by Ivy Stone
“A cold one apparently,” he murmurs and I bite my lip as I watch every muscle in his back move across the large bedroom all the way to the bathroom.
His hand tugs on the door frame and a second later Roamyn’s head pokes out. “I’ll be out in a minute. Just, don’t go anywhere. Okay?”
I nod at his question that comes out more like a demand. My mouth becomes dry, and I head out of his room in search of some water. I step out into a small open plan kitchen and living room. A large, new, very unused kitchen sits to the left while the rest of the apartment screams Roamyn. Messy. Man only zone. An L shape movie theater lounge, complete with cup holders sits to the right side of the room, facing a massive flat screen television mounted on the wall. Beside the lounge, a boxing bag hangs from the ceiling, and as I get closer to the kitchen, I notice boxing gloves strewn on the floor near the bag. Keys, mail, and paperwork, clutter the countertop as I wander to the fridge. The weak light of the refrigerator lightens the room and I scan the shelves for water.
“Bingo.” Pulling out the water I take a sip and shut it behind me.
My fingers drift over the granite countertop as I walk into the living room, taking in the photos on the wall, the clothes hanging over the side of the lounge, and the city lights out the long window at the far end of the apartment. My heart flutters at a young Roamyn in an old tattered photo with a gorgeous woman with long dark hair and almond shaped eyes just like his. She’s classically beautiful, from her natural smile on her flawless tanned skin to her perfect posture as she holds a beautiful blond haired boy in her arms. The grin on the boy’s face gives him away. Roamyn years later, still has the same dimples and cheekiness to his smile. I drift from the old, discolored photo to a newer one. My fingers run over the trim of the frame and I freeze. My heartbeat thrashes loudly in my ears. Roamyn, younger by a few years, less aging around his eyes, his hair is a little longer than he wears it now. He’s smiling from ear to ear. Happy. An arm wrapped around the shoulder of a dark-haired, good-looking man, mirroring his spirit. Both of them in full police uniform. My stomach rolls.
Roamyn’s a cop.
“Ali,” I call out, heading out of the bathroom, tucking my towel around my hips. The silence of an empty apartment is my only response. The hair on the back of my neck rises and I pull open my side drawer for my spare gun.
Gripping it in my hand, I search the room before heading out to check the rest of my one bedroom apartment.
“Ali. You there?”
My heart smacks against my ribs and when everything is clear, I sigh, dropping my Glock onto the counter.
I slam a hand down. “Shit.”
She fucking left. At least this time, I know where to find her.
I straighten up the tie around my neck, checking it in the mirror on the inside of my locker before shoving it closed with a bang, louder than intended.
“Damn, Roam. What’s got you in a mood?”
I frown beside me and find Elias combing his long hair into a bun on top of his head while admiring himself in the mirror. Cocky bastard. He knows me well, my whole squad do. He knows something’s wrong if I’m moody and pissed off and since we both walked into the precinct at the same time, I’ve been nothing but a moody asshole. We’ve worked alongside each other long enough now for him to have noticed I’m not an over-sharer and I hide my emotions well. I shake off all thoughts of Ali, and the irritation of her leaving. Again. I turn my lips up into a smile and get ready for work.
“Nothin’ man. I’m all good. We better get in there before Mason chews our asses out for being late again.” I slap Elias’s back and we both head for the door.
The smell of coffee and a Monday morning hits my nose, the moment I push open the squad room doors.
Cassidy’s blonde head pops up and her eyes widen behind her dark rimmed glasses.
“Finally. Where have you two been?”
I frown at the only female member of our squad who also happens to be Elias’s partner and cousin. I look down to my watch. “What do you mean? We’re late but we’re not that late.”
Why me being late is still a shock to anyone here amazes me. It happens often enough.
Mason shoves open the door to his office at the back of the room. He walks out, phone to his ear, furious expression plastered on his face. “No. It can’t wait until later. I want it now. And when I say now, what I mean is, when I sit my ass down at my desk in five minutes, I want to open my emails and find it there. Got it? Good.”
