by Wild, Nikki
I smiled, looking up at Nathan as I tucked my hair behind my ears with my fingernails. “This looks incredible… But where in the world did you find the candles?”
He picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “A man needs to have a few secrets. Anyway, it’s the least I could do since I I’m the reason you’re stuck here.”
But that was the thing—I didn’t feel stuck.
“You’re important,” I told him, picking up my fork as he sat down. I stabbed at a piece of orange chicken, measuring my words, trying to ensure that what I said was both enough and not too much. I needed to appeal to his ego. “This city needs to see a man like you stand up for what’s right. Your testimony is going to make sure Wallace never hurts another innocent person ever again. Can you imagine what that means to the women and girls he’s devoted a decade to enslaving?”
Nathan didn’t answer. He only smiled weakly and skewered a bit of his broccoli beef onto his fork.
“Oh, come on,” I teased him. “You don’t have to be modest—not in here with me. You can brag a little, if you want.”
He chewed, then swallowed a gulp of his own green tea. “I thought you didn’t like arrogant, self-centered Nathan?”
“I don’t. But I have to give credit where credit is due. You’re putting your life on the line for the greater good. That’s something not a lot of people would do. It’s something you can be proud of.”
Nathan went quiet for a time, watching me eat. When he spoke again, it was in a tone I’d never heard from him before.
“Can I tell you something?”
I looked up at him and frowned. He sounded soft, hesitant, uncertain. His brows were furrowed and the corners of his eyes pinched. For the first time since I’d known him, Nathan looked like a man shouldering an unseen burden, a far cry from the man who would tie me to a bedpost and fuck my brains out without even a hint of care.
I stopped eating and put my fork down. “Yeah. Of course.”
Nathan puts his elbows on the table, wringing his hands together as he looked away from me and to the dancing candle flames instead. They lit up his eyes, highlighting the gold rimming his pupils as he took in a deep, shaky breath that nearly snuffed them out. When he spoke, his voice grated with the pain of a man who’d made a terrible, perhaps unforgivable mistake.
“When my father died,” he began, “I took over his company. You know that, obviously, but… what you don’t know is that I’m nothing but a figurehead. I have no idea how to run a business, let alone an international corporation. Dad tried to groom me for the job as best he could, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t want to do what he did for a living. Besides, Dad was young. Nothing was going to happen to him for a long time. When he passed from a heart attack at forty-nine and it all fell to me, I panicked. I decided to continue on with my original plan and ignore its very existence.”
I watched the shadows playing across his face. He suddenly looked older and farther away, not the twenty-something playboy with a smart mouth and no responsibilities. This was a facet I’d never seen before. It was like looking up at the dark side of the moon.
“But… I don’t know… When you broke things off with me things changed. I started to spend more time at the office. I started to like it. People looked up to me, Sandra. They wanted my advice. My ‘wisdom.’ I never wanted to be some big shot CEO, but once I was in the chair, I didn’t want to give it up… In a way, you gave me that,” Nathan trailed off, staring down at his fork. I kept silent, and he continued.
“When the head of our logistics division coordinated a meeting with Peter Wallace, I agreed, knowing full well who he was. He was offering us an obscene amount of money to transport those shipping containers. When he said it wasn’t anything illegal, I believed him, not because I actually thought he was telling the truth, but because I didn’t care if he was or not. I’d hired people to worry about that kind of thing, and they were all in agreement that the contract was on the level. Mr. Wallace has never been convicted of a crime—you know that. And he does plenty of legal shipping. I didn’t even consider that my advisors might be lying to me. I had no idea it’d be…”
He hesitated, lips parting as he struggled with the word.
“People. Women. Children…”
“But you knew?” I asked him, horror knotting in my stomach. “You knew what he was bringing into the city was illegal, and you let him do it?”
Nathan nodded slowly. “I suspected. Maybe… But everyone on the board wanted to take the contract. A substantial part of my inheritance is tied to maintaining my company. They could’ve voted me out if I didn’t do something, and once I lost the reigns, there was nothing stopping them from carving the whole damn company up for themselves. That would mean…”
“No more fancy title, no more office?” I finished for him. “You would’ve had nothing except for your things, your fancy home, your garage full of expensive cars, and the hundreds of millions of dollars you probably have stashed away in the Cayman Islands. Wasn’t that enough? You’re telling me you secured a job title on the backs of those young women and girls.”
“I didn’t know,” he insisted.
“Because you didn’t want to know!” I replied, gripping the edge of the table so hard my knuckles turned white. I could feel the smoke of anger swirling in my lungs, tightening my chest as it rose into my throat and spilled out of my mouth. “You just wanted the money! You wanted the power! If you’d bothered to look, you would’ve seen their faces. But you couldn’t have that, could you? You couldn’t have that kind of guilt on your head!”
Nathan sat back, folding his arms and looking away from me. “You’re wrong. I never, not for one second, considered there might be people in that container. Look, my family, my whole company has a history of looking the other way. My father didn’t build a huge mansion in Miami on the back of Chinese imports—he built the foundation of this company on cocaine smuggling. Sure, he went ‘legit’ by the Nineties, but that was on paper, Sandra. There were people putting pressure on me to keep quiet and maintain business as usual. Maybe I wanted to make everything legal, but it was easier to let other people deal with the dirty parts of the business. I chose to look the other way and play stupid. That’s on me.”
