrugs. “You want the whiskey or not?”

  “No! Yes. Maybe.”

  “Way to be decisive, babe.” Conor smirks and walks into the kitchen. When he comes back, he’s got two low-ball glasses of whiskey in his hands. He passes one to me in silence and raises his other in solidarity. “Cheers.”

  “What on earth do we have to celebrate, in this moment?”

  He takes a small sip. “You.”

  “Me?”

  He nods. “You’ve been so busy spiraling into panic, I don’t think you realize what this all means.”

  “Um… that we’re utterly fucked? Because if you think Alexei Petrov is going to let a $20 million, one-of-a-kind antiquity slip through his fingers…”

  Conor shakes his head. “Before, we were walking around blindfolded, hoping to stumble onto whatever your husband stole by dumb luck alone. That’s like fighting with your hands tied behind your back. Thanks to you, we know exactly what Petrov is after. We know why he’s so determined to get it back. And we even know where it is — presuming you didn’t throw that jewelry box in the trash.” He actually cracks a smile. “Don’t you see? Now, we have a chance at closing this case on our terms. We’ll get the Egg from wherever you stashed it, use it as bait to draw Petrov and his boys out, and finally catch the bastards.” He lifts his glass again. “And that, Hunt, is definitely worth celebrating.”

  I eye him nervously. “Yeah… you might not want to celebrate our victory too prematurely.”

>   His brows go up. “Why’s that?”

  “When I said I had the Egg, I meant it. I had the Egg. Past tense.”

  His silence is profound. I hear him take a sharp intake of breath, steeling himself. “Hunt, please tell me you didn’t throw our only shot at stopping Alexei Petrov in the garbage.”

  I wince. “Not exactly.”

  “Then where is it?”

  I keep my eyes closed as I tell him the location of the Egg. And, as I listen to him curse like a sailor on leave, I raise my glass to my lips and drain my whiskey in one long sip.

  I’m going to need a little liquid courage for what comes next.

  “You’re not coming with me.”

  “Like hell I’m not,” I growl. “You can’t expect me to sit around here waiting. Not when I can finally be of use for something.”

  “It’s too dangerous.”

  “No more dangerous than me sitting around here like a sitting duck while you rush headlong into the fight. Again.”

  “I rush headlong into danger because I’ve spent years training for it.” He shakes his head. “I can’t protect you out there.”

  “I’m not asking you to protect me! I’m asking you to let me help you.”

  “Shelby—”

  “You don’t even know what the Egg looks like, besides what you’ve seen in some faded black and white photograph. And more importantly, you’re not the one who’s responsible for giving the damn thing away as a re-gift because she didn’t have time to go shopping before her boss’ 50th birthday party!” My cheeks heat with mortification. I’m still struggling to wrap my mind around the fact that I accidentally gave Aimee — the aura-reading, earth-loving woman who owns the small studio where I occasionally teach yoga — a priceless Fabergé Egg… under the pretense that it was a healing crystal to help ‘channel her spiritual energy flow’, no less.

  Anyone else in the world probably would’ve realized their good fortune and sold the Egg to the highest bidder. It’s pure dumb luck that Aimee happens to be the least materialistic person on the planet. I doubt she has any idea of the Egg’s value. And, if she did, there’s a solid chance she might not even care.