57 Pandora’s Box

Well, we all have a face
That we hide away forever
And we take them out
And show ourselves when everyone has gone
Some are satin, some are steel
Some are silk and some are leather
They’re the faces of a stranger
But we’d love to try them on

Well, we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover
See the stranger in yourself

Don’t be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south every now and then
You’ve done it
Why can’t someone else
You should know by now
You’ve been there yourself

Once I used to believe
I was such a great romancer
Then I came home to a woman
That I could not recognize
When I pressed her for a reason
She refused to even answer
It was then I felt the stranger
Kick me right between the eyes

Well, we all fall in love
But we disregard the danger
Though we share so many secrets
There are some we never tell
Why were you so surprised
That you never saw the stranger
Did you ever let your lover
See the stranger in yourself

Don’t be afraid to try again
Everyone goes south every now and then
You’ve done it
Why can’t someone else
You should know by now
You’ve been there yourself

You may never understand
How the stranger is inspired
But he isn’t always evil
And he is not always wrong
Though you drown in good intentions
You will never quench the fire
You’ll give in to your desire
When the stranger comes along

Franziska Von Karma and Shi-Long Lang
Discreet Surveillance Van, Wa Sing Ku’s Neighborhood,
Borginia
October 13, 2024, 8:45 PM

“Holy frijoles!” Kay muttered fretfully to herself as she looked at the two image outlines from the overhead infrared cameras of the Ku mansion on her observation screen. “How in the name of Eugene Levy’s bushy brows do their bodies appear to be generating more heat now?”

The next moment she had her answer as she heard Lana’s sultry voice in her headset, loud and clear.

“I haven’t felt this good in ages. I only wish you could have partaken with me so you’d know how good I’m feeling right now.”

“Miss Dallas,” Miles whispered. “You’re unbelievable,”

“This is the role of a lifetime, Max,” Lana purred back sultrily. “How about I demonstrate just how believable I can be, then?”

Kay’s jaw dropped to her chest as the observed figures then seemed to become even further entwined – to the point where they now appeared as essentially one giant shadowy outline instead of two separate individuals! What was even more mind-boggling was that the Agent was currently detecting so much more additional heat emanating from the conglomerate blob, she wondered if Ku’s smoke alarms were about to be set off!

All audible dialogue ceased thereafter, but the Yatagarasu could make out the sounds as the easily decipherable kind of those caught in the throes of passion and the audible conversation was no longer necessary to ascertain what was going on inside that house!

The ninja’s stomach dropped as she glanced nervously up at her Uncle, whose broad frame, mercifully, till that moment, had been blocking Lang and Franziska from visibility. Badd was clenching his lollipop stick so hard in his teeth that the end broke off and fell to the ground as he stared unblinkingly at the screen.

“Christ on toast…” The Great Thief breathed.

“What is it?” Franziska snapped, ceasing her vain efforts to try to stand on her tiptoes to look over Lang’s shoulder at his tablet since he still vehemently refused to let her have her own! The Wolf Man frowned at whatever he saw on the screen and turned his back to her, further obstructing her view, but not before she got the look of apprehension on his face.

Feeling panicked now, she stormed over to the raven-haired girl and the detective, finding the very same obstacle. After several fruitless efforts at shoving Badd aside, the German woman finally got smart and ducked under his arm, squeezing in front of him so she was standing right behind Kay’s seated form in front of the monitor.

And that was when she saw it.

The images were vivid enough as a mere outline, and no earpiece was required. It was glaringly evident what she was seeing.

Her heart twisted and sunk with nerves as she stared at the screen. The white light enveloped her, coldly, as she shook. Her breaths came in sharp pants and she tried to gain control, but nothing was working. It hurt. It hurt like a Hurensohn! The German Frau tried to breathe calmly, but every time she looked up, those cruel, horrible, tormenting visions were right there – the same ones she’d somehow known would be there long before she’d set eyes on the monitor.

Instinctively, she’d always sensed this pending nightmare, which she’d braced herself for with anxiety, uneasiness, and suspicion, would someday come to life; had been cognizant of this inevitable outcome from the very first moment she’d found out about Miles’ accursed sting operation with that Schlampe, Lana Skye.

She just hadn’t thought it’d be this soon.

