My phone beeps with the address. I inhale and stare at it, considering a moment before I text back, I’m sending a cab to get you.

I wait for a reply. And wait.

I text again. Amber, please conirm you’re okay.

No reply.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

I dial her number. It rings and rings with no answer.

I hold the phone to my forehead. Chris is going to be furious if I do this. And it really feels like a setup. Guilt twists inside me for thinking that, and for just sitting here if she really needs help. I have to do what’s right, even if she isn’t.

I go to my closet and put on a black knee-length skirt, a long-sleeved lilac lace top, and my knee-high boots with four-inch heels. I know I’m going to a club, and if it’s a place where Chris has intimate connections, I’m not showing up in ratty jeans and a T-shirt.

I rush to the sink and grab my purse, planning to ix my face in the back of the taxi, the taxi that I should have already called for. I can’t drive; I don’t know where I’m going. I’ll pay the taxi driver to wait while I go inside and get Amber.

I call a taxi, then I try Amber again. No answer. When I think of the marks on her arms, I can’t help but worry she’s being punished.

I head for the door, but pause. I don’t like to do stupid things, and I fear that’s exactly what I’m about to do. I have to add a little smart to the mix.

I go to the nightstand where I’ve left the journal I started, and scribble a note. Gone to pick up Amber at some club. She was crying and scared. I took a taxi. I add the address and leave it on the pillow.

There’s no reason why anyone should see this. Rey isn’t going to call or come by again. Chris is putting the kids to bed and staying at the museum. I’ll be home long before he’d see the note.

Acid burns in my throat the instant the cab pulls up to the address Amber gave me. It’s next door to Isabel’s restaurant. This is just too coincidental to sit well, and I know there’s a connection. Whatever this club is, Isabel is a part of it, maybe even owns it.

I pay the taxi driver, and ofer him a hefty tip for waiting for me to return. Before getting out, though, I try to dial Amber again.

She doesn’t answer.

I text, I’m outside in a taxi. Please come out.

I wait. No reply.

I picture Chris being beaten in Mark’s club, and remember the pain I’ve seen in Amber’s eyes. If Tristan is like Isabel, Amber needs saving.

Decision made, I slide my purse cross-body and shove open the door. I am going to keep on this path, even though it’s probably foolish.

I head toward the large steel double gates marked with the address I seek. Cold air lifts my long hair, and I wish I’d brought my coat. Even more, I wish I were back in the taxi.

Passing the gates, I ind a long walkway to another white stone building and see another couple walking in the same direction as I am. I let them move ahead of me, and I study them, hoping that doing so might tell me about where I am headed.

The man is in jeans. The woman is in a leather skirt. This tells me very little, but I guess I should be happy they aren’t in head-to-toe leather and chains. I cling to whatever I can ind in the hope that I’m not about to go into the unfamiliar land of full-on BDSM action without Chris by my side.

With a lot of trepidation, I follow the couple to the large wooden door and wait as the woman hits a buzzer. The door opens and a man in a suit waves the couple inside.

I step forward, intending to follow the couple inside, but the man holds up a hand and says something in French.

“English?” I ask hopefully.

“Couple only,” he replies.

Couples only? That’s strange. “I’m here to pick up Amber.”

Someone says something to the man from behind. The doorman glances at me and waves me forward. “Welcome, mademoiselle.”

I draw a breath and walk past him into the small, dimly lit room, much like the one at Isabel’s restaurant. Too much like it for comfort. It feels like this is her doing, and I wonder about the absence of the loud music I’d heard on the phone with Amber.

A coat check area is to my right, and the lady who manages it steps in front of me and points at my purse. “You must leave it here,” she says in heavily accented English.

“No.” I cling to my purse. “No, I—”

“It’s the rules,” she says sharply.

I reach for my phone to take it with me and she shakes her head. “No phones. They have cameras.”

My heart sinks and I hesitate, thinking of Amber and hearing her sobs on the phone in my head. I stuf my phone in my purse and give both up. The woman rewards me with a ticket stub that I stuf in my boot.