“We’re talking about lives here, Nathan,” I whispered. “Not drugs. Not guns. People.”
“If I had known… I would have done the right thing. That’s why I came to the police. Because when I heard what he’d been doing… When I heard about that container they shoved off into the ocean… I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d had something to do with it. If I had, and I let that asshole walk free, I couldn’t have lived with myself.”
I shook my head, and he blinked back tears. “Christ, Sandra… Haven’t you ever made a mistake in your life? One that you could’ve avoided if only you hadn’t looked the other way?”
The question hit me like a kick to the chest. My words dried up in my throat and I looked away from him, staring at the dingy table and my fingernails pressing into it. I closed my eyes, letting the whirlwind inside me die down.
Haven’t you ever made a mistake?
“Yeah,” I said finally, nearly choking on the word. “A long time ago, before I knew better. Before I… became a cop. I didn’t see what was happening around me because I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe in a pretty little lie, and it cost my sister her life.” My stomach turned. “I guess that makes me just as bad as you.”
Nathan’s expression softened. “What happened?”
It wasn’t a story I told often—or ever, if I could avoid it. But there was no backing out of this conversation now, not with the tidal wave of my shame brimming in my eyes and on my lips. I had to tell him.
“I got emancipated when I was seventeen,” I said at last, dropping my hands into my lap to keep from breaking my nails on the wooden table. “I took custody of my sister, Jenny. Our mother was a junkie, in and out of prison all the time, and after our aunt died… Well, it was just the
two of us. I thought I had my shit together. I thought that I was the best thing for her. I thought that she’d see me working hard and playing by the rules and she’d want that for herself, too. I refused to believe that the fifteen years she’d spent watching our mom shoot up and smoke meth would tempt her to do the same thing. She’s a good girl, I told myself. She’d never do that shit.”
Nathan had put his fork down, just listening intently.
“So when Jenny started going to parties and not coming back for a few days, I told myself she was just troubled and going through some hard times. When I saw track marks in her arm, I told myself that there had to be some other kind of explanation, though I never even bothered to come up with one. When she lost so much weight that she was sometimes too weak to walk, I tried to ignore it all.”
“That’s not your fault,” Nathan offered, but I continued despite his petty attempt to stem the flow of words.
“And when she ODed in her room while I was cooking dinner? You’re trying to tell me that wasn’t my fault? That was when I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. That was when I finally had to look at her and see what she really was, what she had been for damn near a year. I finally had to see her bruises, the punctures in her arm and between her toes, the way her body had so obviously been used by the men supplying her with the shit that took her life. But by then it was too late, wasn’t it? I’d already put her in the ground with all the lies I told myself. I may as well have been holding the needle.”
I went quiet for a moment, the memories drifting through my head, taking a little piece of myself with them. “Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault.”
A silence fell between us, uncomfortable and heavy.
“So, yeah,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and quavering. “Yeah, I get it. Sometimes we don’t want to see the truth, because it would mean we’re the monsters. And that’s not an easy thing to look in the mirror and accept.”
“But we can’t change the past,” Nathan said, his voice warm and tender. “We can’t go back in time and undo the damage we caused with our willful ignorance. The only thing we can do is…”
“Change the future,” I finished for him. “Yeah. I know. But it doesn’t make it better.”
“Not if you don’t let it,” he said. “Sandra… what I did… what I didn’t do… that’s going to take a long time for me to forgive. And I’ll work through it, someday. But what happened to you and your sister? That was a lifetime ago. That’s something you’ve paid for time and time again. I can see it in your eyes. Haven’t you punished yourself enough? What would Jenny say?”
“Jenny’s dead,” I said. Even though it had been years, tears sprang to my eyes like I’d lost her just yesterday. “She can’t say anything.”
“But you can,” he insisted, standing up from the table and walking to my side. He knelt down on the ground and took both my hands in his, and I gasped audibly. “You can tell yourself you’re forgiven. You can stop telling yourself that you’re worthless and to blame. You can tell yourself it’s time to move on and that you’ll never make the same mistakes again. And you can tell yourself that you’ll always be there for young people like Jenny who got lost along the way, and that you’ll use your position in the police department to offer them a way out.”
I looked down at our hands, my vision blurred by my sorrow. This was the first time since I’d known him that Nathaniel Hale took the time to ask me about my past. It was the first time I genuinely believed he was listening to me. Staring at our entwined fingers I just wanted to cry. It was beautiful.
“Doesn’t that seem a hell of a lot more fair to you than spending your whole life as a prisoner of your own guilt? And doesn’t that seem more fair to the lives you could save by doing so?”
I stared into his eyes, into those gold-green gems glittering in the candlelight. I was looking for the lie, for the thing that would tell me he wasn’t sincere. I didn’t believe anybody could know what I did and tell me to forgive myself. I didn’t believe anyone could look at me the way he was looking at me right now and really mean it.