Slowly, the panic and anxiety attacks flowed away, yet she remained tremulous. Her eyes, closed and aimed towards her clasped hands, slowly opened. Trepidation swelled through her as she slowly raised her gaze yet again to the steadily shining screen.

It was like a vexing of the soul, for what she felt was not human, it was twisted and distorted but it was something strong. It burned so badly, like fire lacing her veins and creeping up her spine, her skin was a sore-looking red but all she could feel was desire; the desire to hate. She was intoxicated with emotion that she’d had no intention of ever feeling, the acidity of it was residing in her stomach waiting to be spat out of her mouth in foul and vulgar words she would be stared at for saying, except she wasn’t going to say them.

She was going to screech them with every ounce of breath that dwelled in her lungs.

The child suddenly burst out at her like a tornado. She turned on Lang like an enraged panther.

Franziska Von Karma’s tantrums were immediate and violent. There was no winding-up period, no warning. They were full force from the very start like a bomb with no fuse, just an immediate explosion. But unlike such a blast she could go on for some time, sustained in her hormone-fueled rage. Then afterward she would justify it, excuse it, and generally blame it on someone else. And so, she went on his whole life, never learning, never cooling down, always just one more assault away from jail time.

“You!” She shrieked, rushing up to Lang and charging at the stupefied man, pounding at his chest with her tiny fists, fast and furious blows that he was fully unprepared for and had no way of dodging in the small vicinity of the surveillance van. “You brainless, foolish fool! You did this! This is all your fault!”

She’d managed to get a few half dozen shots in before the Wolf Man swiftly reacted. Pinioning her wrists and holding them tightly in his enormous hands, his expression was apoplectic and foreboding.

“Oh, shiiiiittttt….” Kay groaned, forgetting she was supposed to be on surveillance and covering her face with her hands. “Jesus, take the wheel!”

“Not so fast!” Lang roared; his raw voice brutal against her ear. Franziska struggled against him, shooting her right leg out but her movements were far too slow. Hands moving from her waist, the Agent seized her arms, trapping them to her side. Forcefully but not too roughly, he pushed her further away from him, against the side of the van, the agile gesture causing the silver-haired woman to stumble, almost falling flat on her face. “That’s the last bit of horse-pucky I’m going to take from you, pregnant or not, do I make myself clear?”

Franziska wanted to cry as rage filled her belly. She felt her ears getting hot. She glared at him balefully, then spat out the words.

“Unhand me, you fool!”

His half-snarl and half-laugh only added fuel to her wrath.

“How dare you?” Sparks were now flying out of the flashing. flint-colored orbs. “You have the gall to deem this is funny, you foolish… Dummkopf!”

“I’ve just about had it with you!” He glared back at her with fire in his dangerous, dark eyes. “You are an extremely stupid girl, Agent Von Karma, aren’t you?”

“Uneheliches Kind!” She spat. “How is this not your fault? You found that Schlampe! You put them together in this undercover operation! And it is thanks to you that she is all over my fiancé like stink on Scheisse! Even the briefest gander at that obscene image on the screen can indicate what is the tell-tale sign of that cheating swine’s arousal on that screen!”

“Arousal?” Badd inquired, squinting at the screen with interest as he popped another lollipop into his mouth.

“Yes, look at that long, erect shadow you fool!” She shouted, turning her attention away from Lang momentarily to gesture furiously at the monitor. “You would have to be blind to miss it!”

“Um, Franziska…” Badd sounded like he was trying his best not to laugh. “Unless you’re engaged to a horse, that’s not Miles’ er…”

“Boner,” Kay supplied helpfully to her uncle.

“Right. Thanks, Kiddo. Anyhow, his baby-making instrument isn’t what you’re seeing on the screen there.”

“Ach, nee?! What foolishness is this?!”

“Uncle Badd’s right, Franziska,” the ninja chimed in. “It looks like they may have just knocked over the pole lamp.”

“Is that supposed to make everything kosher then?” The pregnant Dame raged while stamping her foot, refusing to be placated. “Just because you claim that is not my fiancé’s visibly erect manhood on that screen does not remove the very viably possibility is fully aroused, nevertheless, from this immoral, sleazy frolicking with that shameless, wanton… Miststück!”

