“No,” I said viciously. “That was the entire point of taking the plea, was it not? The whole reason I suffered the last two weeks was to be able to put him away.”
“It was part of her plea deal,” Jane supplied helpfully, having been a prosecutor herself at one point. “And if she breaks it, she’ll be taken back to court.”
“We may be able to renegotiate that,” Delia replied. “I still think there’s an argument for spousal privilege.”
Jane shrugged. “If it were me, I’d subpoena her regardless, and I’d probably win. Most judges won’t uphold spousal privilege if said spouse is accessory to the crime. Nina already confessed. And served her time for it.”
Which I appreciate more than you know, doll.
I closed my eyes at the sound of the familiar voice that even now still rumbled in the depths of my conscience, two months since I had last seen him. Truth be told, I was still furious with him. And tremendously hurt. The look on his face when he had come storming into the bedroom where we had just made love only to accuse me of acting in concert with my husband to traffic young women across multiple states had cut me through like a sword. Even more once I had had a moment to really look at the so-called video evidence.
Caitlyn Calvert, my former best friend, yes. She might have tried, but she was no me. Not even close.
I had thought the love of my life would have recognized that almost as quickly as I had.
I shook his voice away. Regardless of my feelings for Matthew, I still believed in the importance of his former case. My husband was a monster. My home was riddled with lies. It was long past time for me to do whatever was needed to escape them both and deliver justice where it was needed.
Delia and Barney, Eric and Jane all traded glances. It was no secret that everyone in this room clearly thought that particular decision had been foolhardy in the extreme. I didn’t care. The Brooklyn DA had treated me fairly, and the defense attorney Eric had hired as soon as he found I was there had negotiated terms that were better than I had expected. I was sentenced to forty-five days in prison, had served only a few weeks. Was I now technically a felon? Yes. But I wouldn’t really suffer, and it would allow me to do the right thing: indemnify my husband, the man who was really at fault here.
But if I signed an NDA, it would all go away. Then who knew what he would do to me?
“I want to make something very clear,” I said, taking the time to look each of them in the eye. “I only care about coming out of this with two things: my ability to testify against my husband, and my daughter’s future intact. I don’t care about the money. Any of it. He can have all of my inheritance. Every piece of property. All of it as long as I get to walk away with what’s left of my father’s trust and enough to get myself through school so I can support Olivia somehow.”
My voice carried through the room. The truth was, I was terrified at the idea of being out on my own. But it also seemed like the right thing to do. If anything, Grandmother’s postmortem machinations only convinced me that much more that I could not depend on this family.
“Nina,” Eric started once more.
“No,” I interrupted. “Eric, I know you think I’m just some spoiled socialite raised with a silver spoon—”
“Nina, I didn’t say that. But come on, look at you. You’re…well, you’re obviously used to a certain kind of lifestyle. And now you’re saying you want to go without?”
I looked down at my clothes—an icy gray Givenchy blouse and skirt combo I’d purchased two years ago off the runway. Lovely, yes. But not a necessity.
“This is all Grandmother. You have to know that,” I replied. “The way she made me in her image. She thought she was teaching me the skills to live this life, but really she was just gilding my cage.”
“And the penthouse?” Eric countered. “You live in one of the nicest homes on the Upper East Side—”
“It’s a decrepit hatbox that smells like old rose water,” I retorted. “I’ve always hated it, and I always will. He can have it. Next.”
“It’s a penthouse apartment on Lexington Avenue,” countered Delia not-so-gently. “It’s worth nearly as much as Celeste’s bequest with its value growing. If for some reason the will is challenged successfully, it’s a good insurance policy for you.”
“I. Don’t. Want. It,” I practically gritted through my teeth. What was so difficult to understand about this? I turned to my cousin, pleading. “Eric, you left and made it on your own. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because no one’s asking you to,” he said, but I wasn’t done.
