He enters his own backyard through the gate from Cynthia’s patio. And he could go to jail for a very long time.Īt that moment he doesn’t see how things can get any worse. Marco pushes past her out of the bedroom and goes down the stairs and out the sliding glass kitchen doors without looking back. But if I get impatient, if I don’t hear from you, I might call.” His life is totally destroyed, on so many fronts. Even if he pays her and she destroys the video in front of him, he’ll never be certain there are no copies. So the amount she’s naming now is meaningless. But if he pays her, she’ll ask for more, and more-that’s the way it is with blackmailers.

He would have expected her to ask for more, an amount more in keeping with her flamboyant nature.

“How much money are we talking about here?” He wants to hit her, but he stops himself. “I presume you expected to get the baby back?” “Things haven’t exactly turned out as you planned, have they?” she says. You know what a shit show my life is right now.” “Look, give me some time to figure things out. I would like this to be just between the two of us. “I would rather not show it to anybody, Marco. “You’re not showing that video to anybody.” Would she not blackmail him then? Not likely. Perhaps she wants him to throw her onto the bed they’re both standing beside. Perhaps it’s danger she wants, more than anything else. Her eyes glitter, and he can see her breasts rising and falling rapidly as she breathes. But she doesn’t look scared, she looks excited. He could throttle her right now if he wanted to.

He doesn’t have to play the part of a desperate man-he is a desperate man. “So maybe we need to show Anne the video, too.”

The couple next door online