Magdalene (54 page)

“And you’re a petty thief.”

Sitkaris threw his hands wide and cackled.
“Ah, he speaks. Tell me. Is that worse or better than spreading
your legs for anybody who can afford you?”

The natural man, the bad boy, the
animal
Mitch had kept on a tight leash for the last
twenty-five years— It was howling now, wanting to defend his wife,
but Cassandra wouldn’t want him to defend her. She would calmly
point out that with payments of jewels and art, property, cars, and
cash, she’d made far, far more than what she’d reported to the IRS
in her official occupation of “investment consultant.”

Then Sitkaris would soon find himself in
some situation out of his worst nightmares, his fate custom-built
for him by a woman who didn’t hesitate to punish her enemies—and
Mitch would bet his last dime she already had something in the
works for Greg.

Mitch turned and walked away from him, back
down to his office to pick up his things, but Greg followed.

“Does she eat pussy too? What am I saying?
Of
course
she does. I’d pay to see that, oh yes I
would.”

No, he would not hit Greg.

He would
not
.

Help me, Father.

“Go home, Greg.”

Mitch locked his office and strode down the
hall, trying to get away from Greg before he shoved his fist down
Greg’s throat.

“Not until you give me a reason to have you
arrested. Too bad I couldn’t get your hired wife for kidnapping. I
don’t know how she did it, but I’ll have to thank her for getting
those two whiny cunts out of my house—though unfortunately before I
could get Hayleigh to write her own, ah,
confession
.” He
paused. “Eh, well. You win some, you lose some. Now that my dick’s
recovered from Cassie’s claws, I’m seeing the potential of
something less...nerve damaging. Do you think she’d do it to me
again? Only softer this time?”

Elder Snow. Elder Snow. Elder Snow.

He couldn’t—
wouldn’t—
crack now.

“Oh, c’mon, Mitch. Hit me. Icing on the
cake. What could it hurt? You’re out on your ass, and you
still
don’t have anything on me. I told you not to fuck with
me, Mitch. I warned you, but you didn’t listen.”

Mitch locked the building’s doors once Greg
had exited just behind him, and turned to stride to the parking
lot, his car. Safety.

For Greg.

Because Mitch was about to kill him.

“Whatever. If you can afford to drop a
couple, three million on a glorified Beetle, I can’t see why you
wouldn’t drop sixty million for a whore like Cassie.”

“Greg.”

“Hit me,” he snarled as Mitch opened his car
door, threw his things over to the passenger side, and dropped into
the bucket seat. He held the door when Mitch tried to close it.
“Hit me, you motherfucker. Don’t just sit there and take it.”

Patience, boy.

Mitch turned the key and revved his engine.
“Good night, Greg.”

Greg’s willingness to be harmed to advance
his cause didn’t extend so far as to step in front of a race car in
motion.

Mitch squealed out of the parking lot,
cranked the ZZ Top, and went on a long, fast drive.

•

“
WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!”

Mina would never have demanded Mitch account
for his whereabouts, much less screamed it at him the minute he
walked in the door. He snarled and opened his mouth, then really
noticed her.

An elegant red silk robe flowed around her
long legs, her feet were shod in high-heeled black marabou
slippers, her disheveled black hair swung around and past her
shoulders. She had her arms wrapped around herself, her nose and
eyes were red, there were discarded Kleenexes all over the library
floor, and a bottle of some type of alcohol stood in the middle of
a coffee table next to a kitchen glass.

Cassandra glared at him, but the trembling
mouth, the wet face, and the sniffle all ruined the effect.

“Supposed to be home by ten, out there with
your phone off, driving that—that—
death trap
—you call a car,
and here it is three o’clock in the morning— Come walking in like
you don’t have a care in the world—”

His arms were suddenly full of woman, warm
and wonderful, who wrapped herself around him, clung to him, buried
her face in his neck, and sobbed as if he’d broken her heart.