“I would wear nothing but rags and raise my daughter in a cardboard box if it meant I could be free of him forever,” I said. “That’s all I want. That’s it.”
“Well, luckily, it won’t ever come to that,” Jane put in as she returned carrying a tray of badly needed glasses of wine for us and the lawyers, plus a straight vodka for Eric.
Warmth flooded through me. The way these two continued to care for me was utterly baffling. I hadn’t expected this much. Ever.
My attorneys, however, seemed to have something else on their minds. Neither of them even touched the proffered drinks.
“Er, Ms. de Vries. Might we speak with you in private?”
Eric frowned. “Nina?”
“Come on, Petri dish,” Jane cut in. “We don’t need to be voyeurs on every single one of Nina’s conversations, you know.”
She popped up from the couch and proceeded to tow Eric out of the room by his tie. He didn’t look altogether unpleased by his wife’s sudden attention.
I turned back to Barney, who had made the request. “It’s getting late.”
“Yes,” he said. “But we wanted to speak to you about…well, about the other option here. Of getting Mr. Gardner to be more…amenable.”
I frowned. “There’s another option?”
Delia sighed. “We didn’t think you would want to discuss it in front of Eric and Jane. But, Ms. de Vries, if you did file on grounds of abuse—”
My head snapped up. “On grounds of what?”
Both lawyers remained quiet. They looked almost sorry for me, and their expressions were exactly why I had never told anyone at all about the things Calvin had done.
But that day in their office, caught as I was on a tidal wave of truth that seemed to be crushing every aspect of my life at the moment, I had told them. I had shown them the pictures I had taken over the years. I had recounted time and time again that Calvin had hit me, kicked me, beaten me so hard my ears rang and I saw stars, sometimes for hours after he was done. I showed them the X-rays with cracked ribs, another with a deep contusion just below my kidney. They had seen everything.
“If you file on grounds of physical abuse, it may speed up the process. Particularly given the fact that with the dates of some of these events, Mr. Gardner may face criminal charges if you wanted to pursue them.”
“And if he counters with grounds of adultery?” I asked.
“You said he was not aware of your relationship with ADA Zola,” Barney replied. “Was that true?”
“I—yes, I believe it was. But—” I cut myself off this time. “No, I’m not going to do that. It’s too much. Olivia will find out. My family will learn of it. No. The answer is no.”
Delia folded her lips together, clearly disagreeing. “Please just think about it, Ms. De Vries.”
“I’m paying you the earth, or at least my cousin is, Delia. I’ll think about it, but I’d ask you to think about more creative ways to get me out of this marriage. As soon as possible. Please.”
“Ms. de Vries—”
“I need a break,” I said suddenly, and stood from the couch, sweeping past Eric and Jane as they reemerged from the upstairs.
“Hey,” Jane said. “We were just going to make dinner.”
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Nina, come on, it’s raining,” Eric said. “You can go to Jane’s workshop if you need some space—”
“Goin
g for a walk!” I practically squawked as I grabbed my favorite cashmere coat from the rack in the front hall and swept out the front door.
“Take Tony!” Jane called before the door swung shut.
But I just kept walking, where neither Jane’s voice nor her hulking security detail could follow.
Chapter Four
Matthew
“I’m going for a smoke.”
One brow rose on Jamie Quinn’s face, but my best friend (and my current boss) didn’t say anything. I knew what he was thinking. Jamie was wondering what the hell was so bad that I was smoking for the first time in ten years.
Nah, fuck that. He knew the answer to that, too. And the fucked-up thing was, neither of us had an answer to the problem. So we were, as they said, letting sleeping dogs lie. Or in my case, reacquaint themselves with nicotine.
It was almost midnight on a Monday, and I was only halfway through my shift. The lounge was all but dead, with a few couples nestled in the far booths and the last remnants of the NYU crowd hanging off some of the barstools. There would be one more influx as the 24/7 folks clambered in before last call. Until then, there wasn’t much else to do.
