Lillian blinked up at him, speechless.
He sighed, a scowl on his face. "Fucking Marc Rivera really messed with your head."
"It wasn't just Marc," she said when she found her voice.
"What's that mean?" he demanded, his voice dropping low.
"I grew up in a ballet studio," she explained. "I was good at what I did and people noticed. But the thing about people noticing is that your peers aren't always happy to give you the spotlight. When you get attention they want, insults and cutting people down is just a fact of life. When you're smart, you learn to cut that off at the pass whichever way works. And beating them to the punch worked really, really well most of the time." She swallowed past the small lump in her throat, refusing to cry over something that no longer mattered.
"Christ," he swore. "That's shitty."
"Yeah," she said, clearing her throat. "It sucks, but when dancing is your life, you deal with it. I wanted to dance, Tristan. I wanted it more than I wanted anything else, so I dealt with it the best I could. And when you do it for so long, it's hard to stop. There isn't a switch you can just flip after so many years. It's not that simple."
Especially not when some part of her believed the little insults and barbs that'd been thrown her way for so long. Rationally, she knew that little voice was ridiculous, but she didn't know how to reconcile the facts or understand why things had happened the way they did.
She didn't understand why Marc had hated her so intensely for turning him down or why he'd attacked her. And sometimes… well, sometimes she couldn't help but wonder if he was the Universe's way of taking away the things everyone believed she hadn't deserved. She'd turned him down, so he'd punished her, and everyone had just sat back and let him do it.
"I guess I can understand that, but they were wrong, Lillian. You deserved to dance and what he did wasn't your fault."
"Was it his then?" she asked, looking up at Tristan.
"Fuck yes, it was his fault," he said, his voice full of violence. "He may have been an addict, but the burden of responsibility still rests with him, beautiful. He chose to pick up that fucking syringe and jam it into his vein. And he did it knowing that once he walked on that stage, your safety was his responsibility. He assaulted you, and that's his fucking fault, regardless of what pumped through his veins when he did it. And there's nothing you could have done that was so horrible as to deserve that."
She nodded. "I know."
"Do you?" he asked, tilting his head to rest his forehead against hers. "Do you really?"
She thought back over everything she'd seen and heard in the last few weeks, every statistic and reality that Tristan had given her, and the conversation they'd had days ago in the kitchen. He'd asked her why she'd agreed to help, and she'd told him that the people at Teplo didn't deserve to die, no matter what choices they'd made. If that was true, then she had to accept that she hadn't really deserved what Marc had done to her, didn't she?
"Would you believe me if I told you that I'm working on it?" she asked.
"Yeah." He smiled at her, his expression softening. "Yeah, I'd believe that, beautiful."
She nodded and he eased back down beside her.
"I guess you know how it happened?" she asked a few minutes later.
"I read the case file."
"Oh."
"Does that bother you?" He pulled her back into his arms, nestling her against his chest.
She shook her head. It didn't bother her. Knowing she didn't have to relate the whole, sad story to him relieved her. She knew she needed to tell it to someone, someday, but it was still too fresh for her. Too close.
"Did you two date?"
Lillian shook her head and sighed. "He asked a few times, but I always said no. I thought he understood, but I guess he didn't. They tried to blame me, you know? Said I led him on. That it was my fault he turned to drugs."
The ballet world and gossip rags had called her a tease and a thousand other things. As if anything she could have done would have made her deserve to be violently attacked like that. She'd done nothing to him, but that hadn't mattered to anyone. Not even the judge had really believed her, instead sentencing Marc to rehab. No matter how many times she thought about that, it still hurt. It always would. She'd been punished for exercising her right to say no, and he'd been treated like the victim by most of society.
Tristan's arms tightened around her. "You didn't deserve it."
"I know," she whispered, pressing a grateful kiss into his skin.
"Do you want to talk about what happened tonight?" he asked a few moments later.
