by Ella James
Unless fate intervenes, all I have to do is find my father’s friend and offer him my dad’s congratulations. Wait, there he is! Riccardo. As soon as he sees me, his eyes light up, and we spend so long talking in the hall that my feet ache and traffic starts to flow around us like water streaming past a stone.
“It’s a lovely thing,” he’s saying, “what you’re doing for the…charity. I’ve always thought of it as brotherhood, but they say any gender these days.” His voice fades as my eyes catch on a tall form near the end of the hall.
Dark hair, and…the way he’s moving. But…it can’t be him. I can’t be seeing him again in this place, not within minutes of arriving—like some time warp. But I am. Time runs thin and then expands as my blood roils like the water in some wild tide.
My hunch was right: He’s here tonight. He’s walking down the hall ahead of me, moving toward the elevators like we’ve dropped into another universe where everything is muddled and wrong.
I feel dizzy as I think of the night I stepped into the elevator with him all those years ago, and my ring cut his face.
I wrap up my conversation with Riccardo, steal away with what I hope is tact. My heart pounds as my eyes fly over every tall form in the crowded hallway, seeking out his wide shoulders, the still-familiar stride.
And there he is; he’s moved slowly enough that I can track him. He’s stopped beside a woman now…and then they’re walking. I’m some thirty or forty feet behind, but luckily for me, they’re moving with the leisure of conversation.
I see his profile as he turns toward his fair-haired companion. Cold sweat sweeps me as I pick up my pace. I want to stick close enough so I don’t lose him but not so close he sees me while he’s talking to her.
Oh damn, she’s out—walking under the last archway that leads into the ballroom. The crowd beyond that thins as the hall runs toward the elevator banks. It’s only Luca plus a few men. He doesn’t seem to be engaging with them as he turns the corner.
I feel déjà vu so powerful my head spins. I can see my younger self pressing the up button. I can feel the shock as I stepped inside with him. All that fury. Then the overwhelming horror after he walked out with the bleeding cheek.
That wasn’t who I wanted to be: someone filled with bitterness and anger. How many times did I think of calling him after? Of dropping by. And in the end, I didn’t. In the end, I chose to armor up and guard my soft spots. I was young, though. It’s okay, I reassure myself. He didn’t seem upset in Central Park. He was probably there to manipulate me.
I walk quickly, but I find the hall beside the elevators empty.
I wait a few minutes before pressing the up arrow this time. Give him time to get where he was going. I’ll ride to the rooftop garden, hide out there until Jace arrives in twenty minutes. We’ll dance—we’re both accomplished ballroom dancers by now; it’s good exercise, and fun—and then I’ll go home and leave my memories where they belong: in the past.
The elevator dings. I step in, press the “close door” key, and hit the number 23. Then I lean into a corner of the gold-plated box and squeeze my eyes shut.
There’s a part of me that hates it that I still feel so much for him, that time and circumstance haven’t snuffed these feelings out. I’ve seen therapists and analysts and healers. It’s the lack of closure, I tell myself as I chew on my lower lip. It was Central Park and finding that a brief exposure to him can still light me like a match. It’s the helplessness I feel at that. Who would like it? Love is awful. Even tainted love can come back from the dead and slash you.
I’m lost in thought when the elevator lurches to a stop. I step out onto the building’s rooftop garden feeling heavy. I remember that night on the roof of my old building. How I waited there for him after that unexpected call, and then he stepped outside, and he was hurt. Because his dad attacked him.
That girl and boy are in the past, I tell myself as I step over to the rail. That’s how this works, isn’t it? It’s like train tracks. One direction, only once. Once you’ve passed a spot, you can’t go back. Every however many miles, everyone on the train just disappears and other versions are spawned. People that look just like the versions before, and have some overlap, but…aren’t the same. Are they? I’m not.