Mitch’s anger and tension drained with the
feel of Cassandra’s legs tight around his hips and her fingers in
his hair, closing into fists as if to keep him from leaving her
ever again. He held her to him, her distress doing what hundreds of
miles of high-speed driving hadn’t done.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, but he didn’t
think she heard him. He sighed and carried her to the door, flipped
off the lights, then carried her upstairs while she cried.

* * * * *

Korban
Pesach

April 20, 2011

I awoke sprawled out on my lover’s chest, my
eyes stinging and my mind recoiling in horror at what I’d said and
done last night. His scent was in my nose, his hand caressed my
back, his strength lay under my body, that strength that pleased me
so well.

“I was drunk,” I blurted.

“I know,” he murmured. “And I was
angry.”

“I’ve never done that before. Ever. It’s not
my business what you do.”

“Don’t apologize. You know I liked it.”

Yes, he would. Because I’d given him too
much information.
What
that information was, exactly, or how
he would interpret it, I had no idea. I opened my mouth to ask,
but—

“I’m about to be released from the
bishopric,” he said abruptly.

Well. That had come out of the blue. I
dragged my finger through the hair on his chest, swirled it around
his nipple, which tightened. “Um, okay. Why do you think that?
Besides the fact that you’re almost halfway through year
seven?”

He took a deep breath. “I can’t tell
you.”

I sighed. His body was tense, more than it
had been for the last couple of weeks. “You don’t sound as happy
about it as I thought you’d be.”

“It’s going to be very ugly.”

I levered myself up to look in those pretty
blue eyes, his carved face, and the laugh lines around the corners
of his mouth...the dark sandy curls that he would probably get
trimmed soon... Had I truly thought him ordinary once upon a
time?

“How long then?”

“End of the week. Beginning of next.”

“Talk to me.”

Mitch looked at me soberly. “I can’t. This
isn’t like...”

“Your garments. Your covenants.”

He started.

“You know my meeting I had to go to two
weeks ago? Lunch with Giselle. She was the only one willing to
inform me of my eternal place in your life.”

He pursed his lips. “Um, oops?”

“Yeah. You’re so in the doghouse for
that.”

He waved his unoccupied hand. “Okay, well,
then. Not like that. What’s going on— The— You know.
Confidentiality.”

“Not even with your wife. Your
nonmember
wife. Who has no horse in the race.”

“Yup.”

The fact that I understood didn’t make it
hurt any less. “What time is it?”

No answer while he fumbled with the clock.
“Noon. Neither of us called in.”

“I didn’t have anything pressing.”

“Mmmm,” he murmured, shifting, turning me
until we were on our sides facing each other, so close we were
almost one. “I do.”

I wrapped one leg over his hip, slid it down
the back of his thigh while we kissed. “Uh, I need to brush my
teeth.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he whispered as he
nuzzled my jaw.

“Let me rephrase:
You
need to brush
your
teeth.”

“Too bad.”

I would have laughed, but he pinched my
nipple—
hard
—which made me gasp in both pleasure and pain.
Oh, yes, the man
did
know how to push my buttons. He paid
attention to my body, learned what it did to which touches and
under what circumstances, what I particularly liked, and he
remembered them.

He cared about my pleasure, to the exclusion
of his own if I allowed it.

Ding dong.

“Shit,” I hissed, because I knew he couldn’t
ignore it. It would be someone from church, and as I had witnessed,
being a bishop was just as demanding as being the CEO of a company
that practically ran itself.

Mitch rolled away from me and put his
bathrobe on, padded out of our bedroom and down the hall.

I waited for him to come back, which didn’t
happen for long enough that I fazed out of my arousal and grew
thoroughly disgusted with my personal hygiene.

He was sitting on the bed naked, slumped
over, when I got out of the shower. A torn envelope and a crisp
piece of white letterhead folded in neat thirds lay beside him.

I picked it up, saw the gold logo of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the upper left-hand
corner, and began to read.

Dear Bishop Hollander,

The stake presidency is considering formal
disciplinary action in your behalf, including the possibility of
disfellowshipment or excommunication, because you are reported to
have been found in fornication and adultery.