She bit her lip and then sighed. "There's not really much to say. I thought if anyone recognized me, it would be one of Anton Vetrov's people. I wasn't expecting it to be one of the people in the club. It was a shock, and it hurt. But it hurt a lot less than it did two months ago or two months before that. And you helped."
He squeezed her.
"Is it weird that the girl bothered me most?"
"What do you mean?"
"Last year, she was going to see the ballet with her boyfriend, and now she's… she's on drugs, going to places like Teplo. Tristan, she couldn't have been much older than seventeen or eighteen."
"That's how it works, beautiful," he murmured, brushing her hair away from her face. "Addiction doesn't care what you did last year or how old you are or where you're getting your drugs."
"I just don't get it. She's so young. Why would she do that to herself? It's senseless!"
"Yeah, it is."
Lillian fell silent again, trying to imagine how Emma had gone from attending a ballet to shooting up at Teplo. It didn't make sense. And it was sad as hell. At twenty-two, Lillian felt so much older than Emma. The girl was just a kid. She could do anything, be anything. What made someone just throw all of that potential away?
Lillian didn't understand. She wasn't sure she wanted to understand.
"So I helped, hmm?" Tristan teased, adjusting his position so they lay facing one another again.
"You did." She didn't want to dwell on things she couldn't change, or think about people she couldn't save. The best she could do for Emma and those like her was to help Tristan find a way into that drug lab.
"I think you like it when I help."
Lillian blushed, unable to deny that.
He examined her face for a minute, smirking. "I love it when you blush, beautiful."
"I'm not blushing!"
"You are."
"Whatever," she mumbled, poking him in the chest. "If I am, it's your fault."
"Mmm." He leaned over to capture her lips with his. "I think I can handle claiming responsibility for that one."
"Wise of you," she breathed, her heart fluttering at the feel of his lips brushing across hers.
Within moments, everything but heat and him swirled away from her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
"Darlin', you handled the situation just fine," Jason Ames was crooning into the phone when Tristan and Lillian slipped into his office late the next afternoon. He looked up from his desk, a smile on his face. He was kicked back with his feet up, the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear. He crooked a finger for them to come in and close the door.
Lillian made her way across the office, Tristan at her back.
"We can replace it," Jason said to whomever he spoke with on the phone.
Lillian settled into the same chair she'd taken what felt like a lifetime ago.
Tristan settled down beside her.
"Zoë, I've gotta go," Jason said and then paused while he listened. "Yeah, I will." He smiled again. "I love you, too."
Tristan snorted, shaking his head.
Lillian poked him in the side, mouthing for him to behave.
He winked at her.
Jason hung up the phone. "Zoë says hi," he said, straightening in his chair.
"Tell her hello," Lillian murmured.
"You wanted to see us?" Tristan said, cutting right to the chase.
/> "Hello to you, too." Jason said, eyeing Tristan with an arched brow.
Tristan made a gesture with his hand as if to say get on with it.
"Behave," Lillian muttered, poking him in the side again.
"He has no manners," his boss said to her, an amused smirk on his face.
"I've noticed."
"You're the one who called me and demanded I get my ass to the office pronto," Tristan shot back, mimicking Jason.
Jason ignored him, instead grabbing a square of paper from his desk and holding it out toward Lillian. She eyed him, not sure she wanted to know what he had for her this time. She still hadn't finished the forms he'd given her to fill out the last time she saw him.
"Your concealed carry permit," he said.
"Oh." She closed her hand over it. "Thank you, Agent Ames."
"Call me Jason, please. And you're welcome. It's the least we could do."
Tristan snorted again.
Lillian shook her head at him. He'd been in a bad mood ever since Jason called, as if being called to headquarters was an inconvenience. And maybe it was to him. He didn't exactly strike her as someone who enjoyed spending time in an office. He was too physical for that, too impatient. Too invested.
"Kincaid is on his way in with James Renaldi."
"Who?" Tristan asked, staring blankly at Jason.
