by Ava Bloom
“They don’t approve of my cross-country move and me taking on this case. My dad says it is way too dangerous, but he has always been a big worry wart. My brother stayed close to home and has kids already. My parents hoped the same for me—kids, weekly family dinners, the whole white picket fence thing.”
“You aren’t interested in the white picket fence?” he asked.
“Not unless it’s around my loft in the city,” I joked. Then, I realized what he’d done. “Hey. No way. It’s your turn to talk. I do all the talking. I want to hear about your family.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m not very interesting. Trust me.”
“Everyone’s family is a little interesting. Tell me about your mom,” I demanded.
“What about her?”
“What does she like? What does she dislike? Does she approve of you being a personal trainer? How does she feel about your tattoos? Just tell me about her.”
Lance sighed and then shrugged. “She hates the tattoos now, though she liked the first one I got.”
“What was your first tattoo?” I asked, suddenly more curious about that than anything else.
Lance smiled and grabbed the hem of his t-shirt, lifting it up over his body. I’d been so distracted the first night we were together that I hadn’t fully taken in how incredibly ripped Lance was. His abs were a perfect six-pack on the verge of an eight-pack. His skin was tan and taut over the muscle, his colorful tattoos making him look like a work of art. Vines wrapped around his midsection, large roses blooming in various places across his skin. Then, with the roses came thorns. Some of the thorny vines were painted to look like they had pierced the skin, drops of blood dripping down. I was so busy staring at his body that it took me a few seconds to realize Lance was pointing to a tattoo over his heart.
I threw my head back and laughed.
“Are you laughing at my very meaningful tattoo?” he asked, his voice full of mock-outrage.
“You have a heart with the word ‘MOM’ written across it over your heart. There’s an arrow sticking through it and everything. That is the most cliché tattoo ever,” I said, still giggling.
“As soon as I turned sixteen, I told my mom I was going to get a tattoo and she told me I couldn’t unless it was a tattoo just like this one. I think she thought it would deter me, but I came home that night with this and she thought it was the funniest thing in the world,” he said, looking down at his chest, smiling at the memory. Then, he lowered his shirt. “The rest of the tattoos she didn’t find as funny. She thinks I’m ruining my chance at finding a nice girl.”
“I take offense to that,” I said. “I’m a nice girl. Your mom should meet me. I bet she’d love me.”
Immediately Lance’s face fell. His eyes darted to the floor, and I knew I’d totally crossed the line. We barely knew each other. I couldn’t just casually talk about meeting his mom. It was inappropriate. “Obviously, we aren’t at the meet the parent stage of our relationship,” I said, trying to laugh off my awkwardness.
“No, you were right. She’d love you,” he said, smiling, though this time it didn’t reach his eyes.
I wondered whether we wouldn’t end up back in my bedroom by the end of the night, but Lance said he had an early morning not too long after my outburst about meeting his mom and stood to leave.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said. It had been nice to eat my favorite Chinese takeout with someone instead of by myself, for once.
“Anytime. What do you have going on tomorrow?” he asked, still not making eye contact with me.
“I have to work late. I got a bit behind on work this weekend, so I’ll probably be at the office until nine or ten.”
“I’m sorry, it’s probably my fault you’re behind,” he said, kicking the toe of his black boot into the carpet.
“No, it’s okay. I’ve had a great few days with you. The best I’ve had in a while.”
He nodded, and it felt like he was a million miles away. I could feel him pulling away from me, and even though we’d just met, I felt like we had a real connection. I didn’t want it to be over so soon. It had to be because of how serious I’d sounded about his mom. I felt terrible for freaking him out, and I wanted to fix it.
“I’m sorry if I scared you away with the talk about your mom. It came off a lot more stalkerish than it did in my head. I’m just not good at casual dating. I’ve always been in long-term relationships, so I just need a little time to adjust. Because I really like you, Lance, but I swear I’m not planning our wedding in my head or anything. I’m just having fun right now.”
Lance turned, his eyes burning with sincerity, and grabbed my hands. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You are sweet and honest and funny, and I wouldn’t change you for the world. I’m just tired from today and ready for some sleep. You’re busy tomorrow, but what about the next night? Maybe we can watch a movie or something?”
“I’ll get some groceries and actually cook you something,” I said, raising my eyebrows.
“I look forward to it.” He kissed my cheek and left.
* * *
Sadie insisted I hadn’t said anything wrong.
“If he freaked out about one little comment about your mom, he absolutely can’t handle you, kid,” she said. I could hear music in the background and then she mumbled something to someone else.
“Are you taking my call while you’re at work?” I asked.
“Yes. Mrs. Green doesn’t mind, do you?” she said.
“Not a bit,” an elderly voice answered. “As long as you don’t get distracted and take too much off the top.”
“I’m a professional hairstylist and a wonderful multitasker. You are in great hands,” she said to the woman. Then, she shifted back to me. “You are a serious relationship kind of girl, Jojo. If he can’t handle that, you don’t want to be with him anyway.”
“I do want to be with him, though,” I said.
“Exactly. You’re saying this after only a few days of knowing him. That is exactly why you and a commitment-phobe would never work out.”