He clicks off and I raise my eyebrows at the moody bastard who’s not only my best friend but also the chief detective of our squad. The Organized Crime Control Bureau.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
He runs a hand through his hair and grabs the coffee sitting in the coffee machine to the left of us. He takes a sip and responds, “There was a shooting last night.” He turns to Cassidy. “Can you pull up the file for me?”
“Sure.” Cassidy nods and types away at her computer. The next minute images appear onto the giant ass computer monitor on the side wall in our office. The screen is nearly the entire length of the wall and as it lights up, three dead bodies appear. All of them laid out on a sidewalk. Bullet wounds, a gun, a bag of coke and a whole lot of blood stand out on the crime scene photo.
“Shit. What the hell happened?” Elias asks before I get the chance to speak.
Cassidy reads from the screen in front of her while filling us in. “These three were shot and killed in a drive-by last night. Two males, both been identified as investment bankers… fathers… husbands. You know the type. Both live in the city. The female… her I.D said she was twenty-one but it’s fake. According to the Missing Person’s Database, she’s actually one Jessica Parks from North Carolina, seventeen years of age.” With a vacant look in her eyes, Cassidy turns toward the big screen as she pulls up a photo of a younger version of the girl now deceased. “She went missing three years ago from here in Manhattan while holidaying with her parents.” I stare between the photo of the girl as a young teen and her photo on the right. Recognition hits and a pain lodges in the back of my throat.
“I recognize her.”
All heads turn in my direction. “I saw her last night coming out of Sweet Tarts with those two. Clearly it was before this.” I point to the photos from the crime scene. “She’s a dancer there.”
My gut twists. Did I miss something last night? Was I too focused on Ali up on that stage that I missed something else going down?
I shake my head. “They were fine when I last saw them. The three of them stumbled out of the club, drunk, and were heading off when I was already outside.”
Mason frowns at me. “What were you doing there last night? We have everything we need on the Marino case right now.”
I shrug it off like it’s nothing, not wanting to reveal why I was really there. If Mason knew, it’d spiral shit into something so much worse than it already is. Only he knows about my mom and why bringing down this family means so much to me. Add a vendetta to nearly screwing a nineteen-year-old girl who works for them and I’ll be on the receiving end of Mason’s extraordinarily bad mood today. It won’t be pretty.
“Wanted to make sure I hadn’t missed anything,” I reply. My nonchalance seems to work because no one pays me any more attention.
“So what are we looking at then? This our case or what?” Elias asks, folding his arms across his chest.
“It is now. Cassidy, you want to finish explaining?”
Cassidy stands from her desk and walks over to the large screen, pointing to the bullet wounds in the three bodies. “The slugs from the bodies came from unregistered weapons. All AK-47’s. And the only gun supplier we know in this town, who sells those is—”
“Marino,” I finish for her.
She nods.
“So that’s where we start. Why don’t Cass and I go to Sweet Tarts and find out what we can about the girl?” Elias jumps on it a little too quick, already heading over to his desk for something
.
I roll my eyes.
Cassidy scoffs her face grimacing. “Ew, Elias.”
He shrugs, eyes widening. “What?”
I chuckle. Had to give the guy points for trying to get into a joint full of mostly naked women, even if he was as obvious as fuck.
Mason stands, feet wide, shoulders tall. “All right you two. Nobody needs to go to the strip club. I’m already on it. Plus, we can’t have Roamyn showing up there anytime and being seen either. Not after he’s been in there for the past few weeks.” He turns to Elias and me. “While you two were late getting in, we weren’t. We had uniforms pick up one of their girls for us this morning. She’s in interrogation waiting on us. Her name’s Alison Jenkins.”
Pressure weighs on my chest as Mason searches across Cassidy’s desk full of paperwork. He pulls out a photo and dumps it in front of me.
Ali’s face stares up at me from the photo. I finger the edge of the mug shot and run my hands over her sullen cheeks and bloodshot eyes. She looks sad, lost, and fucking terrible.
