Brazilian Escape: Playing the Dutiful Wife / Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child. Carol Marinelli

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СКАЧАТЬ as Rosa continued speaking and she drained her second glass of water. Her throat was still impossibly dry. Her fingers moved to her hair and she twirled the strand around one finger, over and over.

      ‘Niklas is entitled to one phone call a week and a two-hour conjugal visit once every three weeks. He is being brought before the judge in a fortnight for the trial date to be set and we need you to fly there. At your visit with him on Thursday you are to tell him that only when he is in front of the judge he is to fire his lawyer. Before that he is to give no hint. Once he has fired Miguel we will step in for him.’

      ‘No.’ Meg shook her head and pulled her finger out of her hair. She was certain of her answer, did not need to think about this for a moment. She just wanted them gone.

      ‘The only way we can get in contact with him is through his wife.’

      ‘I’ll phone him.’ It was the most she would do. ‘You said that he was entitled to a weekly phone call …’ And then she shook her head again, because of course the calls would be monitored. ‘I can’t see him.’ She could not. ‘We were married for twenty-four hours.’

      ‘Correct me if I am wrong …’ Rosa was as tough with the truth as she was direct. ‘According to the records we have found you have been married for almost a year.’

      ‘Yes, but we—’

      ‘There has been no divorce?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘And if Niklas was dead and I was here bringing you a cheque would you hand it back and say, No, we were only married for twenty-four hours? Would you say, No, give this to someone else. He had nothing to do with me …?’

      Meg’s face was red as she fought for an answer, but she did not know that truth—not that it stopped Rosa.

      ‘And because you have not screamed annulment I am assuming consensual sex occurred.’

      Meg felt her face grow redder, because sex had been the only thing they had had between them.

      ‘If you had found yourself pregnant, would you not have contacted him? Would you have told yourself it did not count as you were only married for twenty-four hours? Would you have told your child the same …?’

      ‘You’re not being fair.’

      ‘Neither is the system being fair to my client,’ Rosa said. ‘Your husband will be convicted of a crime he did not commit if you do not get this message to him.’

      ‘So I’m supposed to fly to Brazil and sit in some trailer or cell and pretend that we’re …?’

      ‘There will be no pretending—you will have sex with him,’ Rosa said. ‘I don’t think you understand what is at stake here, and I don’t think you understand the risks to Niklas and his case if it is discovered that we are trying to get information in. There will be suspicions if the bed and the bin …’

      Thankfully she did not go into further detail, but it was enough to have Meg shake her head.

      ‘I’ve heard enough, thank you. I will start preparing the paperwork for divorce today.’ She stood.

      They did not.

      ‘Marrying Niklas was the biggest mistake of my life,’ Meg stated. ‘I have no intention of revisiting it and I’m certainly not …’ She shook her head. ‘No. We were a mistake.’

      ‘Niklas never makes mistakes,’ Rosa countered. ‘That is why we know he is innocent. That is why we have been working behind our own principal’s back to ensure justice for him.’ She looked to Meg. ‘You are his only chance, and whether or not it is pleasant, whether or not you feel it is beneath you, this must happen.’

      She handed her an envelope and Meg opened it to find an itinerary and airline tickets.

      ‘There is a flight booked for you tomorrow night.’

      ‘I have a life,’ Meg flared. ‘A job, commitments …’

      ‘A visit has been approved for Thursday. It is the only chance to make contact with him before the pre-trial hearing in two weeks’ time. After you have seen him you can go to Hawaii—though we might need you to go back for another visit in three weeks, if things don’t go well.’

      ‘No.’ How else could she say it? ‘I won’t do it.’

      Rosa remained unmoved. ‘You may want this all to go away, but it cannot. Niklas deserves this chance and he will get it. You will see, when you check your bank account, that you are being well compensated for your time.’

      ‘Excuse me?’ Meg was furious. ‘How dare you? How on earth did you …?’ But it wasn’t about how they had found out her bank details. It wasn’t that that was the problem right now. ‘It’s not about money …’

      ‘So it’s the morality of it, then?’ Rosa questioned. ‘You’re too precious to sleep with your own husband even it means he has to spend the rest of his life behind bars?’

      Rosa made it sound so simple.

      ‘For the biggest mistake of your life, you chose rather well, did you not?’ Rosa sneered. ‘You are being paid to sleep with Niklas—it’s hardly a hardship.’

      Meg met her eyes and was positive that he and Rosa had slept together. They both stared for a moment, lost in their own private thoughts. Then Rosa stood, a curl on her lip, and another sassy Brazilian gave her opinion of Meg as she upended her life.

      ‘You need to get over yourself.’

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      WHEN THEY HAD GONE, Meg did what she had spent a year avoiding.

      She looked up the man she had married and found out just how powerful he was—or had been before he had been charged. She understood now that the Niklas Dos Santos she was reading about would be less than impressed to find himself in business class. And then she read about the shock his arrest had caused. Niklas might have a reputation in business as being ruthless, but he had always seemed honest—which was apparently why it had made it so easy for him to con some high-flying people into parting with millions. They had believed the lies that had been told to them. His business peers’ trust in him had made them gullible, and despite Rosa’s and her colleagues’ protestations of his innocence, for Meg the articles cast doubt.

      She knew, after all, how effortlessly he had read her, how easily he had played her. Meg had seen another side to Niklas and it wasn’t one she liked.

      And yet, as Rosa had pointed out, he was her husband, and she was apparently his one hope of receiving a fair trial.

      And then Meg clicked on images and wished she had not.

      The first one she saw was of him handcuffed and being bundled into a police car.

      There were many more of Niklas, but they were not of the man she knew. The suit was on and the tie was beautifully knotted, the hair was as she remembered, СКАЧАТЬ