I walk down a long, narrow hall, and the hazy bedroom lighting is really creeping me out. I’m about to reach what looks like a much larger room when Amber rounds the corner, dressed in a tank top and a red leather skirt that barely clears her hips. With her arms exposed, I see the fresh welts on them.

“Sara.” She rushes toward me, and I gape at the low neck-line of her dress, which leaves all but her ni**les exposed, before she hugs me. “Thank you for trying to help me.” She steps back. “I convinced Tristan we’re entertaining you, so he won’t take me to the chamber. He told the doorman not to let me leave. We have to sneak out.”

I shake my head. “Let’s just walk out right now.”

The sound of several people behind me makes me turn, and I ind a couple staring at me with such lusty expressions, I feel like a starving man’s dinner. I can’t let them by without body contact, and I quickly turn to Amber, who grabs my hand and tugs me forward. This is so not going well.

She leads me down a set of stairs and pushes through a door, where music blasts around us. I blink into the smoky room to ind a bar to my left and a dance loor beyond it, with a lot of skin in every direction I look. This place is crawling with skimpily clad women, with men and women draped all over them.

Against walls, by the bar, on the dance loor, and in seats around it. But no sex. Just lots of wishing for sex, I think.

Amber pulls me to a spot by the bar and I turn to her, settling my back against the leather rail behind me. I have no intention of staying.

Amber lags down the bartender. “Two shots of tequila.”

“No,” I say. “I have a taxi outside waiting.”

“I can’t hear you,” she complains as she leans in close to me, her hand reaching over my chest, arm pressing on my br**sts to hold the bar at my opposite shoulder. I stifen, aware of how intimate and unnecessary the move is as she repeats, “What did you say?”

I ight the urge to push her away, afraid it will turn into more touching. “I have a taxi waiting for us.”

“A new doorman comes on in thirty minutes. He likes me.

He’ll let us pass.” She leans back and looks at me, then strokes the hair from my eyes. “You really are very pretty.”

My breath hitches. What is happening? What is she doing?

“Amber—”

“You’re never going to stop making him pay, are you?”

At the sound of Tristan’s voice, Amber turns to him, her arm thankfully dropping from my chest. I blink Tristan into view, his long dark hair framing crystal-blue eyes. He’s staring at me, his expression hard, unreadable.

Amber touches my hair and I instinctively pull back, but she’s focused on Tristan. “I need this. It’s your duty to fulill my needs.”

Tristan stares at her, several intense moments ticking by before he pulls her to him, his hand on the back of her head.

“It’s time to let him go. It’s past time, Amber.” His gaze slides to mine and there is something unidentiiable in his stare. Then he is kissing her, his hand sliding over her breast and yanking down her top, exposing her nipple right there.

I can’t breathe, but the look Tristan gave me . . . I don’t know why, but I think he’s giving me an escape, and I need it.

I sidestep away from them and dash for the hallway, then stop abruptly. There’s a woman with her shirt pulled down to her waist, with a man sucking her ni**les right in front of the exit. I turn away, looking for any direction but back toward Tristan and Amber, and calling myself every kind of fool.

I dart to my left and down a hallway, hoping for a bathroom. There’s only a doorway that seems to lead to a room. I turn to ind Tristan and Amber headed toward me, and I rush forward . . . and straight into hell.

I stop dead just inside a dark room illed with bodies.

Naked bodies huddled together. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

There is a woman with a man behind her, rubbing her breasts, while another woman is between her thighs, licking her. Beside them, a man is masturbating while watching. Behind him is a threesome of some sort. And it goes on and on. All around me, people are all over each other.

“This is what he wants,” Amber says, wrapping herself around me.

I don’t even ight her. My body is frozen, my heart ice.

“No,” I whisper. “It’s not.”

“Yes,” she promises, turning me to face her, her hands on my shoulders. “You will be one of those people, with him right there with you.”