"A health inspector who just so happened to pass Fu Lin's two weeks ago."
"You're serious?" Tristan sat up straighter in his chair, his eyes widening.
"Yep," Jason said, "and it gets better. When Kincaid went to talk to him yesterday afternoon, he was jumpy as hell, so we did a little snooping this morning. Two days after Fu Lin's passed Renaldi's inspection, he mysteriously came into ten thousand dollars."
"Son of a bitch," Tristan murmured, a grin spreading across his face.
Lillian watched him, not sure exactly what they were talking about. Tristan was honest with her about the case, but only when she asked and only if he felt she needed to know. Other details, he kept to himself. She wanted him to let her in, true enough, but she wasn't sure she wanted to know everything about this case and his job. Sometimes, ignorance really was bliss.
"I assumed you'd want to be here for the interview."
"Hell yes," he said.
Jason nodded and climbed to his feet. "We'll set you up in the viewing room." He paused, glancing at Lillian, one eyebrow arched in silent question.
Tristan didn't even hesitate. "She doesn't leave my sight."
Jason shrugged, not arguing.
"Mr. Renaldi," Michael Kincaid shook his dark head and tsked sadly. "That's the most pathetic excuse I've ever heard in my life and I work with crooks and criminals, so seriously, dude…." he trailed off and shook his head again.
Tristan rubbed his hand down his face, trying to hide a smirk. Kincaid spent far too much time around gangbangers, lowlifes, and potheads. Professionalism was seriously lacking, and Mr. James Renaldi had no clue what to make of him. While that probably shouldn't have been funny to Tristan, it really fucking was.
The man had broken a sweat no more than fifteen minutes into questioning and they hadn't even gotten to the good stuff by that point. Five minutes later, Kincaid casually mentioned drugs being funneled through Fu Lin's and Renaldi had turned into a stuttering, mumbling mess. Kincaid had him by the balls in about two seconds flat. Renaldi was now shaking in his loafers over the bank statement laid on the table before him. Tristan felt no sympathy whatsoever. The idiot was taking bribes to keep things quiet.
"I mean seriously, dude," Kincaid continued when Renaldi just stuttered incoherently and looked at him in a blind panic. "Your grandmamma just left you ten thousand dollars? The same grandmamma that lived off social security and died"–Kincaid picked up the file he'd slapped together on Renaldi–"in 2004? Jesus, man!"
His mouth popped open like he was shocked, his blue eyes gleaming with amusement. "I know the system is slow, but hot damn! Someone call a senator because that is some seriously unacceptable red freakin' tape there, my friend. They need to get on that like whoa."
Like whoa?
Lillian laughed softly beside Tristan.
"I…." Renaldi glanced between Jason and Kincaid again, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. His bullshit excuse for the miraculous appearance of the money in his bank account was flimsy as hell and he knew it.
"Just tell me what we need to know," Jason said impatiently, leaning back in his chair. "We know they're funneling drugs through the restaurant and honestly, Mr. Renaldi, we don't give a shit about busting your balls for taking a bribe on the job. Your boss might, however."
"I met her yesterday," Kincaid said. "The woman does not look like a forgiving soul, my friend. She had a pencil in her bun. And pleats in her pants." He whistled. "I would not want her all over my junk about this."
"And we're wasting time," Jason inserted. "Time that I don't have to waste."
"True, dude," Kincaid added. "His boss is a mean motherfucker. He'll toss your ass in a cell and leave you there if he isn't out of here soon. Last time I was late for a meeting, I got stabbed." He lifted his shirt. "See?"
Jason rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut as Renaldi looked between the two of them, confusion and fear on his face. He was about to cave.
One more push….
Jason reached into the Vetrov file and pulled out a handful of photographs before tossing them down in front of the man. Renaldi's eyes popped open wide as the crime scene and morgue photos spread across the table in front of him. Tristan couldn't see the images, but he knew what they contained. A mottled leg showing here, an up close and personal photo of a tracked up arm there, another of Kalani's lifeless eyes….