“Enough of the gratuitous German insults already!” Lang exclaimed. “I don’t need to speak the language to know that you’ve gravely insulted Miles, Lana, and me – all within the last half minute! And for what, pray tell? Why am I to blame? Did I force Lana to be crawling all over pretty boy there like a spider monkey?”

Franziska went to lunge at him again but Badd caught her this time, wrapping his enormous tree-trunk arms around the waist and holding her squirming form tightly against him to restrain her from committing certain homicide.

“I know you are just reveling in this, much like a Schwein in Scheiße!” She accused hotly. “Either that or you planned this, Wolf Man! Admit it! This is all just one sick joke to you!”

“Rolex wearin’, diamond ring sportin’, kiss stealin’, wheelin’ dealin’, limousine ridin’, jet flyin’ son of a gun will you placate your mammaries already, you crazy dame!” The Interpol lead was equally as furious. “Exactly how in the nine circles of hell can you fathom that I saw this coming?”

“Lana Skye been panting after Miles like a Miststück in heat since the moment she laid eyes on him! Meanwhile, my equally culpable betrothed has regressed into a lovesick schoolboy ever since that Hure came about, as well! Do not try to claim to have not noticed! Surely not even you can be so foolish and blind, Lang?”

“Um, guys?” Kay cut in awkwardly, taking one headphone off her ear. “Can I say something?”

“Great steaming bouts of steaming magma on a beeline for the orphanage!” Lang bellowed, visibly cantankerous at being interrupted. “What the hell is it, Kay?”

“Er, based on what I could tell discernably perceive from the conversation, it sounds like Ku forced them to do that cocaine,” she informed them, her green eyes wide. “Mr. Edgeworth managed to dodge it, just barely but it seems like Lana was having a bizarre reaction to it. They’re not em …. canoodling anymore. And she’s now expressing extreme regret for her actions already.”

“How noble of the floozy to take her tongue out of my fiancé’s mouth long enough to have a conscience!” Sarcasm was positively dripping from Franziska’s tongue. “Someone please present that Schlampe a merit award!”

Badd sighed and loosened his grip on her long enough to turn her around to face him. Placing firm hands on her shoulders, he peered down at her with a serious, no-nonsense expression.

“Can you try to be rational for five seconds here, Franziska?” He asked evenly. “I don’t know if you’ve ever done cocaine before…”

“You fool! Iwis, I would not ever be foolish enough to allow such a thing!” She scoffed. “A Von Karma would never sully their body or permit their mind to stray from the path of perfection with prohibited pollutants!”

“Bully for you, but I’m no stranger to coke myself,” the burly man retorted, smirking at the stunned look on Kay’s face. “Don’t judge! For the record, it was way before my LAPD days. Plus, it was the 1980’s, when that stuff was everywhere! The point is, blow changes your mood, your psyche. You think you’re invincible …and you’re not yourself.”

Franziska was silent as she pondered this, sinking into a nearby chair as she contemplated his words, but then suddenly, her expression grew fierce again as her arm shot out and she pointed an accusing finger at Lang.

Badd groaned and clapped a hand to his forehead as he realized his assiduous effort to calm things down had all been for naught and that the heated loggerheads would continue. It was a scathing war of words and the victor would be who could hurt the other one worse. Both Agents were at each other’s throats like savage hungry dogs fighting over dominance.

“This is still your fault, you fool!”

“Of course, it is!” Lang agreed acidly, crossing his arms, and giving her one of his best feral glowers. “Everything is my fault. World War Two was my mea culpa as well, didn’t you know? Please do regale us about how some Asian King Pin prompted your undercover lover to do his job and act the part of the boyfriend role with Lana – while the latter was under the influence of coerced cocaine! – was my bad, Ane-san?”

“You. Sent. Them. To. A. Drug. Lord’s. House,” Franziska bit out through gritted teeth. “Yet you did not possess the foresight to arm them with dopamine or some sort of substance impeder to counteract against any sort of illicit drug that may have been given to them – such as cocaine?”

Lang looked away guiltily for a moment and her voice raised several notches.

“Surely you had access to these kinds of preventative substances did you not, you verdammt fool?!”

