Silent steps halted.

He had been closing the button on his sleeve when he'd noticed something on the bed.

It was the paper he had thrown away but forgotten to waste completely. It wasn't like him to forget and make mistakes like these, and yet he'd made two withing the last 24 hours. One was to not notice that paper enter the pile, and the other was to not burn it when he had the chance.

"You read it."
His voice came out calm, without any hint of what he was actually feeling.

"I did..." his wife spoke without turning to face him.

The man dropped to the bed, "Do you not trust me?"

"I do... But you should've known I'd read it if it wasn't destroyed."

"My curiousity is far greater than my trust. 'Curiosity killed the cat,' they say."

She still couldn't face him, for she was struggling with several different emotions all at once.

"You know, then."
"Yes, I know... "

She walked to the bed but hesitated slightly, "I know how you used the company's resources to cover up the incident." there was a pause, "And I know about the interrogation."

"And I also know... that the other man is dead." She paused again to collect herself, "By your hand."

And she remembers asking  Null to leave them be.

"But what I don't know... what I can't understand is why you didn't see it fit to tell me?"

He wasn't avoiding her. On the contrary, he looked right at her. And she looked into his eyes but saw nothing.

Her temper rose, and before she could stop herself...

She'd already slapped him.

And he had let her.

She shouldn't have, she knew it, because she also knew what had happened after the cover up. It had also been in the report, although the details were missing. 'Punishment' it had said.

"Null, I'm sorry..."

Not that she needed details, because she remembered the days after she'd been returned home as if it happened yesterday.

" ..."

The details of the kidnapping itself had started to elude themselves from the woman's mind, but everything else from that time had stayed. What she had had for breakfast, what clothes Loupe had worn. Things that she would normally forget, she still remembered.

"I remember..." she breathed out.
"What."
"You had bruises..."

She looked down and took his hand, "Right here... on both of your wrists."
" ..."
"And you refused to take your shirt off for days, when I was around."

" ..."
"I never knew why. I couldn't even guess."

"But now I know."

That was the organization he worked for. Their true nature, and it left her with fear.