There’s a big tree out here. Over to my right, beside the rail. What kind of tree is that? It almost looks like an oak tree. Something from a storybook that ought to have a rope swing on it. I wonder how it got up here, and when. I walk slowly over to it, stand under its branches, peer over the rail. I watch the traffic, tracing bright veins with my tired gaze, wondering at every soul behind each little smear of brake lights.
And I feel him behind me. Tears well in my eyes. I struggle to fill my lungs as I feel him step still closer.
“Hi there.” It’s a murmur.
My lungs forget their function as I look over my shoulder at him. I’m try not to stare, but I drink in the details of his body in that tux. He’s holding what I think’s a cigarette—until I smell it in the wind.
One look at his face and I can see his eyes are heavy-lidded.
“Madam D.A.”
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper.
“Why not?”
“Do you want to be Houdini?”
His lips curve into a lazy grin. He looks decadent. Like a gorgeous, perfect hedonist in God’s own flawless body. And that tux.
“I’m all right with that,” he says.
“Are you high?”
He blinks, lips twitching. “What do you mean?” He takes a drag of the joint, holds it in his lungs, blows it away from me.
“That’s not a cigarette.”
He smirks down at it then up at me. “What is it?”
God, but does his voice have to be like that? I think I can see a scar on his cheek, but I tell myself it isn’t so. The ring I had on that night had been twisted around, so the tall emerald was nestled against my palm when I struck his face.
“What do you think?” I can see his chest rise on a breath, and for a moment, his face looks so serious—as if for just one heartbeat, he forgot his high. “Do I look older?” He smiles sadly. “Do I still look like that kid you knew?”
“I don’t think I knew whoever you’re talking about.”
He holds the joint out, and now I can’t read his face. “You like?”
I fist my hands. “No, of course not.”
“You guys putting people behind bars for green stuff?”
“This isn’t 1999.” I curl my lip—a put-on for him. So he can’t see that I’m almost panting at his nearness.
“What’s it like?” He leans back against the railing with one elbow, looking slim hipped and wide shouldered. “Having so much power?”
“I could ask the same of you.”
He smiles, looking like a scoundrel. “I’m a business person. Nothing special there.”
“No?”
“Nah.” The word is soft. It draws my gaze to his lips. Why do they have to look the same?
“I saw you see me,” he says.
I look at the floor—because I can’t just be smooth.
“That night after the election. You were looking at me.”
“I was looking at the middle. You just happened to be there.”
“Why the middle?” God, his voice is soft like smoke. His smoke smells good; I still like marijuana even if I left that off the campaign flyers.
“That’s where you look, just…you find a person. To lock onto. Helps you not process how big the crowd is.”
“It was big. Everybody came out for the pretty woman with the big brain.”
Something changes with his face. I think I see him clench his jaw, and then he takes a breath. He looks uncomfortable. Like something’s hurting him.
“Why did you?” I whisper.
He gives me that twitch of a smile. Just one side, so he looks roguish, but I know—I think I still know—that’s a smile he does when he’s not happy. “We were in the neighborhood.”
>
“You and Isabella.”
“Isa,” he says. His lips bend into a small frown, and a notch forms between his dark brows. An awkward moment passes before his blue eyes meet mine again. “Are you happy—with the job?”
“Why do you care?”
He blinks, and I watch as his features school themselves into something more neutral. He shuts his eyes, so brief I can’t be sure it happened.
He gives me a long look. “Have a nice night.”
Then he’s walking toward the door. I look up, searching the roofline for cameras. I can’t see—it’s too dark—but I can’t stop myself from moving in his wake.
“Don’t go yet.”
He turns slowly to me, the poker face gone. He looks like he did after I slapped him.
“I still want to know.” I’m startled by my own words and the painful hoarseness of my voice. “Were you in love with Isa? No wrong answers. I won’t prosecute. For that.” My cheeks are burning and my eyes sting slightly.
He regards me with the poker face back up—at least it mostly is. It’s like he’s looking back in time and so his eyes aren’t focused.
