He eyed her compassionately. “You’re punishing me. For the other day.”

She denied this with an impatient toss of her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. I was always going to end things with you before my wedding.” She could tell by Roux’s glazed obstinance that she wasn’t getting through to him. Never does a woman lie in a more cunning way than when she tells the truth to a man who doesn’t believe her. Frustrated, she turned on the tap and began filling the vase with water.

“You tell Gideon you’re leaving him or I’ll tell him myself.”

She turned off the tap. “What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

For a moment, she didn’t take him seriously. And then, she did. An incredulous fury rose in her, the fury of a master in the face of mutiny. She could tolerate violence but she couldn’t tolerate violation.

“If you do that,” she said, “it’s over between us. I’ll hate you. I’ll hate you.”

“Ah,” said Roux, “but I thought it was already over between us.” Her anger had reanimated him. Given him the impression he had the upper hand.

“Let me tell you how this is going to go,” he said. “You’ll get married. I’ll go away like a dog with my tail between my legs. Once you get bored playing house, you’ll call me. It’s the same shit over and over. Stop deluding yourself about your fake marriage.”

Ivy took two steps forward, raised her arm, and let the vase fall from her hand.

“What the—”

Glass shards splattered across the kitchen floor. Roux, barefoot, leapt back, his ears glowing red like two coals on either side of his pale head. “Are you crazy?”

She didn’t respond. There came the sound of ice cubes tumbling in the freezer. “Going to slap me again?” she asked.

Roux shook his head over and over, cursing under his breath. The thought floated through Ivy’s head that she might stop by Gideon’s office later to bring him takeout from his favorite Greek place. He’d probably be working all night again. They had a big meeting coming up in Costa Rica with some important minister. Roux was on one knee, picking up broken glass with fistfuls of napkins. Broken glass on a kitchen floor—that was Roux’s world. Meaningful work, efficient tasks, decisions based on logic and clear-cut goals—that was Gideon’s world, the place he carried with him wherever he went, a place immune to the sordid, the trivial, the violent, the shameful, the poor. And Roux was trying to take it away from her.

He was still ranting, all threats no doubt, as if she needed some tough love to come to her senses. Like most men, he’d liked her passion when he was the cause of it, but her own passion, passion that had nothing to do with him, was dismissed as foolishness. Nothing she would say now could convince him to take her seriously. He couldn’t afford to.

Ivy remembered something. “If you ruin my marriage,” she interrupted, “I’m going to ruin your life. I know the Morettis are part of the mob. I’ll go to the police, the Feds.”

He actually started to smile. “The mob? Ivy, you don’t know shit about what I do.”

“All money is traceable, virtual or real.” It was something Sylvia had said during the launch party, when she and Jeremy were still discussing how the mob operated.

Roux’s smile froze.

Ivy’s instincts zeroed in on the bullseye. “I’ll go on record against you. I know about the house in Evansville. The cement you poured over your basement. The casinos, those converted warehouses.” She tossed out all the jargon she’d ever heard: testify, witness, mob, racketeering, embezzlement, gambling… She watched his body straighten, the arms uncross, the fingers curl in the air as if grasping at an invisible handle. The mouth could lie but the body never lied.

Roux leaned in. “Have you ever seen what a gun looks like up close?” He saw her slap coming and grabbed her wrist. Their eyes locked.

“You disgust me,” she said. “You’re an animal. You’re worse than an animal. You’re a—a criminal.”

“I’m a gambler,” he said curtly, turning his back to her and walking to the sofa. She unwillingly followed him. He stared out the balcony for a long time. She was afraid to break the silence lest he was in the midst of some epiphany concerning the truth of her words.

“I’ll make you a wager,” he said finally. “Tell Gideon about our affair. If he still marries you—I’ll give you half my net worth.”

Ivy couldn’t contain her guffaw. She should have seen this coming. With Roux, it always came down to the price tag.

He gestured toward the bedroom. “You think I haven’t noticed you’ve been stealing from me? Who else would accept you, Ivy, if they knew the real you? You fumble around your life like a deaf-mute person. You can’t pick a career, you can’t pick a man. You have no idea what you want.”

“Do you hear yourself?” she exploded. “The real me? You—don’t—know—me. We’ve literally just met again after a decade.”

“People never change.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Roux strode to the door and pulled it open. “This is becoming tedious.”

Her face contorted. Control was a zero-sum game between them: one had to suck it from the other.

“Two weeks,” he said, propping the door open with his foot. “If I find out you still haven’t told precious Gideon, I’ll have a talk with him. My offer still stands. If you tell him—”

“Roux—”

“If you tell him and he forgives you, then I was wrong about everything. I’ll gladly pay up. And if he doesn’t take you back, well, I guess my money won’t seem so filthy after all.”

“You’re so—”

“Go.”

“Fuck you.”

“Go.”

She reached down, pulled off one shoe, and flung it with all her might at his head. The heel struck the wall near his left shoulder, leaving a black smudge the size of a quarter.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “You’re more honest when you’re angry.”

She flew at him but he was ready. He practically tossed her into the hallway, barring her way back inside with his steely arms. Dignity abandoned, Ivy called him all manner of names, insulted his mother, his lowly birth, called him corrupt, berated his corrupt mind, his disgusting habits, his cowardly nature, his lack of integrity. At her last insult, Roux pulled out his wallet and showered her with a fistful of crumpled bills. “There’s your integrity,” he said, and slammed the door.

* * *

SEX WAS A kind of sickness, Ivy realized, and that sickness began and ended with Roux. Maybe there was a kind of logic to Tom’s father’s fanaticism with God, worshipping an honest and righteous deity who would never betray you. She wondered if such devotion stemmed from willpower or from something else, a deeper secret to life she had never known. All her life she had had secrets. They had held her up like stilts on quicksand, without which she would have sank long ago, just another one of Sylvia’s sheep waiting to be led to slaughter. She felt she had to take control of her life. But how? I am the one controlling my life, am I not? she asked herself.