Avoiding Jamie’s latent judgment, I took advantage of the lull and headed out the back entrance to the alley. Leaning against the cold brick wall, I pulled the crumpled pack of Camel Lights out of my back pocket, lit one, and took a long drag, then exhaled with a sigh of relief.
It was a bad habit I’d picked up on tour. Like a lot of other servicemen, I grasped at anything that would help harden my pounding heart, calm the swirl of anxiety that constantly seemed to beat there when IEDs killed one of my men every other day and the threat of insurgents loomed on every horizon.
Maybe it was the nicotine. Maybe the curling smoke. But something about a cigarette calmed the nerves, something I needed these days. Badly. This city was a war zone. Except the bombs going off weren’t IEDs—they were memories of her.
That corner over there. A restaurant two blocks down. The hotel penthouse that loomed overhead. Even this fuckin’ bar, where every night, I’d stare at the barstool where I’d first seen her, sipping on red wine, pinky raised and all.
How could you have not known? she’d asked, pain cutting through her silvery eyes like a knife.
It had cut through my chest, too.
And why didn’t I see it, huh? If I hadn’t been so busy looking for her guilt, I might have noticed proof of her innocence. I’d broken the first rule of justice: innocent until proven guilty.
I’d turned it all around out of fear, too scared to trust the woman I loved. And now I was paying for it, a blast to the heart, on every goddamn corner.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Liver or the lungs. One of them was going down while I tried to let go of my regret. And let go of her, too.
I finished the cigarette and headed back inside, grateful for the slight haze that now clouded my thoughts. The bar was full again, right on schedule. In another hour, it would peter out for the last time. Jamie would do last call around two, then he and I would clean up, and I’d head home at the relatively early hour of three instead of four thirty or five.
Some schedule. Some fuckin’ life.
“You want me to take the door end?” I asked as I washed my hands at the sink next to the register.
Jamie finished ringing up a new tab. “No, I got it. You take the inside section. There’s someone there for you anyway.”
I frowned. “Who?”
For a moment, I wondered if it was one of the ladies who sometimes still left breathy voicemails, dreaming of “that one night” we had spent together and begging for one more. Some people might have found them pathetic, but these days, I only felt that about myself. A year ago, I would have taken those calls and thought nothing of it. Met them at some hotel out by the airport, where their husbands wouldn’t find them.
Now the thought just made me ill. Because as much as I hated it, there was only one woman I had eyes for anymore. Married or not, she had stolen my soul, along with any faith I had in the institution of marriage or even love.
And I’d fucked it all up.
Shit. Maybe I needed another smoke.
“I think you know.” Jamie handed me a newly opened bottle of his most expensive red wine. A wine I knew very well, considering I’d once shared a bottle of it with—
“Shit.”
“Don’t pussy out now. Although you might want a breath mint. You smell like a pool shark, Zola.”
“It’s a bar, Quinn,” I snapped even as I grabbed one of the Altoids we kept under the register.
He just chuckled. “Whatever you say. But if I had that waiting for me, I’d take at least four of those bad boys. And I wouldn’t keep her long.”
My friend turned to help a crowd of college students on the other side of the bar. I sighed, taking a second to adjust the rolled-up sleeves of my plain white shirt, the cheap black tie, the old black pants that were appropriate for a job where spills happened every few minutes, courtesy of over-excited patrons.
I felt strangely naked without a full suit. This was a woman who went through designer threads like she picked them up at the Goodwill. I’d never seen her anything less than perfect unless I was the one mussing her up. I wasn’t her equal in a lot of ways, but right now, the idea that I was no better than one of her servants hurt my pride more than I wanted to admit.
Or maybe you’re just delaying the inevitable, asshole.
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, even my conscience wasn’t putting up with my bullshit tonight.
