by Nicole Fox
But there’s a way to avoid all of that.
“No,” she mutters. She stops doing chest compressions. She wipes the sweat away from her face, slicking her hair back. “No. No. This can’t be happening.”
She’s wide-eyed, shaking her head like she’s a mental case. There’s certainly guilt written all over her, but there’s something more, too. Her bag is right next to her. She could have called 911, but if she had called them before I showed up, I’d hear the sirens by now.
I walk over to her bag. I pick it up. It’s pathetic. When I pull the zipper, some of the material rips. I find her phone in the bag and hold it out to her.
“Do you need to call someone?” I ask. She slowly turns her head. She looks at her phone. She must see her reflection in it. She shakes her head again before putting her forehead in her hands. I watch her for a few seconds. “You killed a man.”
“I didn’t mean it,” she mumbles. “God, I’m sorry. God.”
“Why did you come back here with him?”
“H-he was a bad person. I just wanted to make sure—he didn’t do … I just wanted to keep an eye on him.”
My mind jumps to rape. I imagine his hands on her. My grip on her bag tightens involuntarily.
“He touched you,” I say. A statement, not a question. She looks up at me, staring up at me with her nose scrunched up.
“How did you … ?” She stops. “Oh. No. That wasn’t the problem. I mean, it was, but it wasn’t. He killed a girl after getting drunk. DUI.”
She still hasn’t called 911. Or her father.
I crouch down next to her. It smells like piss down here, but I can’t be certain if it’s coming from the asphalt or the body.
“Do you want me to call one of your parents?” I ask. She rests her head against the heel of her palm. She closes her eyes.
“No. They can’t know about this.”
Reputation is something I understand better than most. A lot of doors were closed to me when I was building Mariya’s Revenge; my father’s notoriety turned me into a pariah for a lot of people.
But Allison’s father is alive, and whether or not he keeps his job is dependent on his reputation. She’s worried about contacting anybody because of her father’s job—being connected to a murder would give any police chief a bad image and the mayor would likely force him to resign in order to appoint a chief who wasn’t closely connected to a felony.
Her body begins to shake.
“Tell me you’re not crying,” I say. She shakes her head.
“You don’t understand,” she mumbles. “Everything is over. My father is going to lose his job. Even if I don’t go to prison, I’ll never be able to get a job. I should have just let him do what he wanted.”
“That’s pathetic,” I tell her.
“You don’t understand.”
I watch her. The crying is an annoying habit, but even with the tears, she’s beautiful. As she chokes down a sob, I’m brought back to a memory.
My mother is crying. My father keeps telling her that she can’t tell anyone. When I was older, after I found out that conversation was about the Bratva, I asked him how he could be certain she would keep the secret and stay married to him. He told me that she knew if she turned against him, a jury would inevitably question if she had known he was in the Bratva the whole time and she’d therefore be guilty by association. Commitments are fueled by fear. My mother was fearful of my father’s power and violence. My father was fearful that she’d expose him and make him look weak.
I could blackmail Allison. Use her fear to my advantage. I could blackmail the chief, too, but I know the chief is significantly more capable of luring me into a trap. Allison is weak, young, and malleable. Her father is significantly more valuable to me, but there’s a way for me to secure the chief’s loyalty through her. The tail wagging the dog, so to speak.
“I can deal with the body,” I say.
Her head shoots up. “What? Why?”
“Because you’re afraid of what a murder investigation will do to you and your family.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“Because I want you to marry me.”
Silence permeates the space between us.
I stare at her as she stares at me. If I was her husband, it would make me immune to police investigations. Nobody is going to go after the son-in-law of the police chief unless there was enough evidence to convince the whole city I was the Bratva boss—which would never happen.
A laugh bursts out of her. She covers her mouth with her hand. “Are you insane? Are you on something? Were they selling molly in there?”
“Allison Harrington,” I say. Her smile vanishes at the sound of her name. “If I marry you, it will force the police to stop trying to investigate me and it will add legitimacy to my business. It’s a rational transaction.”
“I thought this club was legitimate,” she says.
“Cut the bullshit,” I say. “I know why you were here. I know that your father wants to bury me and I’m not going to let him do that.”
“I was here because of him—”
“You came to my nightclub on the chance that a criminal was here?” I retort.
“No, not exactly, but—”
“You haven’t noticed yet, have you?” I ask.
She throws her hands up, letting them smack down onto her thighs. “Noticed what? That you’re insane?”
I turn and point upward. Her eyes follow in the direction that I’m pointing to. Three camera lenses point down toward us like sentries’ eyes.
I glance back down at her. Her face is stark white.
“I don’t even need to go to the police,” I say. “I can take this video straight to the media.”
“It … it shows that I hurt him in self-defense. It shows that it was just pepper spray.”
“It shows you here, not calling 911. How long has it been since he started dying? Certainly long enough that people will wonder what the fuck your father did wrong while raising you. The court of public opinion does not operate on innocent until proven guilty, Allison. All it takes is the shadow of a doubt. You’ll never outrun it.”