“What do you take me for?! The neurotransmitter synthetics are over there in that locked box beside Kay,” He muttered uncomfortably, fidgeting with his sunglasses. “It simply didn’t occur to me to administer them to Miles and Lana at the time, because…”

“Because of what, you foolish fool of a fopdoodle?” She screamed, her face red with fury. “Because your pea-sized brain could not grasp the concept of how such panacea methods only tend to work when you use them?!”

“It was an innocuous, early evening dinner for just the two of them and Ku and not a wild, late-night party this time!” Lang shouted back defensively, albeit with more subdued zeal now. “How was I supposed to speculate that their proclivities extended to any given occasion that arose?!”

“If memory serves me correctly, the first party that you schlepped them off to did wind up turning into one of those, and you didn’t arm them with any sort of anti-drug defense mechanism then either, you foolish, bungling … Arschloch!”

“You watch your filthy, insubordinate mouth, Agent Von Karma!” He snarled, clearly needing no translation for this latest Deutsche aspersion. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to here?”

“A completely incompetent fool of an Agent that I have the misfortune of having as my superior?” She goaded. “Or should I raise my cadence to a higher octave so you and the rest of your canine kin can better hear and understand me?

“One more smartass remark out of you and I’ll have your Agent badge, you unruly little hellion!” Lang slammed his fist against the counter behind him, causing the whole van to quake and poor Kay to jump slightly. “And believe you me, I don’t make threats, I make promises!”

Lang’s temper was like TNT, once the sparks started to sizzle there was very little time to duck and cover. Franziska knew she should just stay quiet and wait for the storm to abate, but she couldn’t help sparring with him. Like trained boxers they circled one another; the kid gloves were off, and it was fighting time. She traded slur for slur, insult for insult, dig for dig. When his temper blew hot and he started thumping the furniture with his fist, she knew she’d won. He’d never laid an actual hand on her, but she knew she’d pushed him harder than was wise. For every pound she weighed he weighed three and it was all solid muscle. It would have been an uneven fight even if she hadn’t been in her current “delicate condition.”

I am in the right. I know I am. But none of these Dummkopfs will listen! I could explain all damn day and they still would not get it. My face has become rigid, jaw clamped tight, teeth grinding. It is time to get out of here before I do something that they will make me regret.

The scenario would undoubtedly get even uglier than it already had if things further escalated. She needed to get the hell out of there. She shot out of her seat and in standing, her chair flew backward and fell over. The Wolf Man glared at her as if she’d done it on purpose.

“I am taking a walk!” Franziska announced, flinging open the rear van doors and stepping out into the cool night air, storming off before anyone could reply. On the way out, she slammed the door hard; she hoped their minuscule brains rattled within their witless skulls. “I refuse to breathe the same air as that foolish, slack-jawed, bipedal mongrel for another instant!”

Her mind raced as she stomped around the neighborhood, her face still flushed with anger.

In Lang’s head, in all their minds, surely, my retreat was a victory to them already. In their warped logic, my anger meant they were right. Just because they had mostly kept their cool does not prove the veracity of their argument. They are just coolly wrong. I need to turn away now, turn before I snap at their wide, judgmental stares. “There she goes again, all pregnant and irrational” is the shared consensus that I can hear them thinking! With each stride I take, away from them, I am wholly aware I am the subject of discussion. Not so much the reason I lost it, but the fact that I lost it. And so, it goes on, with them feeling superior and me never altering the status quo, no matter how hard I try.

She let out a slow controlled breath and attempted to loosen her body movements. She was walking like a clockwork soldier and that was no way to be in this neighborhood. She gave her shoulders a wiggle and lolled her head in a circle, letting her stride slacken to a more casual pace. It was a decent effort, enough to fool the casual observer, but for the onlooker with a keen eye, she was a walking advert for tension. Her eyes moved with the alertness that comes from heavy stress and her hands remained clenched by subconscious demand.

The expecting mother tried to calm down and neatly assess the situation from a bird’s eye point of view.

She and Shi-Long Lang had always butted heads in the past and rarely seen eye-to-eye. She knew that eventually, her anger with the Agent would fizzle and surely come to pass.

But as for Miles and that strumpet/Miststück/Schlampe Lana Skye…

Franziska dug her fingernails so hard into her palms that she could feel the tender skin tear and start to bleed slightly. She wasn’t sure when or even if her fury at them would ever cease.