I checked my breath, and when I finally turned around, I was immediately struck with the strongest déjà vu of my life. Nina de Vries was sipping wine at the end of the bar right where Jamie said she was, looking almost exactly the same as when I’d first met her in an elegant gray cashmere coat partially covering a white silk dress. Under the dim lights, her smooth, pale skin seemed to glow. One long leg was crossed over the other, a silver-colored high heel dangling off her foot. Her blonde hair gleamed, and her lips were stained with drink.
For a moment, it was the same dark and stormy night eleven months ago. I was knocking back gin like it was my job, feeling lost and alone for reasons I couldn’t comprehend. She sat at the other end, fingering the stem of her wineglass. An angel in white. A beacon in the dark.
This time, though, the angel was staring a hole through me and looked really fucking mad. Angel of mercy, I’d hoped for. More like the angel of death.
Still, it was her. Nina, in my bar. Nina, out of jail.
Nina…free.
“Excuse me?”
The palm of a short, snappy woman found the bar top with a flat, hard smack. Shit. Nina already had her drink, but there were at least four customers waiting to be served. As much as I wanted to ignore them, I couldn’t. I was working. And frankly, I needed the tips.
“Hey, handsome,” said the twentysomething woman, whose businesslike blouse was unbuttoned a few too low. “Think we could get some drinks?”
I blinked. “Sorry, ladies. Sure. Just caught in my thoughts for a second.”
“I like a daydreamer,” said her friend with a sly grin. “So long as he shows me what he’s thinking later on.”
She slid her jacket off, baring a thin black shirt that was a lot too tight, and batted a pair of eyelashes that looked like the ones my sister Joni glued on her eyelids every now and then. I told her they made her look like Betty Boop and that no man wanted to feel plastic butterfly wings smacking his cheeks when he was kissing his date. She told me to take my chauvinist male gaze and shove it up my ass.
Some manners.
I didn’t argue. Still, a man could have his preferences.
I nodded at Betty with a fake smile, conscious of the much more alluring siren to my right watching us with silver daggers.
In the two months since I’d last seen Nina in that interrogation room, I’d about given up on her. Us. Anything. After that little stunt I pulled, I had been told in no u
ncertain terms that I was not to approach her until she was sentenced, unless I cared to be disbarred completely. And even though Cardozo never said it, talking to her at all until her husband was locked up was probably a bad idea too.
But apparently I was a glutton for self-punishment. I had tried to visit her at Rikers only to be told that Ms. de Vries was not accepting visitors other than her attorneys. Since she was released, her phone number was disconnected too. She had a lot of very good reasons for the distance too, I supposed. Like that I’d broken her fucking heart.
Maybe that was the reason she looked like she wanted to claw my eyes out. Or maybe she was just acting the same way I felt as a couple of men eyed her overtly on their way to the restroom.
Jealousy really is a sneaky bitch.
So yeah, maybe that’s what made me wink at my new customers like a teenage boy on the prowl. I had an audience. And for the first time in months, it was making me feel a bit more alive.
“What can I get you ladies? Something sweet or something spicy?”
Okay, not my finest, I’ll admit. Still, the two girls giggled like hyenas. The white figure in my peripheral vision remained perfectly still.
“Can you make a cosmopolitan?” asked Betty, eyelashes batting hard enough to cast a small wind across the bar.
“Like a champ,” I told her with a grin. “And for you, miss?”
“A lemon drop, please,” said Blouse Buttons.
“Sweet and sour,” I confirmed. “The very best combination.”
The girls glanced at each other and grinned. “We like to think so,” one of them said. “Especially with the right…mixer.”
A loud yet incredibly ladylike cough sounded from the other end of the bar. I didn’t look her way—not yet—and just smiled more broadly to myself.
“We’ll be in the far booth if you want to join us,” said Betty as she and her friend sashayed away. “We hope you do.”
“Cheers, ladies.” I turned to the next customer only to find Jamie already there.
The Honest Affair (Rose Gold Book 3) Page 5