Her fingers sink into her hair. She grips onto it.
“You’re a piece of shit,” she whispers.
“Sure. I’d consider that a step above murderer.”
“I need time,” she says. “Give me a day.”
“I’m not giving you anything. You either marry me or this city will be screaming for blood over your family’s hypocrisy. Let’s all hope that every defense lawyer in the city doesn’t realize they could use this to claim that any crime your father presided over should be null and void. That would be a significant number of released criminals and it would retraumatize victims’ families. And the press … I shudder to imagine.”
I drop her bag near the dumpster. “The offer ends in the next minute. I need to know if I should call the police or call someone to clean up the body.
“If you call the police, I’ll just tell them that you threatened to throw me in prison.”
I get on my knees. “Those cameras don’t have audio. Does it look like I’m begging you to not blackmail me?”
“I hate you,” she whispers. “You have no idea what you’re asking from me.”
“I’m asking your hand in marriage,” I counter. “It is a good deal. You should take it.”
Her fists clench. “The defense lawyers would never have a case. Those criminals wouldn’t walk free.”
“It wouldn’t be difficult to plant some doubt into people’s minds. You sound like Daddy’s little girl. You two must be close if he sent you here and you did it. So, I’d bet that you two have talked recently. If you talked to him at all today, it’s going to point to the idea that he was involved in killing this man. And an idea is all the public needs to start questioning how corrupt your father is.”
She stares at me. Still on my knees, I pretend to propose to her. She smacks my hands down before grabbing one of them.
“I’ll marry you,” she whispers hoarsely. “Until death do us part. Let’s fucking hope that happens soon.”
5
Allison
I sit in the center of my room, staring at the window. In the apartment below us, I hear Andrew Straub, a four-year-old with an attitude problem, screaming. I have no idea why he’s awake at 5:13 a.m., but he’s always up before the sun.
My morning is a hazy blur.
5:25 a.m. The sound of car doors slamming shut and speeding toward the center of the city.
5:40 a.m. The sound of a man pissing in the apartment. Julia must have gotten Jonathan to come over.
5:50 a.m. The sound of the creaking floorboard in front of the door. The door softly closing behind someone.
5:55 a.m. I stand up. I pull out the business card that the asshole—Lev Alekseiev—gave me. He wrote his address on the back, telling me to visit at 7 a.m. to talk about our arrangement. The place is on the rich side of the city, just above the reach of the law.
Lev warned me that if I tell anyone about our deal, the security camera footage will be sent to every news station in the city. All night, I’ve told myself the facts: it was self-defense, I didn’t mean to murder him, and there was a minimal chance that the pepper spray would kill him.
But he did die.
And I’m an accomplice in hiding the crime. Maybe, if I had called the police right after it happened, there could have been minimal repercussions. The moment got away from me. My mind was flooded by the chaos and Lev took advantage of it.
While Lev escorted me back to his office, he called someone to take care of the body. Afterward, he laid down his threats like appetizers—casual but with refinement and if one of them wasn’t to my taste, there was another one that would be.
It certainly didn’t help that while we talked, he leaned against his desk, making the lines of his body discernible through his white dress shirt. Away from the dead body and in the glow of his office’s lighting, I saw his jade eyes, the granite-sharp jawline, and a level of indifference bordering on sociopathic.
And yet when his hand touched my arm, my body wanted nothing to do with the warnings in my thoughts. It just wanted more. Sex, to me, has always been a chore, nothing more. It’s never been like this, where a single touch can turn me feral.
As the memory overwhelms me, heat flushes under my skin. I open my door and take the four steps to the kitchen. I fill a glass of water, drinking all of it before setting it in the sink. I need to give Lev a new deal—something he won’t be able to resist so I can get out of marrying him.
I could sleep with him.
God, I need to sleep.
Banging on the door. I jump, my heart racing in my chest. The police. He turned me in anyway.
How much will the women in prison hate me for being the daughter of the police chief? I’ve heard enough stories to know what goes on behind bars. Nothing pretty.
Will Elizabeth prosecute me and charge me with first-degree murder, just to prove to the public and the mayor that she wasn’t close to me? Her career will only go as far as her reputation takes her, and she wouldn’t think twice about erasing an insignificant black smear like me from her public record.
What if the public decides my father was an accomplice? Reporters can be vicious. Citizens are worse.
Whoever is at the door knocks again, softer now. Julia’s bed creaks as she tosses and turns.
I take a deep breath. I concentrate on moving forward, but it’s impossible to ignore my legs trying to fail underneath me. As I open the door, I prepare for a police officer to grab me, wrenching my arms behind me to handcuff me.
It’s a cop on my doorstep. But not just any cop.
“Ally,” my father says. I glance around him. No other policemen.
“What are you doing here?” I ask. His forehead scrunches up.
“It’s nice to see you too,” he says. “I kept calling you and you never picked up. You said you’d call when you got home. Did you get too drunk and fall asleep?”
The disapproval in his voice drapes over me. If he knew what happened, he’d never be able to look at me or himself again.