But I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find anything but honesty and acceptance. This was a man I’d known only as a sexual fling and a childish asshole, but now, looking into his eyes, I felt like we were one and the same. We were both looking for redemption. What if we’d found it in each other?
“You deserve better than this,” he said to me, and I couldn’t help it; I threw my arms around his neck, and without giving myself even a millisecond to reconsider, I kissed him as hard as I could.
Our lips crashed together, but somehow fit as perfectly as they always did. I felt fireworks go off in my chest and stars burst behind my closed eyelids. I felt the heat of his body pressed against mine, the scorching ferocity of his mouth blending with my own, his arms moving around my waist to cradle me, comfort me, make me whole again.
As his strong fingers clutched at my back, I pulled away, trembling violently. I looked again into his hazy, lust-filled eyes. His jaw was clenched as he searched my face, looking very much like a man doing his best to hold his desires back.
“Sandra,” he whispered, “we shouldn’t do this…”
“I know,” I told him, my lips aching for another kiss. But it wouldn’t be right—not like this. Not when I was still assigned to his case and sworn to protect him. I couldn’t do that if I was compromised by my feelings. I’d broken things off with Nathaniel Hale for a good reason, and I had to keep a professional distance no matter what my body was telling me.
I stood up, liberating myself from the circle of his arms and wiping my eyes with the back of my wrist. Every cell in my body screamed for me to return to him, but I couldn’t let my heart overrule my head. I couldn’t put Nathan in potential danger by letting myself get distracted, and after what I’d just done, I couldn’t bear to sit there and take another bite of dinner.
“I’m going to bed,” I murmured, ignoring the longing pulsations between my thighs. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Nathan nodded slowly. I could see his rippling muscles bunch up like he was ready to pin me to that couch and fuck away every bad feeling and thought threatening to destroy me. I could almost feel the weight of him on top of me, pushing me down, sinking into me as he made me his again. I could taste his lips again, or feel the flame of his tongue darting against my own. I could almost feel his flesh beneath my nails.
But no. Not now. Not yet. Not until I knew he was safe.
“Goodnight,” he said, his voice strained as he watched me pull the screen around the couch so I could change into my pajamas.
“Goodnight,” I echoed, slipping under the blanket I’d brought from home. As I listened to the sounds of him cleaning up the table, I tried desperately not to touch myself and drifted off into a restless night’s sleep.
Chapter 5
Morning came far too quickly for a girl who’d spent the evening entrenched in nightmares.
I’d been dreaming about Jenny, of course, and my mother, too. I’d dreamt their corpses were in our old living room, stuck with the thousand needles they’d used to keep their demons at bay. They were bloated and bruised, but all smiles, with teeth too bright for dead girls.
And all the while, they kept asking how I was, if I had made myself a hero yet. And in my dream, all I could do was say, “No, Mom,” and “No, Sis,” like some shameful little girl, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.
Why the hell did you kiss him? I thought to myself, pondering my own stupidity as I sat up on the smelly couch. I guessed the only good thing about last night was that the department was fighting a budget crisis and probably didn’t have any ears in this room.
“Stupid,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to myself or to the man still entombed in a sea of Egyptian cotton. We’d told Nathan to pack for a week, and he apparently used most of his luggage space to stow away miles of white sheets with an almost impossibly high thread-count. No sleeping like a commoner for that man.
I didn’t need this. I didn’t need any of this. My life was complicated enough without trying to jump back into bed with someone who’d probably cut himself on cheap toilet paper. I’d learned my lesson once, and I didn’t need to be reminded.
Did I want to do it anyway? Yes. Was I going to? Hell no.
The sun was coming up, and he was still sleeping as I began my little ritual. I spent five minutes at each window surveying the ground, taking note of everything worth noting. Cars parked in the lot by make and model, loitering individuals with their general descriptions, places someone could hide… Captain Pierce would expect an update with his morning coffee, and I wanted to be the detective on top of this case, not the woman who spilled her heart out and kissed the star witness.
And there was a problem out there. There were at least a dozen men posted about in unusual places. Not police, that much was certain. I could spot an undercover from a mile away, but these men were different. I spotted another one out on a little patch of grass on the edge of the property, his back leaned up against a tree, hands in front of him and his head slowly turning from one side to the other as if searching for something—or someone. A moment later, a pair of men came rounding the block again, walking calmly down the sidewalk. That was the third time they’d passed.
They were ex-military. No question. If I could see twelve of them, there were probably a dozen more being a little less conspicuous. With the entire apartment being too small to allow me a quiet place to make the phone call, I decided the little area that doubled as a living room was probably best. I lifted the phone to my ear.
“Detective, I expected this call ten minutes ago.”
Captain Pierce was being his usual rosy self.
“I have eyes on some men downstairs. At least twelve, well trained. They appear to be holding position around the building.”
“Yes, Sandra. Mr. Hale insisted on private security. We have a few trusted officers posted in the building, but we can’t afford to throw an entire squad at this problem. The world doesn’t stop being a bad place when a rich asshole needs protection. Mr. Hale has invested a small fortune in protecting himself since your little visit to his house,” the Captain replied gruffly.