His mouth…there’s just this little twist of some emotion. I can see him inhale. “Elise…” He blows the breath out. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
His dark form glimmers as my eyes well. “So you were. And I’m a fool for asking. Probably on camera.” I throw my hands up, glancing dizzily up at the roofline.
“There’s no camera.” He holds up a cell phone. “They’re my cameras.”
That makes me laugh. “Well, I know you’ll delete it.”
He steps closer to me. “I’d delete it for you.”
I shut my eyes. I don’t want to move. Not ever again. His hand on my upper arm. His gentle fingers firm around my shoulder. “You’re still everything I thought you were,” he murmurs, his eyes on mine as he says that. My knees are wobbling like they might buckle. He shifts his weight, coming close enough that I can smell his marijuana breath, the bite of liquor under it. He kisses my cheek near the jaw, and for a tiny moment, I can feel his forehead brush my temple.
“No, rosa.” He’s looking down, and there’s an inch of space between us. “It was…my father.” His shoulders rise and fall, and his hand tightens on my shoulder. “He…died. And—” His hand lets me go as his eyes flicker to mine. “I had…problems.” I can see him swallow, see the regret in his features. “Didn’t want to fuck your shit up,” he rasps. “Is it better if I say I fucked her?” He smiles sadly. “I don’t want to be your tragic story.”
“You’re a tragedy without a sequel, Luca. So it just ends that way.” Tears shimmer in my eyes so I can’t even see his face now.
His hand catches mine, the motion so quick that it startles me. He leads me over to the rail, right near the door but in the shadows. His hands frame my face. “It doesn’t end like that. You want another ending?”
I nod, brainless, just a throbbing heartbeat.
“Here.” He kisses me, and it’s so hard and rough that when we break apart, I press my fingers to my lips to see if they’re bleeding.
“It ends like that.” He lifts his brows, and there’s the face I knew.
Then he turns around and walks away.
9
Luca
In the dream, the ringing phone is in his pocket. I can see the pocket clearly, each thread of his denim jeans stained bright, wet crimson. That snapshot—the pocket—has been haunting me for years. I feel pissed off that it’s in my dream. There’s a reason why it shouldn’t be. There’s something else? There’s something else I should be dreaming about— something important.
I try to remember, but the phone is ringing. I open my eyes. Elise. Just a second to feel that before I’m fumbling for the phone. Fuck, it’s not the one in my pocket. It’s one of the ones in the nightstand.
I’m unsteady on my feet, confused from dreaming. The clock says 2:41 a.m. My heart hammers as my hand dives into the top drawer, filled with a dozen flip phones. The one with the pink sticker is the one that’s ringing. The pink ops phone.
I frown at the unknown number—on these phones, they’re all unknown—and then I answer, trying not to sound asleep. I’m greeted with the sound of someone ranting. Aren? Yes. It’s Aren, and he must be pissed as shit. I don’t think I’ve ever heard his accent this thick. I can’t understand him.
“What?”
“That cunt has” —something garbled— “on your second and three of my ones. It happened in the place…at the place which is like Georgia to Armenia.”
I squint, blinking over at my wall-mounted flat screen, which apparently I paused while watching The Fall.
“You gotta give me just a second.” I rub my eyes. “Are you talking about…” I think of how to say Queens. “Like…it could be on a chess board?”
“Yes! That was where! He has it—that rat bastard Figaro! Your bastard!”
How the fuck is Figaro mine? “That dude’s from Portugal. Well, he’s from America,” I correct. “I think his family came from Portugal, though, not Italy.” Figaro—a Brooklyn cop—is not in any way “mine.” I don’t even know the guy except on paper.
“Is this the phone you use for everything?” I mutter. Aren’s usually in the pink phone as Nine.
“Do not be asking about my phone! You think I would use a bad phone? What you have is a bad man there in Georgia! You said the place was safe, it wasn’t. What am I to think? That the camera was yours!”
I frown. I think he’s referring to Queens as Georgia because it’s technically north of Brooklyn, as Georgia is north of his ancestral country, Armenia.