"Sweet baby Jay-sus," Renaldi whispered, squeezing his eyes closed.
"Mr. Yin is selling that shit to people who don't give a damn if their users live or die, Mr. Renaldi," Jason told him. "The eight in those photos there? They've all died in the last few months, and unless you start talking, there will be eighty more of them in the next two. I don't give a fuck if you took a bribe, but I do give a fuck that the longer I sit here and screw around with you, the less time I have to help put a stop to that."
"I didn't know," Renaldi muttered.
Tristan snorted, disgusted. It was always the same with men like Renaldi. Someone waved money in their faces and promised more if they falsified reports or pretended they didn't know a damn thing, and they leaped without even stopping to consider the consequences. They were in it for what they could get out of it and didn't spare a thought for those that ended up in photographs spread across a metal table in a police precinct somewhere as a result.
"Didn't know what?" Kincaid asked, dropping down into the chair across from Renaldi and grabbing a pen.
"There's a room behind the kitchen…."
Relief rushed through Tristan when Renali started talking.
"Riley," Davis called to Tristan as he led Lillian down the hallway an hour later, relief still pumping through him.
Tristan bit back a curse and stopped walking. He'd really freaking hoped to get out before he ran into Davis.
"Sir," he said, holding out his hand to shake.
"Kincaid and Ames got what they needed from the health inspector?" Davis asked, pumping his hand.
"Yes sir," Tristan answered. Renaldi had given them enough to raid Fu Lin's and cut off the Vetrov's Ecstasy supply. It wouldn't slow them down for long, but it was better than the great big pile of nothing he'd managed in the last month. "When I left, they were waiting for blueprints of the building so Renaldi could mark out where to find the drugs."
"He saw the drugs himself?"
"Yes."
Thank God for that, too. Without that eye witness account, they'd still be twiddling their fucking thumbs waiting for Kincaid to find something solid.
Davis nodded his balding head in approval. "I got something for you." He held out a photograph for Tristan.
Tristan took it,
a curse falling from his lips.
It was the greasy blond from Teplo.
"It was taken three months ago in Mazatlán. Tijuana has no ID for him."
Son of a bitch.
"Think he's one of Francisco's?"
Davis rubbed his chin, seeming to think. "It'd be a hell of a coincidence if he isn't."
Yeah.
"Shit," Tristan swore, tilting the photo so Lillian could see it.
She took one look and averted her gaze, shivering.
Tristan fought the urge to reach for her. No fucking way Davis wouldn’t notice that and start asking questions. The last thing they needed was Davis in their business.
"Looks like your boys have been working with Francisco longer than we thought," Davis said.
"Looks like." Tristan sighed, defeat rolling through him. One step forward, and two back. Every fucking time. "Does Tijuana know anything about him at all?"
"Nope."
"Not even a street name?"
"Nope."
Great. Just fucking great.
Tristan shook his head.
Davis focused on Lillian for the first time. "Miss Maddox, I presume?"
"Ah, yes sir," she said.
Davis eyed her for a long moment, and then smiled, his eyes crinkling. "Keep our boy here in line, you hear?"
"Ah, yes sir," Lillian said again.
Davis slapped Tristan on the back and then strolled away.
Tristan stood where he was for a long moment, and then sighed again. "Fucking hell," he muttered, shoving the photo into his pocket.
"Who was that?" Lillian asked, glancing between Davis's retreating form and Tristan.
"Davis."
"Oh." She frowned. "He seems nice."
Tristan snorted.
"Well, he does."
"He is nice when he wants to be. Come on. We've got shit to do."
Lillian fell into step beside him again.
"Do you really think he works for the cartel?" she asked, glancing at the edge of the photo sticking out of Tristan's pocket.
Ravished (The Teplo Trilogy #1) Page 28