Mason stares at me. Suspicion in his eyes. “You know her?”
I shake my head. “No. Not really.”
It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole the truth. I may have thought about her every day for the past few years. But she’s still a stranger to me.
Cassidy rattles off Ali’s details as I continue looking at her photo.
“Alison Jenkins, age nineteen. Although like our dead girl, she has a fake ID saying she’s twenty-one. Priors for drug possession, public nuisance, possible prostitution, but nothing ever sticks because she’s protected by the Marino crime family. Where the connection is, I can’t figure out. But whatever it is, the girl is underage and doing God knows what for them. If we can get her to talk, we could hit the jackpot here. She obviously has an in that could prove very valuable.”
“Let me talk to her. See what I can get out of her,” Elias offers.
“No. I’ll do it,” I announce with a sharpness in my tone I forgot to try and hide.
Mason nods. His eyes never leaving me. “All right. Well, Roam and I will have a crack at the girl and you two find the Misery’s Angels and ask them about the shooting seeing it was right by their clubhouse. They must know something so I want to know if they were involved.”
Cassidy groans. “You know they won’t give us anything, right?”
“Won’t know if we don’t ask, Cassidy.”
That’s all he gives before heading back to his office and sending Elias and Cassidy on their way to the Misery’s Angels motorcycle club compound.
The metal clanks beneath every tap of my fingers on the interrogation table. My hair begins to stick to the sweat gathering on my forehead. I squeeze my eyes shut and I rest my head in my other hand. The silence, the waiting—it’s unnerving, it’s deadly, and driving me damn near insane. I lean forward, forehead on the desk and I try to shut everything out. But I can’t, not without help. I need another hit. I’m losing it. I’m helpless against the devil inside of me when I’m like this—clean.
The door is thrown open and I jump in fright. Sitting back up in my seat, I blink away the darkness to gain a look at the light. My heart races when Roamyn’s form stands in the doorway. No. This can’t be happening. Is this why he’s been at the club the past few weeks? Was I bait? A way to nab Giuseppe or Lucio? This had to do with one of them, there’s no doubt in my mind.
My stomach flutters with butterflies as I drink him in from head to toe. His short hair shaved around the sides, sticks up and to the left, away from his flawless face. It doesn’t matter how many times I see him, every time is like the first. He steals my breath. My body abandons me, sending tingles throughout every crevice. Why? I have not a fucking clue. I don’t like men. Not normally. I’m not into girls. But Lucio has ruined me for men after what he’s put me through these past few years.
His jaw tightens. I watch as his frown deepens with every moment he looks at me. His eyes bore into me with anger, and I sink back into my seat as last night catches up with me. I left his apartment without a word, I’d be mad if I were him too. But I didn’t know what to do. Or what to say. I had ten things run through my head, all at once, and it was too much. I needed out.
My body quivers as tingling grows in my stomach. God, he’s so unnaturally perfect. I swallow deeply as my body heats up. His dress shirt tightens around his shoulders and biceps, his muscles defined through the fabric, all the way down to where it tucks in at his narrow hips. A file slams down on the desk, breaking my train of thought. A chair scrapes against the floor and before I know it, the Roamyn I remember becomes someone I don’t recognize and instead a cop sent to interrogate me about the same thing they always want from me.
I swallow my nerves. My hero has become my enemy.
Roamyn coughs, breaking the tension thickening with every second we sit, staring each other down.
“Miss Jenkins. Do you know why you’re here today?”
A shiver runs down my spine as my name leaves his lips. He stares at me vacantly, without recognition and my heart deflates as he sits here pretending he doesn’t know me. Pretending that less than twenty-four hours ago I wasn’t writhing beneath him as he tendered explosive kisses all over my body.
I don’t answer, instead fold my arms across my chest and meet his glare. If this is how he wants to play it—two can play this game.
His brows furrow impossibly deeper, his hardened stare a clear warning.
I roll my eyes.
“No, Detective. Why am I here?”