No. Chris doesn’t share.

Tristan steps beside Amber and pulls her into his arms, and I blink as they begin to passionately kiss and touch each other.

No. No. No. This is not what Chris wants us to be.

And still I stand there, watching them peel away each other’s clothes. I wonder at why I didn’t dart past the na**d bodies at the exit? Maybe some part of me had to know what was in this club.What Chris was being accused of being a part of.

A stranger comes up behind me and touches me, and reality slaps me in the face. I shove the man away and rush for the door and down the hall. Somehow I ind the bathroom I’d missed before, and I go inside and lock the door. I lean against the hard surface and wonder if there are peepholes for people to watch me. My stomach churns at the idea. This can’t be what Chris wants. It can’t. He doesn’t share. I know he doesn’t.

But what are these secrets he doesn’t want to tell me?

What could be so bad after all I’ve seen but this? I’m lost. I don’t believe this is Chris, but Amber and Isabel and even Tristan are all parts of his life. And his desperateness to keep me away from them is pretty damning. Maybe this is his past, not his present. Except the Chris I know wouldn’t have a past like this, any more than a present. What if, like Ella, I don’t really know Chris at all? I’m confused. I hurt. I hurt badly. I’m not crying, but I will. There’s a storm coming and I don’t want it to happen here.

Ready to be out of here now, I unlock the bathroom door and make my way toward the exit, but I can’t help but stop and glance at the bar. Suddenly, I think I need that drink I’d been ofered early in the night, or the storm I know is coming might just erupt before I get home. I know this place isn’t Chris’s present life, but I am terriied this will be like the beatings he’d said he’d never need again and did. Tonight has dug up all of my hot buttons and insecurities I’d thought I’d buried. I wasn’t enough for Chris when Dylan died. When will I live that hell again? The idea is almost too much to bear and I want out of my own head. The more I think, the more the hole in my heart bleeds.

Rushing forward, I wave at the bartender, who happily supplies me with a shot of tequila. I choke it down and ask for another. I am not myself. I do not even know who I am right now. I don’t know who Chris is. I don’t know who Ella is or was. I know. . . . nothing.

Amber is suddenly by my side, wrapping her arm around my shoulders. “If you love him, you’ll get used to it. I promise.

I did.”

Her voice and her touch are making me hurt more. I down my second shot and ask for another. My head starts to spin.

Amber drags me to the dance loor and I welcome the American music playing. I need something that feels familiar, something to put a loor beneath the ground I feel has fallen from beneath my feet. I know the words and I sing to them, blocking out the bad things trying to speak in my mind. Only I can’t stand the way Amber keeps trying to touch me, how several strangers paw at me, and I shove away from the crowd.

All I want is . . . Chris. I want these people to go away. I want to call him and I want him to be the Chris I know, not the Chris Amber knows. I stop dancing. He is. He is that Chris.

My Chris. These people do not know him. Amber does not know him. I want out of here, but now I’ve made a mistake. I’ve let the tequila go to my head and I don’t think I can get home.

Not without Chris.

My gaze goes to an empty pedestal and I climb on top. I am alone. So alone, and I shut my eyes, try to block out everything but the music and the dancing. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel anything.

Until his hand touches my leg, and I hear his voice calling my name, permeating the loud beat in my head. I look down to ind Chris standing there.

Twenty-Four

I stare down at Chris and blink, not sure if he’s real. He’s supposed to be at the museum. He can’t know I’m here. And why does he look angry? I’m the one— “Come down!” he shouts at me over the loud music.

Swaying slightly, I swallow hard. He’s really here. Chris is here, and I’m not ready to hear what he’s going to say.

I shake my head, and the room spins.

Chris reaches up and grabs my legs. I sway again. He shackles my wrist and tugs. I tumble forward with a yelp, only to ind myself down on the dance loor, lying against Chris’s hard body, his arms wrapped around me.

“What the f**k are you doing here, Sara? And dressed like you want to be here.”