“I’m listening.”
“Fedor Petrov squeezed the trigger of his .45 millimeter point-blank to his head last night.”
Lori’s stomach protested. She swallowed. Hard. “God, no.”
“I wish I was joking.”
“Where is Trina?” Petrov was their payer, and Trina was the temporary wife halfway through her two-year contract.
“Secluded in Petrov’s estate in the Hamptons.”
“This is bad.” Lori closed her eyes and envisioned Trina the last time she saw her. She was packing up her apartment after her brief fake honeymoon and moving back east. “How did you find out?”
“Trina called, hysterical.”
“My God, is she okay?”
“No. I’m not sure it’s possible for her to be okay right now. My plane leaves in two hours.”
“I’ll be ready.”
Chapter Two
By the time Lori and Sam landed in the Hamptons, every newscaster, rag, and wannabe paparazzo had beat them there. Cameras blinded them as the car passed through the gate of the Petrov estate.
Thankfully, the media had no idea who Lori was, so she rushed in first. But when Sam stepped out of the car, cameras renewed their frenzy. Sam had already established herself as Trina’s friend, so her presence wouldn’t be questioned.
Lori found Trina sitting on a chaise in her bedroom with an empty bottle of wine at her side.
The dark skinned, ebony haired woman looked up when Lori entered the room.
She’d been crying. A broken shell of the woman Lori had last seen just six months before.
One look in Lori’s direction and Trina’s tears flowed again.
Lori folded Trina into her arms and listened as she sobbed.
Through hiccups, Trina spoke.
“I didn’t sign”—Lori patted Trina’s back—“up for this.”
“It’s okay . . . you’re going to be okay.”
Trina buried her face in Lori’s shoulder.
Lori looked up at the sound of Sam’s footsteps. She and Sam kept eye contact for several seconds of silence.
“I should have seen this coming,” Trina managed once Sam sat on the other side of her.
“Did Fedor say anything to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Then how could you have known this would happen?” Lori asked.
“I’m his wife.”
Lori glanced to the closed bedroom door. “In name only.”
“People are going to blame me for not seeing this coming.”
Lori couldn’t argue with that. “It’s not your fault.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’d been quiet this last month. Almost never away from the hospital. I thought the changes in him were about his mom. I asked him how he was doing, but he didn’t offer more than that he was holding up. He obviously wasn’t holding up,” she cried.
Fedor was a devoted son, his mother was his world. Suffering from cancer, Alice Petrov had been on her deathbed for the last few months, and Fedor knew it would bring her peace to see him married.
Cancer was stealing her lungs, and a stroke had left her in a wheelchair. In the past week, she’d had a second stroke and no longer recognized anyone. The doctors didn’t give her long to live.
Sam’s theory behind Fedor’s suicide was that he couldn’t cope with his mother’s impending death. And since she no longer recognized him, he wasn’t hurting her by exiting this life.
“Did you find a note, a suicide letter?” Lori asked.
“No, nothing.”
“We’re going to get you through this,” Sam told her.
Trina’s tears were drying up. “Two years and I’d have the means to be able to start my own company. That’s all I wanted.” Her eyes welled again. “I didn’t think anyone was going to die.”
While there were clauses in the prenuptial contracts for the unlikely event of one of the spouses dying during their marriage, in the history of Alliance, they’d never had to revisit the clause.
A knock on the door caught their attention. “Mrs. Petrov?”
Lori recognized one of the housekeepers. “Yes?”
“Your parents are here.”
Trina blinked a few times before she spoke. “Give me a minute.”
The housekeeper nodded and closed the door behind her.
“Do they know the truth about your marriage?” Sam asked.
Trina shook her head. “No. I’ve told no one.”