Miles Edgeworth and Franziska Von Karma
Interpol Headquarters, Borginia
October 13, 2024, 10:30 PM

“OK, I heard them recap details about the next shipment, which Ku insisted wouldn’t be a dud this time, and then Mr. Edgeworth and Lana were preparing to exit the premises,” Kay apprised them as the van pulled up to the office. “That was about half an hour ago, so they should be here shortly to debrief.”

“Assuming we can manage to get Miles through the door before Agent Von Karma has his head on a platter,” Lang stated dryly, directing his sights at the tight-lipped German, who was sitting across from him with her arms crossed while pointedly evading his pointed stare. She didn’t reply to her boss, but the stiffness of her posture and the tightness of her jaw indicated that the matter was nowhere near resolved, just resting.

“Franziska?” Kay placed a hand on the expecting mom’s shoulder, her eyes filled with concern. “Are you going to be alright?”

The tempestuous beauty nodded mutely. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

During her walk, she’d managed to clear her head enough to acknowledge that while Lang may have been naïve at best, and negligent at the worst, what with not foreseeing the need to arm Miles and Lana with defensive solutions, her main issue had naught to do with her supervisor. No, in the end, her issues had everything to do with her loose-lipped swain and his porn star dubbed faux bimbo! She’d swallowed their excuses and acts of innocence long enough. It was time for some answers.

At long last, around 11:00, the barrister strolled in, with his undercover partner in tow, a coffee cup in her hand, just like last time. It was déjà vu all over again. Except that on this occasion, Lana’s scarf was wrapped around her slender bare shoulders as a wrap in place of her phony boyfriend’s jacket. The brunette slid into the seat next to Lang while Miles stood rigidly at her side.

Franziska thought she’d calmed down a tad by now, she truly did. But at the sight of her future husband next to the cheap jezebel she deemed to be the cause of all her suspicions and headaches, she felt the burning rage once again hissing through her body like deathly poison, screeching a demanded release in the form of unwanted violence. It was like a volcano erupting; fury sweeping off her like ferocious waves. The wrath consumed like, engulfing her moralities and destroying the boundaries of loyalty.

Miles caught the flared look in her eyes and gulped, desperately wishing he’d gotten a coffee for himself as well. It would have given him something to fidget or toy with, rather than stand there completely unarmed and defenseless, under all their unrelenting stares; three sets of weary eyes, and one downright murderous.

The dread crept over him like an icy chill, numbing his brain. In this frozen state, his mind offered him only one thought.

It would be today.

There was no more avoiding it. He felt like a cow being herded into a truck for the slaughterhouse, only the unsuspecting future steak didn’t know where it was going and he did.

Nowhere good. And he had nowhere left to hide.

His nerves were frayed to the quick. In his building anxiety, he constructed elaborate rationalizations for why everything would turn out hunky-dory. Nevertheless, the nagging voice in the back of his mind spoke of nothing but doom ahead.

As Franziska reflected on her partner’s betrayal, her lip curled and her nostrils flared. Her body felt as if lead coursed through it instead of blood. Her once sunny childhood memories of him now felt as if they were tarred, disfigured into something grotesque. She took a moment to drag her gaze off him. She couldn’t bear to look his way, because if they made eye contact, she thought she might vomit. Disgust. Total disgust.

The reticence hung precariously in the air like the suspended moment before a falling crystal vase shatters on the ground.

“I do not see any point in wasting any more time here, do you?” Her cadence was filled with venomous sweetness. “Why keep ignoring the pink elephant in the room?”

“Franziska…” Lang began, but she held up her hand, silencing him.

“You have done enough already, have you not, Agent Lang?” She asked softly, though with palpable intensity in her tone. “Do you not owe me this much?”

“Maybe we should give them a few moments alone,” Badd suggested. “We’ll just go grab some coffee…”

He was already rising from his seat, with Kay following suit, but Franziska raised her hand.

“No, please stay. After all, you all had to witness my humiliation about the events that transpired tonight. Why leave half the story untold?”

Lang crossed his arms, sighed in resignation, and shook his head.

“You’ve got five minutes to get this out of your system,” he stated firmly. “Like calm, rational adults. Then we get straight to the debriefing.”