She made a good point, but I didn’t want to concede. Lance and I could figure it out. “I just wanted to get your opinion,” I said, wrapping up the phone call. I called her over my late lunch break because I was having a hard time focusing on work with thoughts of Lance ghosting me floating around my head. “I have to get going. I’ll be home late tonight, by the way.”
“I’ll be stalking my peephole waiting for you,” she said before blowing me two kisses and hanging up the phone.
It was truly a miracle I could be best friends with someone like Sadie. She was wild and outspoken and content to bounce from one guy and idea and job to the next. She didn’t want to settle. Whereas, I’d basically been settled since I was born. I’d always wanted to be a lawyer and I’d always wanted to get married and have kids. If she and I could make it work, Lance and I could make it work. Though, I made a mental note not to mention anything about marriage or kids for a few years.
The rest of the afternoon was spent looking for anyone willing to testify against the Petrov family. I called everyone they had ever spoken with. I went so far as to call their doctors, mailmen, the baker who had made the eldest Petrov daughter’s wedding cake. Either no one had any information, or they simply didn’t want to testify. And I couldn’t blame them. The Petrov’s had the entire city under their thumb.
A few minutes before five, my boss came in.
“Mr. Whittaker, welcome,” I said, ushering him into the paper-strewn den of my office. “I’m working on finding some more people to testify. Phil is still on the fence, but I think I may be able to argue for a protection order with the judge on Thursday.”
“That’s actually why I’m here to talk to you,” Mr. Whittaker said. He was a big, round man with a gray mustache and a red face. He looked like the lawyer version of Santa, except much less jolly. He only came to my office when he had bad news to deliver, so I was nervous. “I think you need a little help on
this case.”
“Okay,” I said, my brows pulling together.
“Randy has a lot of experience with cases like this one and I think he could be a real asset to your team,” he said.
“I am my team. It’s just me,” I said.
“And now it is you and Randy,” he said, giving me a vacant smile.
“I don’t understand. I’m the youngest lawyer this firm has ever had. I have undertaken a major homicide case on my own, and the Petrov family is scared. They are trying to intimidate my witnesses because they know I can hurt them. Why do I need Randy?”
Mr. Whittaker gestured for me to take a seat, but when I refused, he lowered himself into a chair and looked up at me, his eyes tired. “You’ve done a great job, Jo. But you’re going after the Petrov’s too hard. Everyone knows Pauly is guilty.”
“I don’t know that,” I said, though that wasn’t exactly true. “I know he deserves a fair trial, though.”
“There’s no such thing as a fair trial in this situation. And you’re putting yourself in danger going after the Petrov’s the way you are. This case is about Pauly, not about bringing down an entire mafia family. I’m worried about you, kid.”
“First of all, I’m not a kid. And second, are you asking me to back off? Are you telling me not to go at this with everything I’ve got?”
“I’m not telling you anything. I’m warning you. The Petrov’s are dangerous, and I’d hate to see anything bad happen to you. I think Randy could help bring the tempo of this case down a bit. He is a good lawyer, and I think he’ll help reign in your scope a bit.”
“You mean slow me down?” I asked, suddenly furious.
“This is for your own good, Jo. I hope you can see that.”
Mr. Whittaker left, and I collapsed back into my desk. Was he really asking me not to try my hardest? All through law school and my internship, I’d had to work twice as hard as every man in my class. I had to shine to get any kind of recognition, and now I was excelling in my career, and they wanted me to slow down? No way. I couldn’t. The Martinetti/Petrov case was going to make my career, but not if I didn’t go at it one-hundred percent.
And my witnesses trusted me. They believed that I would take care of them. They didn’t know Randy. He hadn’t been at the negotiating table with them, he didn’t have the same kind of connection to this case that I had. If he came onto the case, they might lose faith in me as a lawyer, they might decide not to testify.
Not to mention, Randy had a reputation around the office of being a lazy lawyer. He'd lost more cases than anyone else, but he was likeable, so he had a job. If I took after Randy, I'd be fired within months. No female lawyer who lost cases was kept around, and she certainly wasn't made partner.
I looked at the mountain of work left on my desk and then at the clock. It was five-thirty. The idea of staying in that small office for another three and a half hours made me want to scream. So, I packed up my desk, grabbed a few pertinent files in case I decided to work a bit from home, and left.
When I got back to my apartment, I felt a pang of sadness that Lance’s car wasn't in the space next to mine like it had been the day before. It was still early, but I could get used to the idea of coming home to him every day. My arms were loaded down with my briefcase, lunch bag, and purse, so I was distracted digging in my purse for my keys and didn't notice the person standing outside my door.
“Josephine.”
I looked up and blinked. It was Lance. He was standing in front of my door wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt, a black duffel clutched in his hands.
10
Lance
When Josephine started talking about meeting my mom, I realized how badly I needed to get out of there. I wasn’t supposed to be hanging around with her anymore. I should have disappeared after our night out at the club together. I should have stopped calling and texting her, and I certainly shouldn’t have been ordering food on my debit card from the Chinese place around the corner from her apartment. More than that, I shouldn’t have been sitting on her living room floor thinking about how much I wanted her to meet my mom.
