Chapter Text
Elizabeth Scott was many things, but a fool she was not.
And even if she hadn’t been an FBI profiler, she was certain she would have caught on eventually. How could she not? Professional training was not required to find something suspect about an elementary school teacher who went out of town for alleged conferences every other weekend.
A woman’s intuition, they say.
To his credit, he hadn’t actually slipped. His calls and texts had all been clean and standard, his shirts had never had lipstick on them, he’d never smelled of unfamiliar perfume, not once had he backed out of sex claiming he was tired…
If anything, he really had been the picture-perfect partner since day one: always smiling and supportive, never raising his voice, most often the first one to apologize, magically had hot baths and fresh take-out waiting for her before she could even think to ask… Besides his questionable choice to make her pancakes for breakfast nearly every fucking day—she hadn’t had the heart to tell him she hated pancakes about as much as she hated wet socks—he had truly seemed like God’s gift to her for all the shitty men she’d been with throughout her life.
In hindsight, that should have been a huge red flag in and of itself.
No one is that perfect.
Still, a big part of her had felt stupid—and crazy and paranoid and guilty—when she’d slipped a bug on his jacket.
She had believed that her fiance was cheating on her.
She’d been right.
The rustle of stripped clothes, the moans of two people coming together, the gag-worthy dirty talk that he certainly had never used on her before… And by the sounds of their fleeting bits of conversation, it’d appeared to be not a one night stand but an ongoing affair, and the bitch had even had the audacity to ask how his cute little profiler was doing.
She had thought that sleeping with another woman was the worst thing he could have done.
She’d been wrong.
So very, unimaginably wrong.
Her eyes narrowed as she struggled to find out just where he was going—if there was even a destination in mind. The noise of traffic steadily faded, and his footsteps grew in both speed and volume right before coming to a sudden halt.
“You know, you should really learn to keep it in your pants.” A woman—though, not the one he’d just had a passionate tryst with. “You can only fuck around for so long before getting caught. What would our dear Elizabeth think if she found out her fiance is not so innocent after all?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
She had never heard him speak in that tone of voice before.
Today was just full of revelations, it seemed.
“You don’t need to know who I am—only that I’m here to remind you of what will happen if you fuck up.”
“That’s not necessary,” he snapped.
“Isn’t it? You’ve been engaged for months and she hasn’t even told anyone, for god’s sake.”
“Her dad has cancer.”
“And she’s getting cold feet.”
“You don’t know what the fuck—“
“What I do know is that she is the only thing that keeps you useful to Berlin. You lose her, you lose your protection—which we both know you’ll need once Reddington finds out you turned on him. Think about that the next time you decide to get your dick wet.”