The ridiculous thing about all this is the fact that Roamyn and the police actually think I know a damn thing that goes on in the Marino world of crime. As if the little nineteen-year-old whore would be told vital information or anything of importance. I’m a hole for Lucio Marino to stick his dick in. Entertainment for the sleazy bastards at Sweet Tarts.
I had a chance to leave. I tried to. To end this constant nightmare, I’ll never forget. But Lucio caught me leaving and I paid the price for two months until I was so far gone beyond repair, I just didn’t care what happened after that. Until the moments I’d think of him. Every time he would bring me back to the place where I believed leaving again could lead to a road of happiness. A path to a new life. To live in a world free from darkness and owned by peace. I want him. To hold me, listen to me. Just like he did the first night we met. It was enough, it was everything I craved and everything I’d never had from anyone other than my sister. But I can’t have him. Not now I know he’s a cop. Once Giuseppe or Lucio find out what he is, we’ll both be as good as dead.
“Alison.” His voice drifts me back into reality.
“What do you want from me?” I ask hunching over. My stomach is doing flips.
He pauses in his reach for the file between us and answers, “I want to help you.” I don’t have a chance to respond before he continues on, his tone professional. “You’re here because of your relationship with the Marino’s. You’re Lucio Marino’s girlfriend, correct?”
I shudder and a horrible taste sits in my mouth just enlightening the thought of such a thing.
“No. I am not his girlfriend,” I spit back, gritting my teeth so tight it actually hurts.
Roamyn sighs and clasps his fingers together in front of him, frustration growing fast. “Look. This will be a lot easier if you tell us the truth and tell me what you know. If you help us, Alison, we can help you.”
Anger bubbles inside of me at his words and I stand, pushing the seat back behind me. “You think I need your so-called help? Well, I don’t. I won’t tell you anything, just like I’ve never said anything to the other detectives all the previous times they questioned me. So let me go. I know you can’t keep me here without anything on me.”
I know the rules, this isn’t my first rodeo. And the more he spoke without care, the more my heart shattered. My breathing quickens. My hands ball into fists at my side.
He gestures toward the door. “You’re free to go. But if
you don’t help yourself while you still can it might get to a point where I can’t do anything.”
The sincerity in his eyes, tells me he’s giving me the truth. To whoever is listening it would seem standard procedure, every word spoken. But to us, it’s so much more. There must be a lot I don’t know but it doesn’t matter. I don’t want his help. I know what happens to a rat, and while I don’t care if I carry the title, there’s no offer the police could give to convince me to risk another two months or longer of torture. I’m not strong enough to pull through that again.
I shift my handbag over my shoulder and move toward the door. Reaching for the handle, his voice stops me in my tracks.
“One of the girls from Sweet Tarts was murdered last night.” He drops a photo on the table and I glance back at it. I turn away when I recognize Silver’s vibrant red hair framing her lifeless face.
Roamyn points to the photo of Silver dead on a gurney. Make-up free, dark rings around her eyes. Her face, pale. She looks so much younger. “She was only seventeen. Her name was Ashley Parks and her parents are still looking for her. She went missing three years ago here in the city while she and her family were on vacation. Now we have to go tell her parents we found their missing daughter dead on the sidewalk, after being shot to death and enduring years of God knows what at the hands of a psychopath. So tell me, Alison, you want to be next? You want to end up with a few bullets in your chest, left to die on the street?”
My shoulders hunch over, his harsh tone hitting the spot I’m sure he intended on. “You don’t understand.”
“Let me try.” Roamyn stands and walks toward me hand out but I pull back. If he touches me I’ll back down and I can’t. I just can’t do it. But I can give him the truth about Silver. About us all.
“To me, she was Silver. She never drank a drop of alcohol and never touched drugs. Her favorite color was red and she cared about the girls at the club even though she didn’t care much about herself.” I reach for the door handle and add, “Their daughter was gone, Roamyn. She wasn’t Ashley. She was Silver and she’d been her for a long time. They should be glad she’s gone. At least now she can rest in peace.”