Sins and Scarlet Lace Read Online Free Page A

attorney. You can’t keep me in here when I’ve done nothing wrong.” Hysteria edged its way into her voice and she looked around the room, looking for some way to escape.
    “Have a seat, Mrs. Huxley. Do you expect me to believe this act? That you could be married to a man like him and not have any idea the kind of hell he brought down on people’s lives?” Agent Brennan’s voice never rose, as if he was used to watching a woman approaching breakdown status.
    Sophia stared at him in shock and answered before she could think better of it. “Of course I know the kind of hell he brought down on people. He was a master at manipulation, at mind games, until you no longer recognized yourself anymore and his truths became your reality. You see these two fingers?” she asked, holding up her right hand so the crooked appendages were easily seen. “He did this the day I told him I wanted a divorce. And then he held a knife to my throat and raped me while he told me he’d kill me if I ever tried to divorce him.” She pulled down the collar of her shirt so he could see the faint scar where the knife had bit into her skin.
    “As soon as I managed to crawl away and scramble to my feet I grabbed the rifle I kept by the door and held it on him until he left. But I never found the courage to file for divorce. And every day after I looked over my shoulder because I knew if I ever let my guard down he’d find some way to strike when I wasn’t looking.” She looked at her hand and flexed her fingers back into a fist. “I guess he found a way to strike back at me after all, because here I am. So you don’t scare me, Agent Brennan. I’ve lived through the hell of Kane Huxley.”
    “It’s an interesting story,” he said. “And I have no doubt he would do something like that to his own wife. But it doesn’t excuse the evidence that says you’re as guilty as he was. Do you know how he died?”
    Sophia just stared into the cold depths of Gabe Brennan’s eyes and didn’t answer. There didn’t seem to be a point.
    “Kane made a deal with the wrong man.” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his hands across his stomach, as if they were just having a casual chat. “We’d deployed a team to Central America to destroy one of the largest drug labs in the world and disband the Ramos cartel. Huxley sold out the team so the soldiers were waiting for them, but the drug lord in charge decided to take Kane down with them instead of parting with the five-million dollar fee Kane had asked for.”
    “I don’t know anything about this. About what he did,” Sophia said again.
    “You were married to the man. You shared his bed and his home. You can’t tell me you didn’t know what was going on.” Gabe spread the file open and fanned the papers so they arced in front of her. “The evidence doesn’t lie.”
    She barely glimpsed at the papers and kept her eyes steady on him. “Kane Huxley and I were married in name only,” she said, feeling the humiliation creep up on her once again. Her eyes darted to the long expanse of glass—she could feel their gazes on her. “I barely saw him when we were married, and I only saw him twice in the three years after I told him to leave.”
    “Maybe so, but Kane has been an agent within the CIA for a dozen years. Surely you became suspicious of his behavior during that time.”
    Her fists pounded down on the table, sending some of the papers to the floor. “I was too busy trying to outguess his moods and keep my sanity,” she screamed, her voice breaking again. “Do you know what it’s like, Agent Brennan, to be young and confident and on top of the world, and then have that world shattered in the blink of an eye? Until you have no self-confidence or self-respect because someone is in your face day after day, listing your faults and implanting new ones in your mind just because they like to fuck with you?”
    Tears coursed down her cheeks, but she ignored them, just as she ignored the