“Which type of debriefing did you mean, Agent Lang?” Franziska purred. “The kind where we go over the details of the dealings that our undercover lovers here secured tonight, or the kind of debriefing where male undergarments are removed? AKA the kind that this first drunken, and now drugged … Hure keeps repeatedly attempting to do with my fiancé? Assuming, of course, that tonight she was not finally successful in her endeavors?”

Miles gawked at his fiancée in disbelief, the color draining out of his face.

“Franziska, you are completely out of line!” He rasped, struggling to maintain an even tone. “I will have you know that no such lewd conduct occurred tonight whatsoever!”

“None that cameras picked up, Liebling?” She asked silkily before her voice hardened like glass. “Or none that you are willing to admit to at the moment?”

“I resent this aggressive line of badgering!” Lana cried; her eyes filled with tears of indignation. “Yes, Miles and I kissed, but nothing else happened, I swear it! I know even going that far was still wrong and I’ll admit my conduct tonight was unseemly and unprofessional but I will not allow myself to be slandered in such a manner! I was forced to do cocaine and thence, was not myself tonight, Franziska! I’m – I’m still not!”

She dropped her head in her hands.

“Ugh, my head…”

“Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?” Franziska sneered. “This helpless, damsel in distress act only works with the men, Agent Hot Lips! However, as a woman, I am not only onto you but completely immune to your transparently man-eating ways and so-called feminine wiles!”

“Meine Dame…” Miles began but she cut him off, her intonation as sharp as a blade as she continued the dressing-down of her oppugnant.

“How exactly do you expect me to react when this is now the second time that I have witnessed you being all over my fiancé like the hair on Lang’s back?”

“Not so fast!” The Wolf Man started to protest against this unprecedented insult, but Kay shushed him. Like a chastened pup, he obediently piped down, then mumbled, “my back’s not that hairy, is it?”

She nodded her affirmation with a smirk, then waved her hand in a silencing motion at him, like a disapproving mother trying to quiet down her unruly child at Sunday mass. Lang had no choice but to sullenly oblige while Franziska continued her ruthless tirade.

“In both instances, Agent Skye, you conveniently claimed you were under the influence of some substance.” She shifted her accusing glower towards Miles. “And how do you expect me to feel, Sir Baron Kiss-A-Lot, after watching how you threw yourself into this role of a lifetime with such gusto, hmmm? However, unlike your cohort, you do not have the handy excuse of drugs as an alibi!”

“Please, leave Miles out of this!” Lana pleaded, still rubbing her temple with her free hand as she set her drained cup down on the ground. “I’m so sorry. I was the one strung out on coke, not him! He was simply acting accordingly as my lover because it was either that, or we’d risk blowing the entire operation! Surely you can understand that?”

“All I understand is that you’ve been disgustingly panting after each other like a couple of dogs in heat from the moment you came here! Moreover, you’re supposed to be affianced too yet you brazenly continue to conduct yourself in such a licentious, undignified manner with my future spouse! I am beginning to wonder if that whole tragic tale about your jailbird fiancé was just a ruse so that you could look like the unsuspecting, innocent party while you tried to seduce mine!”

“You’re getting way below the belt here, Franziska.” Lana’s lip quivered. “Don’t you dare talk about Jake in such a manner! There’s no need to drag him into this!”

“And why not? How do we know Jake even exists?”

“I know Jake Marshall. He most assuredly does exist…” Miles offered weakly but his fiancée ignored him and continued the relentless haranguing of her rival.

“What proof do we have that you even are engaged to this suitor you speak of? There is no ring, ergo no physical evidence of such troth! All we have is your word, which means nothing in light of your indecorous actions!” Franziska raged. “If this Jake Marshall does exist, then he is the most cuckolded man in existence! I cannot believe he is completely unaware of what a vile, filthy slut he has proposed to! A Schlampe of such loose morals she would dare try to sleep with a pregnant woman’s betrothed!”

“You shut your foul mouth, Franziska Von Karma!” Lana rose unsteadily to her feet. While her eyes remained slightly glazed, her lethal stare was savagely piercing, as if it’d be able to tear her foe apart in a blinding teal light. “Don’t even think of going there unless you’re prepared for the consequences!”

