CAROL MARINELLI - Brazilian Escape - Playing the Dutiful Wife / Dante - Claiming His Secret Love-Child

‘You’re safe,’ her mum said.

‘I am.’

‘We need to talk …’

‘We will.’

When she hung up the phone she looked at him. ‘You could have told me the truth that day.’ She was angry that he hadn’t.

‘What? Walk back in and tell you that I am being investigated for fraud and embezzlement? That the man you met twenty-four hours ago is facing thirty-five years to life in jail …?’ He looked at her. ‘What would you have said?’

‘I might have suggested you didn’t go back till you found out the case against you …’ she flared. ‘I might not be the best one in the world, but I am a lawyer …’

‘My own lawyer was telling me to get straight back.’ He kicked himself then, because had he confided in her—had he been able to tell her—he might not have raced back, might have found out some more information before taking a first-class flight to hell.

‘I had to return to face it,’ Niklas said. ‘Would you have stood by me?’

‘You never gave me that chance.’

‘Because that was what I was most afraid of.’ He was kneeling beside her and she could hear him breathing. ‘You never asked if I did it.’

‘No.’

‘Even when you visited … even when you rang …’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Did you believe I was innocent?’

‘I hoped that you were.’

‘There was too much love for common sense,’ Niklas said.

She sat there for ages and was glad when he left her alone and headed to the bathroom. She heard his sigh of relief as he slipped into the bath water and thought about his words—because while she had hoped he was innocent, it hadn’t changed her feelings towards him and that scared her. After a little while she wandered in to him.

‘I am so sorry.’ He looked at her. ‘For everything I have put you and your family through.’

‘It wasn’t your fault.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But still, I have scared you, and nearly cost you your life …’

And then he looked at her and asked the question the police had asked her earlier.

‘Did he do anything to you?’

‘Apart from hold a gun at me …’ she knew what he meant ‘… no.’

She watched him close his eyes in relief and knew then that he had cried.

‘He wanted to walk,’ Meg said. ‘That was when I started to worry.’ She gave him a pale smile. ‘Not quite the Niklas I know.’ And then there wasn’t a pale smile. ‘I’m still cross about what you said on the phone.’

‘I wanted you to leave,’ he said. ‘I wanted you to be so angry, so upset, that you got on the next plane you could …’

‘I nearly did.’

‘Do you want me tell you what happened?’

She wanted to hear it now, and he held his hand out to her. Yes, he assumed she would join him—and for now he was right. Her clothes and her body were filthy, and she wanted to feel clean again, to hear what had happened, and she wanted to hear it as she lay beside him. So she took off her clothes and slid into the water, with her back to his chest, resting on him, and he held her close and washed all her bruises and slowly he told her.

‘There was bedlam in court,’ Niklas said as he washed her gently. ‘The place erupted when I asked for a new lawyer, and then Rosa presented the evidence implicating Miguel. He was arrested immediately, but of course I had to go back to prison … I knew they were never going to release me just like that. I told them that you were in danger, but they would not listen, and then, as they were taking me back, he made contact with Carla, asking for money. He said that he had my wife and texted a photo. The police only believed me then that I had a twin.’

She frowned and looked up to him. ‘You knew you had a twin?’

‘I guessed that I did last night, after I spoke to you.’

‘How?’

‘It made sense. I knew I was innocent.’

‘But how did you work it out?’

‘I swear in several languages …’ She smiled, because that was what he did. ‘I was angry after speaking to you—worried that you would not leave—and I swore in Portuguese. The guard warned me to be careful, he called me Dos Santos and I heard the derision in his voice, in his tone. I thought he was referring to me having no one, and I swore again, and then he said something about you. I went to curse again, but in Spanish …’

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