Sidney Sheldon’s After the Darkness. Тилли Бэгшоу

secretly relieved when the auction ended and it was time for dancing.

      ‘I hate these things,’ she whispered in Lenny’s ear as he whisked her around the floor. ‘All those fragile male egos trying to outspend each other. It’s chest beating.’

      ‘I know.’ Lenny’s hand caressed her lower back. ‘But those chest beaters just raised fifteen million for our foundation. In this economy, that’s pretty good going.’

      ‘Do you mind if I cut in? I’ve barely spoken to my favorite brother-in-law all night.’

      Connie, Grace’s eldest sister, slipped her arm around Lenny’s waist. Lenny and Grace both smiled.

      ‘Favorite brother-in-law, eh?’ Grace teased. ‘Don’t let Jack hear you say that.’

      ‘Oh, Jack.’ Connie waved her hand dismissively. ‘He’s been in such a funk all evening. I thought being a senator was supposed to be fun. Anyone would think he was the one who’d just lost his house. And job. And life savings. Come on, Lenny! Cheer a girl up, would you?’

      Grace watched as her husband danced with her sister, holding Connie close so he could offer words of comfort. I love them both so much, she thought. And I admire them both so much. The way Connie can make jokes and laugh at herself when she and Mike are going through hell. And Lenny’s incredible, inexhaustible compassion. People were always talking about how ‘lucky’ Grace was to be married to Lenny. Grace agreed. But it wasn’t Lenny’s money that made her blessed. It was his kindness.

      Of course, there was a downside to being married to the nicest man in the world. So many people loved Lenny, and relied on him, that Grace almost never got him all to herself. Next week they were flying to Nantucket, Grace’s favorite place in the world, for a two-week vacation. But of course, being the gracious host that he was, Lenny had invited everyone at the table tonight to join them.

      ‘Promise me we’ll get at least one night alone,’ Grace begged, when they finally crawled into bed that night. The ball had been fun, but exhausting. The thought of even more socializing filled Grace with dread.

      ‘Don’t worry. They won’t all come. And even if they do, we’ll get more than one night alone, I promise. The house is big enough for us to sneak away.’

      Grace thought, That’s true. The house is enormous. Almost as big as your heart, my darling.

       Chapter Two

      It was the morning after the Quorum Ball, a Saturday. John Merrivale was in bed with his wife.

      ‘Please, C-C-Caroline. I don’t want to.’

      ‘I don’t care what you want, you pathetic little worm. Do it!’

      John Merrivale closed his eyes and moved down beneath the sheets till he was eye level with his wife’s neatly trimmed black bush.

      Caroline taunted him. ‘If you weren’t such a limp dick, I wouldn’t need you to do it. But since you’ve failed to get it up yet again, it’s the least you can do.’

      John Merrivale began to do what was asked of him. He hated oral sex. It felt disgusting and wrong. But the days had long passed when he was allowed to follow his own desires. His sex life had become a series of nightly humiliations. Weekends were the worst. Caroline expected a morning performance on Saturdays, and sometimes even a Sunday matinee. It was incredible to John how a woman who so patently despised him could still have such a rampant sex drive. But Caroline seemed to get off on degrading him, bending him to her whim.

      Feeling her writhe with pleasure against his tongue, John fought the urge to gag. Sometimes he fantasized about escape. I could go to the office one day and never come home. I could drug her, then strangle her in her sleep. But he knew he would never have the balls to do it. That was the worst part of his miserable marriage. His wife was right about him. He was weak. He was a coward.

      In the beginning, when they first met, John had hoped that he might draw strength from Caroline’s dominant personality. That her confidence and ambition would compensate for his shyness. For a few blissful months, they had. But it wasn’t long before his wife’s true nature emerged. Caroline’s ambition was not a positive force, like Lenny Brookstein’s. It was a black hole, an envy-fueled vortex that sucked the life out of any human being who came near it. By the time John Merrivale realized what a monster he’d married, it was too late. If he divorced her, she would expose him to the world as a sexual cripple. That would be more humiliation than even John could bear.

      Thankfully it only took a couple of minutes for Caroline to reach orgasm. As soon as she had her pleasure, she got up and marched into the shower, leaving John to strip the bed and put on fresh sheets. There was no need for him to perform such a menial task. The Merrivales had a small army of maids and housekeepers on permanent call at their palatial town home. But Caroline insisted he do it. Once, when she considered his hospital corners to be less than perfect, she’d smashed a glass perfume bottle into his face. John had needed sixteen stitches, and still bore the scar on his left cheek. He told Lenny he’d been mugged, which as he saw it was not far from the truth.

      If it hadn’t been for Lenny Brookstein, John Merrivale would have killed himself years ago. Lenny’s friendship, his warm, easy manner, his readiness with a joke, even when business was going badly, was the most important, treasured thing in John Merrivale’s life. He lived for the office and his work at Quorum, not because of the money or the power, but because he wanted to make Lenny proud. Lenny Brookstein was the one and only person who had ever believed in John Merrivale. Awkward and physically unattractive, with red hair and pale, gangly limbs, John had never been popular at school. He had no brothers and sisters growing up with whom to share his troubles, or toast his modest successes. Even his parents were disappointed in him. They never said anything, of course. They didn’t have to. John could feel it just by walking into a room.

      At his wedding to Caroline, he overheard his mother talking to one of his aunts. ‘Of course, Fred and I are absolutely delighted. We never thought that John would marry such a bright, attractive girl. To be perfectly honest, we’d rather given up hope of his marrying at all. I mean, let’s face it, he’s a sweet boy but he’s hardly Cary Grant!’

      The fact that his own wife despised him hurt John, but it did not surprise him. People had despised him all his life. It was Lenny Brookstein’s friendship, the huge trust Lenny had placed in John, that was the great surprise of John’s life. He owed Lenny Brookstein everything.

      Of course, Caroline didn’t see it that way. Her envy of Lenny and Grace Brookstein had grown over the years to the point where she now struggled to conceal it in public. In private, John had grown used to hearing her refer to Lenny disparagingly as ‘the old man,’ and to Grace as ‘that bitch.’ But recently Caroline had taken to wearing her loathing on her face. For John, this made events like last night’s Quorum Ball a terrifying experience. His love for Lenny Brookstein was immense. But his fear of his wife was even greater. And Caroline Merrivale knew it.

      At breakfast, John tried to make small talk.

      ‘We made a r-r-respectable total last night, I thought, all things considered.’

      Caroline sipped her coffee and said nothing.

      ‘I know L-Lenny was pleased.’

      ‘Fifteen million?’ Caroline laughed scornfully. ‘That’s nothing to the old man. He might as well just write a check himself and be done with it. But of course, that would mean missing out on all the adulation. All the great and the good telling him what a terrific, philanthropic guy he is. And we couldn’t have his darling Gracie go without getting her picture taken six thousand times, could we? Heaven forbid!’

      John spread a thin layer of butter on his toast, avoiding his wife’s eye. He knew from experience that Caroline’s anger could turn on a dime. One wrong move and