1.4 Vivienne

“Where the hell have you been?!” Liam snarled as soon as the door opened. He marched across the open-concept room, arm already raised in preparation. “I’ve been waiting for hours! I thought I told you to go straight home woman. Did you think I was joking?!”

Vivienne tensed her shoulders and braced for the imminent burst of pain, only to be surprised when none came. When she opened her eyes, she found Marcus standing in front of her, one hand wrapped so tightly around Liam’s wrist that she could almost hear the bones grinding from the strain. Her husband tried not to show how much it hurt, but Vivienne had lived with the man long enough to spot the telltale cringe in his shoulders.

The broad planes of Marcus’s back arrested her vision as he planted himself before her. A massive barrier, unfaltering in the face of Liam’s impotent rage. It was like watching a beetle attempting to fight a boulder.

“What the hell are you doing, Riviera?” Liam hissed. “I didn’t pay you to defy my orders.”

“No,” he agreed calmly, “but you did hire me to take care of your wife, and that is what I plan to do. I’m sure you understand.”

With that, he released Liam’s wrist so suddenly that the momentum from his efforts sent him stumbling away. Liam righted himself quickly, rubbing the ache from his wrist and doing his best to pretend that his pride hadn’t been hurt just as badly. “Hmph, whatever. As long as you do your job, then I don’t care what you do.”

“Liam, what is going on?” Vivienne needed to know.

He snorted and gestured to the dining table where a familiar brown envelope sat. “It seems your acting skills have landed you some competition,” Liam sneered. Confused, Vivienne walked over to the file and pulled out the same sheet of paper upon which a letter had been typed out in plain Times New Roman font.

Liam, you know we’re supposed to be together! I love you more than that whore could ever dream of, so why won’t you let me? I don’t want to shed blood, I just want us to be happy, so make the right choice or I’ll make it for you.

Vivienne nose wrinkled. Great, not only was she forced to endure her husband constantly cheating on her, now one of his flings had flown off the deep end about it. She shook the envelope, feeling more weight, and tipped it over to reveal something that made her blood turn to ice in her veins. Photographs. Photographs of her.

The first few were fairly innocuous, the sort of thing any desperate paparazzi might be able to snap if they happened to see her in the street, but then they slowly grew more concerning. Pictures of her in the park, in the grocery store, walking into the hospital for a check-up.

Vivienne’s voice died in her throat at the sight of the final image. It was a shot of her asleep on the upstairs couch, clutching a novel to her chest. Her palm was covering the dust jacket, but Vivienne already knew exactly what book it was. Two weeks ago, Vivienne had gone out shopping and fallen asleep during a reread of her collection of Grimm’s fairytales. Two weeks ago, a stranger had broken into her house and taken pictures of her while she slept.

Ants crawled all over her skin, and Vivienne felt repulsed and violated. Suddenly, nowhere felt safe. Someone had been in her house! How? Had they left? What if they came back? What if they’d been back already and done worse?

“Oh relax,” Liam snapped. “You’re overreacting. This is nothing to be concerned about.”

“Nothing to be–?!” Vivienne whipped her head around to gape at her husband in disbelief. “Someone broke into our house, Liam! They sent you pictures of me asleep on the goddamn couch!”

“You’re a celebrity, Vivi,” he waved her concerns away with a flick of a wrist. “These things happen all the time. It’s perfectly normal, but we do have to be seen to be taking some precautions.”

Marcus, the mentioned precaution, flicked his gaze over to Vivienne but said nothing. “Right,” she rolled her eyes, “because hiring a bodyguard without telling the actual person is so normal.”

The sarcasm was thick in Vivienne’s voice, but it rolled off Liam’s back like pondwater off a duck. Her husband just grinned and shrugged his shoulders. “You’ll cope, dearest. Just be positive and have faith in the fact that your beloved husband hired the best of the best to take care of you.”

“What do you mean?” Vivienne narrowed her eyes and glanced at Marcus, who blinked back beatifically. “Are you specially trained or something?”