“Do you honestly think you can scare me?” Franziska shouted back. “You are nothing more than an aging, pathetic, oversexed cougar that needs to prowl after a man who belongs to another because she obviously is not satisfied by her own ensnared Liebhaber!”

Her lips curled into a contemptuous sneer as she pointedly ignored the cautionary flare of her incensed enemy’s nostrils.

“Is that what this is truly all about, Lana Skye? Did you wish to sink your predatory talons into the one who got away? Was this all just so you can finally stop wondering how old Jake stacks up, or should I say, lacks in comparison to my Miles in bed?”

The prosecutor felt his heart drop down into his shoes as he watched his ex’s icy glare lock onto Franziska’s. They were the same ones the brunette had reserved for the apprehended guilty criminals back in the day; a contemptuous, hateful disdain. But it was more than that. There was also a terseness she wasn’t even trying to mask … like the false warning silence before the loud explosive sound of thunder.

“I don’t need to wonder how Miles stacks up,” Lana seethed, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Been, there, done that already!”

She caught the poleaxed expression on Franziska’s face and narrowed her eyes.

“There you go! The cat’s out of the bag! Are you happy now?”

The Frau was thunderstruck at the revelation, although, in hindsight, she knew she shouldn’t have been.

It was exactly what she’d suspected all along. But believing something and hearing your confounded suspicions out loud in such a manner was still a thousand times worse than she could have ever anticipated. This was it at last; her worst nightmare come true.

Sensing her antagonist’s retreat, Lana stepped up her attack, both guns blazing.

“Let’s just get it out in the open already! Yes, Franziska, you’ve heard it straight from the horse’s mouth now! Miles and I – we’ve fucked! We fucked hard! However, that was eight bloody years ago! Was that what you wanted to hear?! Yeah, we work well together – because we have chemistry! But I’m not in love with him and for some unknown reason, he is madly in love with your spoiled, insane, jealous Arsch! Regardless of that, you’re the future mother of his child, so stop being so goddamn petty and insecure and juvenile and grow the hell up!”

The no-holds-barred decisive testimony echoed throughout the soundless room. You could have heard a pin drop in the aftermath of Lana’s barbed words, which could never be taken back or unheard. They’d now been witnessed by everybody present, as clear as a bell.

The truth was like the sun. One could shut it out for a length of time but it would never, ever truly go away.

A glance and one small comment stirred a hurricane of harsh and hurled insults. Miles’ phizog burned crimson, just a tone lighter than Franziska’s puce visage. This was no longer “He said, She said.” Blood had been spilled; feelings hurt. Their bond hadn’t been too sturdy at all lately, and after this, he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that now their union would never again be as strong as it’d once been.

And now it was too late for recanting or regrets.

Franziska’s mind reeled. Her voice shook as she turned her devastated, accusing gaze onto her shamefaced fiancé. Their voices rose above the tense silence.

“You lied to me, Miles.”

“Meine Dame –”

She shook her head, her heart pounding rapidly as she felt the furor once again coursing through her veins.

“I explicitly asked you, repeatedly, if Lana had ever been more to you than just your boss and you blatantly denied it. You looked me dead in the face and lied to me. How am I ever supposed to trust you again?”

The eyes that regarded him now rendered him speechless. She was past rage, past yelling. What was now left behind was something much, much worse.

The Pandora’s box had been opened, sending each word full speed ahead to shatter their souls into a million pieces.

Her cold fury burnt with dangerous intensity. He’d never worried about her frequent fireworks and showers of red-hot sparks. It was these bitterly cold, slow-burning rages that threatened to engulf their relationship.

Angry eyes were just the start, soon to be followed by the dismissive strut, then the next bout of slamming and clipped words. Franziska would turn, all a smolder, but her familiar, loving face was gone. Instead, she now bore the baleful mask of her stern father, the one who’d raised her on the fancy side of town in the house where Miles’ own life had been hell. Between the perfect stripes of eyeliner, the gray orbs he’d fallen for were no more than stormy chips of ice.

When someone looked at you like that, eyes holding total anger, it hurt; but when that someone held your heart in their hand, it killed. Even if you deserved it, sometimes especially if you did, the loss was a fine pair of concrete boots and your own soul was an unforgivably cold, raging river.

Billy Joel – The Stranger