You are invited to attend this disciplinary
council to give your response and, if you wish, to provide
witnesses who are members of the Church or other evidence in your
behalf.

The disciplinary council will be held on
Thursday, April 21, 2011, in the stake high council room at
7pm.

Sincerely,
David Petersen
President, Nazareth Pennsylvania Stake

I thought my heart would explode. “
Oh, my
God
.” I sat down beside him, my knees suddenly too weak to hold
me up. My hands trembled. “
How?
”

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said
low.

“Sitkaris.”

He said nothing.

“Do you really think they’ll—”

“No,” he snapped, a steel edge in his voice.
I couldn’t tell if he was lying to me or lying to himself. “They
won’t. These men know me, so this is just to sort it all out.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Yes, I can. Once we all get in that room
together, they’ll know the truth.”

“How?”

“They’re men of God.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is
Greg
going to be there?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Yes.”

“And...you’re just going to wait for God to
intervene on your behalf.”

“Yes.” He paused. “He has to,” he
whispered.

* * * * *

Tarry Here and
Watch

April 21, 2011

Thursday evening we sat in the car in the
church parking lot, waiting for seven o’clock to arrive. I clutched
Mitch’s hand, hoping to give him some small measure of strength. I
know when men need to talk, and Mitch was really no different than
any other man who’d found comfort on my shoulder.

Except that he wouldn’t take the comfort I
offered him freely, and the longer he kept it in, the more tense he
became until now, awaiting what amounted to an execution, his body
was thrumming with anger.

There was only one way to get to him, to
leach off some of that tension, so I snapped, “Mitch Hollander, you
will
tell me. I did not sign up for this gig to be kept in
the dark.”

That caught his attention, and he looked at
me strangely. “You signed up for this gig so I’d have sex with
you.”

Hm. Well, that was true. “Things change,” I
muttered, and looked out the window.

“
What
changed? Precisely?”

I glared at him for not playing along. “You
said you loved me. Isn’t that what people do when they love
someone?
Confide
in them? What haven’t I done to earn your
trust by now?”

Mitch growled low in his throat, but then,
instead of turning it back on me, he heaved a great sigh.

“Greg and I—”

I stopped him. “Spare me the ancient
history. Prissy and I managed to figure out all the delicate
politics.”

“Of course you did,” he said dryly. “Where
should I start?”

“November. Why you fired Sitkaris from being
Young Men’s president.”

“He’s a thief,” he said shortly. “Had a tip
he’d swindled a family in another ward. Checked him out. I know he
did it; don’t know how. My people uncovered another couple of
tidbits that led me to believe he’d been the linchpin of the Jep
Industries operation.”

I sat and thought about that a second or
two. “All those players left the country. Why didn’t he?”

“He got left behind. He wasn’t important
enough to care about, and he’d keep his mouth shut because he’d go
to prison if he said a word.”

“So he was bitter about that, which didn’t
have anything to do with you.”

“Also bitter about not being bishop.”

“Then you didn’t rehire him, so he not only
didn’t have a job, he didn’t have his cushy side operation, no
opportunity to steal from you directly, and still had to report to
you at church.”

“Until I released him. I had no other
recourse because anything else I could do would require the stake
president’s approval.”

“Which he wouldn’t give because of how
Sitkaris has cultivated his image and relationships in the
stake.”

He nodded. “I confronted him with what I
knew, especially his part in bringing J.I. down, told him I’d find
out what and how. He called my bluff. Pointed out to me that, among
other things, since Knox and his family aren’t the Church’s
favorite people in the world, and they’re part of my inner circle,
it wouldn’t take much for him to be able to chip away at my
credibility until I had none left. That was when I realized he
wasn’t just somebody I didn’t like or get along with. He showed me
a side I’d never seen before.”

I pursed my lips and mused, “Sociopaths
don’t bother to hide themselves once they know there’s no point.
Especially if they think they have something over you.”