“Better,” Liam smirked. “Marcus Riviera is a bona-fide ex-veteran and alpha shifter. He came highly recommended.”

The day just kept piling on more surprises, but at least this one answered a few questions about Marcus, like his unusual body heat and how he had found her in the café despite being told that she would be home. Shifters were rare nowadays, and most packs kept themselves hidden due to the restrictions often placed on them by regular society. The ones who didn’t have families tended to wind up shafted into work that was physically grueling, like the army or construction sites.

“Now that I had the letter leaked to the press, your popularity is sure to skyrocket!”

“You did what?!” Vivienne screamed and whipped out her phone to check the headlines. Sure enough, there were already several social media posts arguing over the legitimacy of the threat and whether this was just a publicity stunt. “Liam, are you insane?! Why would you do something so foolish?”

“This is Hollywood, honey,” he dismissed, turning to walk over to the cupboard where he kept the alcohol. The top shelf was reserved for the stuff he would never drink, the bottles that were only there to be looked at by Liam and his equally shallow friends. Pouring a fingerful of expensive whisky, Liam continued. “We have to capitalize on every bit of attention we can get. All press is good press, and your name is going to be a hot commodity in the coming weeks.”

“And you didn’t consider that all of this might just put me in even more danger?” Vivienne pointed out icily. “Did you even think about the consequences, or does my life seriously mean that little to you?”

“God,” Liam rolled his eyes patronizingly, shooting a knowing glance at Marcus as though to say women, am I right? “Guess that’s why you’re an actress, huh? There’s no need to be so dramatic. Marcus is just going to babysit you in public for a while. You’ll do some interviews about how worried you are, and in a month or so everything will go right back to normal. Capiche?”

This was too much. She was an adult, not a child who needed to be chivvied along! Vivienne had enough of that, but the memory of those photographs made her shoulders droop. “Fine.”

“Good girl,” Liam’s patronizing gaze ran over her, and then he tossed back his whisky and poured himself another glass for good measure. “Now, if that’s all there is to it, I need to get back to work. You’ll be fine at home, won’t you?”

Exhaustion sank deep into Vivienne’s bones, soaking into her words and weakening them like rot. She didn’t even believe herself when the words finally crawled out of her throat. “Liam…I want a divorce.”

Liam blinked at her once, and then he laughed and gulped down his drink. “Sure you do, Vivi. I’ll see you later.” With those words, he walked out the door.

Great. Just fantastic. Tears brimmed in Vivienne’s eyes, and she hurried to wipe them away. She couldn’t cry now, especially not in front of a stranger. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she apologized shortly once she was confident that her voice wouldn’t waver. Vivienne cleared her throat and tried to keep her focus away from the considerable bulk of his whole…everything. “So…Marcus, huh? This probably wasn’t what you signed up for, was it?”

“I try not to have fixed expectations about my clients, Mrs. Hardison,” he replied. Unlike Vivienne, he truly had no qualms with staring. His gaze flayed her from top to bottom, and the sensation worsened when he met her eyes. “I prefer to form my own opinions based on…personal experience.”

 “How enlightened of you,” Vivienne laughed, wondering what opinion he’d formed of her and her fucked up marriage now. “But please, just call me Vivienne. I didn’t even ask before, but is it alright if I call you Marcus, or would you prefer Mr. Riviera?”

“Either is fine, Mrs. Jo – Vivienne,” he corrected himself, and Vivienne forced down the surge of warmth in her chest. Really, how desperate was she that acts of common decency had her battling butterflies in the pit of her stomach?

I need to de-stress and talk to Melanie. Have a girl’s night out and get this all off my chest. It would have to be during the weekend, when Liam was off on one of his ‘business trips’ and not home just lurking and waiting to make her life worse.

Vivienne nodded agreeably. “Marcus it is. Well, since you’re going to be staying here for a while, I can show you to one of the guestrooms.”

The only response she received was a crisp nod, and nothing else. Well then, Vivienne smiled grimly to herself as she listened to the near silent footfalls behind her as their new houseguest followed her to the spare bedroom. At least it’s going to be a quiet couple of weeks.