“Listen, Aren. Like I said already, Figaro’s not one of mine. I’ve only got a few up there” —meaning a few friendly cops— “but not that guy. I think Figaro is a rule guy.”
“I hope he likes the rule of no more Figaro. And what about this warehouse? You say this warehouse is safe for what we do! Someone put an eye there. Captured things we don’t want being seen.”
I blow a breath out…rub my fucking forehead. “So let me get this straight. You’re saying you heard Figaro has some sort of footage of…what exactly? Why don’t you back up and tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“I should never be selling to you! This is what’s the problem with this. You, your second, there’s some sloppy actions from you—sloppy or deliberate. Your D.A. cunt has something on mine. That’s what I’ve been hearing. You turncoat to help her nail the nails into the coffin for me. That’s what is bringing all of it down!”
My pulse picks up at what I think he’s saying—about Elise. But I don’t hone in on that. “What do they have, Aren? What are you saying Figaro has, exactly what?” Is this the same shit Max told me about?
“They have my people and your one…on the film. As they are doing the exchange!”
Okay, so maybe it’s the shit Max told me about. There’s only one thing we’ve been doing recently at a warehouse that’s mine that’s in Queens, with my “second”—Alesso—present. This must have been before I changed the route on moving the acquisitions I get from Aren and Co.
“They have the thing that happened there…you’re saying someone has it on film? Someone from the precinct where Figaro works?”
“Your warehouse, it had the camera! I sent someone tonight! We found it, we beat it with the hammer. Dusted for fingerprints, and I will find whose fingers there are! No more fingers for that person, Luca Arnoldi. And I hope he isn’t you.”
I roll my eyes. Aren has been calling me Luca Arnoldi for years.
“There is only one solution,” he says grandly. “You go to your girl—see, I will not be calling her cunt,” he says, like I should be grateful. “You get…what we need. Exemption,” he says, like he’s trying that word on for size. “I do this for you—I find the assets because you ask me for assets. None of my ones are going down because of your assets.”
I roll my aching eyes again, cause that’s a bunch of bullshi
t. Aren has been doing this since I was in my twenties. I’m not arguing, though. Instead, I focus on the only detail that matters.
“She’s not my girl.”
“I heard she is your cunt, your girl…I heard it from good source. You and she were lovers. You love her?”
I swallow. “I think you mean loved.”
“You loved the cunt O’Hara? Because that’s the cunt I hate.”
I suck air in through my nose. “What are you hoping I can do about this, Aren?”
“You know what I hope for. I am hoping you make it go away. You should make it disappear. I then will be happy again with you.”
“As far as you know, have the cops in Queens already passed this up the line?” I ask him.
“I don’t know about that. I know not so much about it right now. It’s up to you—for your second.” He means Alesso. “You will fight against it.”
I snort. “Have you even seen it?”
“No, I only heard of it. What I see, though, is your camera! At your warehouse! I didn’t see film, but I would like to see it. You locate it, then I see it.”
That sounds like a pretty damn good deal—for Aren.
“I’ll take a look, but I’m not promising you shit. I didn’t cause this problem, and it’s not my job to fix it.”
“You want assets? You fix it. You want to be in the good graces of Aren? Your place, your camera. You the one I’m holding responsible.”
“I’ll get data on that fucking camera and I’ll figure out who put it there. But I’m not making any promises about anything else. See how far you get without the money from my ‘assets.’”
Aren is a crazy fucker, but he’s never shown that side of himself to me. I think he usually doesn’t, unless he’s threatened or he thinks you double-crossed him. Even then, I’d like to see how far he thinks he can get in a war against me. He might be crazy as shit, but I’ve got a hell of a lot more people—and more money.
“I’ll be back in touch. Don’t call me in the middle of the night, Aren.”
I hear him whispering some threat before he ends the call. I wait till five a.m. before I make one of my own. Then I get out of bed and throw on my running gear.