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “I was just tired and the trial was on my mind.”
I press my thumb against my lips. I shouldn’t have mentioned the trial. Jeffrey Douglas could have been reported missing by now.
“I know that had to be hard on you.” He glances past me. “Do you have a visitor or something? Can I come in?”
“Sorry, right. Come in.” I step aside and my father walks in. He looks around the apartment like there’s going to be a naked man hiding in a corner somewhere. “I’m sorry about not calling, Dad.”
“I know you wouldn’t have just let me worry,” he says. “You’re a good daughter. You just need to be more responsible if you’re going to be a lawyer.”
“I’m not that good of a daughter,” I say. He claps his hand on my shoulder, giving it a small squeeze.
“You made a small mistake,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’re bad. I just want you to think more about your future when you’re making decisions. It’s not even about calling me. It’s being aware of your actions.”
He lets his hand fall back to his side.
“I’m sorry,” I say, swallowing back the truth like bile. He sighs.
“Honestly, it’s not just you,” he says. “I’m under a lot of pressure right now. The mayor is breathing down my neck. She doesn’t understand what it’s like to have everyone constantly questioning you and deciding their own verdicts about who you are.”
“What?” I rub my neck, feeling where Jeffrey bruised it. “Why is the mayor questioning you? What happened? Are you being accused of something?”
“No, no, Ally, it’s not that.” He leans against the counter. “Not directly, at least. There are some allegations of police officers being bought by the Mafia. I’m certain it’s bullshit, but it’s always bullshit that ends people’s careers.”
He rubs his temple, his eyes looking down at the laminate counter, but I know his mind is twisted around the idea of losing his job.
“Your career isn’t going to end like that,” I tell him. “You’re going to retire after a long career and everyone is going to talk about how you were the best man for the job. They’ll put up a statue of you in front of city hall.”
“That’s some blind faith you have,” he jokes. He grabs me, pulling me into a hug. I hug him back. When he pulls away, he peers at me with the same dark irises as mine. “Are you okay? If you’re hungover, eggs can help with that. An egg sandwich is always a good plan.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “But I have to start getting ready. I have an appointment at Chanson Law School for a tour of the campus.”
“I can take you if you want.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I say. “The last thing I want is for everyone to realize I’m the daughter of the police chief. I love you, Dad, but I want to earn it myself. Not because I’m fifty percent you.”
“I hear you, kiddo. Well, good luck with the tour.” He squeezes my arm and turns to leave. “Wish me luck with the mayor.”
“Good luck,” I say as he opens the door. He gives me a quick smile before slipping out, softly closing the door behind him.
In the past, I could count on my hands how many times I’d lied to my father. Now, I’ve lied so much that I’d break a polygraph. I’d fall apart on the witness stand.
A chill races down my spine.
I head toward the shower, though I’m fairly certain I’ll never be clean again.
I expected the house to be large. I was even prepared to see a mansion. But Lev’s house is massive. It’s white, two stories tall, and the property stretches far enough that he never has to worry about neighbors seeing him. The front-facing rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows with white trimming. The entrance has two columns on either side of it, granite and imposing.
After using the intercom system to talk to a
woman and explain who I am, the massive, intricate metal gates to the property swing open. I drive in, parking near a black pick-up truck that’s twice the size of my car. He must be compensating for something.
As I approach the front doors, I notice there’s wire framing inside the glass. All I can see through it is a long, wide hallway.
I look for a doorbell. There isn’t one. As I’m about to knock, I see a small, short, older woman approaching. She opens the door.
“Hello, Miss Allison,” she says in a faint Russian accent. She indicates for me to step in. “May I take your bag?”
“No thank you,” I say, gripping it tightly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name …”
“Irina,” she says. “Shall I take you to Mr. Alekseiev? He is in the den.”
“Yes, please. Thank you.”
She starts walking. As I follow her, I’m taken aback by the utter extravagance of the house. There’s a chandelier above us, limestone floors, and a spiral staircase with a handrail that’s carved to look like writhing snakes.
I nearly walk into Irina. She stops at the first door in the hallway. Even the arched entrances here are elegant.
Irina gestures for me to wait before she steps into the room.
“Mr. Alekseiev, Miss Allison is here,” she says.
“Thank you, Irina,” Lev’s voice says.
She steps out and indicates for me to walk in.
“Thank you, Irina,” I tell her.
“It was my pleasure.”
She leaves as I walk into the room. There’s a large fireplace on the west side, two love seats, and two recliners curved around it. In the center of the furniture is a large glass coffee table. There are various bookshelves around the room and a small bar set up on the east side. The décor makes it appears small and cozy, but I’m pretty sure it’s larger than my apartment’s kitchen and living room combined.
Lev is sitting in one of the recliners, a lowball glass in his hand. Unlike me, still wearing the shoddy the clothes from yesterday, he’s changed. He’s wearing a new dress shirt and different pants. It’s less formal than what he had on before, but it only means his body is more apparent than ever.