She was my target. The Petrov’s were expecting me to send word within a matter of days that Josephine was dead and the job was complete. I couldn’t become attached. But as I left her apartment, wishing more than anything I could turn around, go back to her, and lay in the warmth of her arms all night, I feared I already had.
As soon as I walked in my front door, my cell phone rang. Unknown number. I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath, and answered.
“Hello, Graham.”
“Using names is highly frowned upon, Lance,” a deep much voicer than Graham’s could ever wish to be responded. “What if this line has been compromised?”
My heart lodged into the base of my throat. It was Marvin, head of the Petrov crime family. I’d been working as a hitman for the Petrov family for five years and I’d only spoken to Marvin once. His low rumble of a voice had been the one to threaten my mother, to assure me that she would be safe if I worked for his family, earning my way out of my father’s debts.
“Hello,” I said, careful not to use his name. “You’re right. It was foolish of me to risk something like that, though I don’t believe this phone has been compromised.”
“That you know of,” he said. “There are eyes everywhere. Remember that.”
He sounded like he was trying to warn me about outsiders listening in, but a small shiver ran down my spine. To me, his words sounded less like a warning and more like a threat.
“I heard you ran into some complications with your latest job,” he said. “Would you mind enlightening me on what those complications were exactly?”
“I was spotted and could no longer follow through with my original plan,” I said.
“Could you go into more detail, please?”
“What if the line has been compromised?” I asked, using his own reasoning against him. “I think it is better for me to remain vague.”
“I’ve never been good at vague,” Marvin said. “You see, I think the complication is that you’ve been sleeping with your target and you’ve gone soft.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but no words come out.
“You found the pretty lawyer girl too good to resist and decided to go off script and get yourself involved with her. The problem here is that you didn’t run this plan past anyone in the family,” Marvin said. “Least of all me. See, if you had asked me about this plan of yours to traipse all over town with your target, I would have urged against it. In fact, I would have insisted that you have nothing to do with her and DO YOUR DAMN JOB.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, his voice nearly shattering my eardrum.
“You seem to have forgotten our deal, Lance. You seem to have lost sight of the stakes.”
“No, I haven’t,” I said, finally finding my words again. “I understand. I will take care of it. I’ll do the job.”
“Oh, I know you will. You’ll do it, or else your mom’s insurance might find themselves dealing with a house fire. It will be a total loss, unfortunately. Oh, and what’s that beneath the rubble? Human remains? Too bad the fire will have burned away all of the evidence about how it could have started. It’s such a shame when innocent people die because of someone else’s mistakes, don’t you think?” Marvin asked.
It was ironic, really. I was only in this mess because of the mistakes of my father. He had abandoned me and my mom, wracked up so much debt that he wouldn’t be able to pay it back if he had eight lifetimes, and then skipped down, never to be seen again. Secretly, I wondered whether he hadn’t been found and disposed of already. It wouldn’t surprise me. Marvin Petrov wasn’t known around town for being an honest, upstanding guy.
“I just need a few days, and—”
“No,” Marvin said, clacking his tongue. “I’m afraid that won’t work for me. I need it done tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? That doesn’t give me any time to prepare or plan.”
“You’ve had three extra days—tomorrow will be the fourth. That is beyond generous. Have it done tomorrow, or our deal is over.”
He hung up the phone. I realized then how deep I’d fallen into Josephine’s world. With her, I could forget I was a hitman. I could forget about my past and the horrible things I’d done. So, all the time we’d spent together, I’d convinced myself it was part of my plan, but I hadn’t been planning shit. I’d been getting to know her and making it harder for me to do my job. There was a reason hitmen weren’t known for palling around with their targets before killing them. Once you saw the target as a human being, it became so much harder to pull the trigger or tighten the rope or drop the anchor. And Josephine was a great human being. One of the best, in my opinion. And the idea of killing her made me feel sick.
But if I didn’t do it, I had no idea what Marvin Petrov would do to my mom. I could call her and tell her the whole truth, explain to her that she needed to hide, but how long would that last? She had never been the type of person to run from a fight. She’d hold her ground. When the hitman Marvin hired showed up to take her out, he’d find her sitting in her armchair, a cigarette sticking from the corner of her mouth, her blue fuzzy slippers hanging from her feet. She’d probably curse at him and tell him to do what he came for.
I couldn’t let that happen. She’d raised me. She had been there for me when my dad ran out. She had given up everything to make sure I had food in my stomach and clothes on my back. I couldn’t let her down now, not even for Josephine.
The next day passed slowly. I put together the barest bones of a plan. I now knew enough about Sadie’s schedule to know she worked late on Tuesdays, and Josephine would be at work late, as well. So, I could sneak into Josephine’s apartment and lay in wait for her to return, similar to my original plan. I’d kill her and get out. Then, when the police questioned me about her disappearance, I’d admit that I knew her and that we’d been dating, but I’d mention how we met. I’d tell them that I saved her from a would-be rapist and that he had escaped before I could call the police and Josephine hadn’t wanted the news to get out about the attack because of her big court case, so the crime had gone unreported. Perhaps, I’d suggest, he came back to finish the job.