The Honest Affair (Rose Gold Book 3)

by Nicole French

  Of course the smug fucker was happy. He’d practically bankrupted Gardner in the process of this trial. But freedom was better than jail, even with nothing to his name. For now.

  “And the restraining order?” Puffed with satisfaction, Gardner watched his wife stand, white-faced.

  Clyde smiled, revealing a row of stained, horsey teeth. “She was only able to have it extended through the trial. As of now, you’re a free man.”

  “Not free yet. Now you need to get me my money.”

  “Our money,” said Clyde. “There’s the matter of that settlement de Vries offered, too. We need to talk about that. Harvey doesn’t think you’ll get any more. And I don’t have to remind you of your bill, Mr. Gardner.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gardner said distractedly as he watched Nina making her escape. Beyond the doors was a hoard of photographers, already shouting her name. New York’s princess, foiled again.

  He squinted his eyes and stood. He had a few things to say to her. Things he’d been saving up over the past few months. Things that no longer had to wait.

  “I’ll meet him back at the office in an hour,” he told Clyde. “Thanks again. Really.”

  Abandoning the lawyer’s proffered hand, he shoved his way out of the courtroom and tracked Nina down the hall, shoving his way through the throng of reporters who all shouted his name too.

  “Mr. Gardner!”

  “Calvin!”

  “How do you feel about the verdict!”

  “Will this affect your divorce with Mrs. Gardner?”

  “Get the hell out of my way,” he snapped, shoving the closest photographer hard enough that he nearly fell down the steps. The rest fell back. Typical. Shove one, the rest fall, like bowling pins. Sheep.

  He spotted her across the street, purchasing some iced tea from a street cart vendor. As soon as she spotted him, her large eyes widened even more, and she shoved a bill at the vendor and darted away. Was she—was she really headed toward the subway in her pristine white coat? His wife? Nina?

  “Nina!” he shouted after her. “You might as well turn around, princess. You know I won’t give up.”

  Goddammit it, he really hated to run. Thankfully, she stopped, whirling around with sudden fury.

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” she snapped.

  “Hello, princess,” he said. “Nice to see you, too.”

  “You are not supposed to talk to me. Go away, Calvin, before you get into more trouble.”

  She glanced around nervously. Gardner tried not to smile, then decided not to bother. He always did enjoy the way he made her scare like this.

  “I’m not doing anything wrong. Your little restraining order expired at the end of the trial. That’s today, in case you missed it. Which means I’m free to see you as much as I want. And Olivia, come to think of it,” he added, unable to help himself.

  He really did love seeing her squirm whenever he mentioned her waifish daughter. Honestly, the kid always gave him the creeps, with those huge dark eyes of hers that seemed to see right through him.

  But she didn’t squirm. Instead, she straightened to her full, irritatingly tall height. Gardner was thankful he had worn lifts today, but that still put him an inch or two below her when she was in heels. Fuck.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “You’ll leave Olivia and me alone, Calvin. You won’t have a reason to see her anymore anyway.”

  “And why’s that?” he asked. “She is my daughter, after all.”

  Again, to his disappointment, she didn’t squirm. If anything, his normally demure wife looked about ready to hit him. God, what had she been doing the last six months?

  “She absolutely is not,” Nina said much more calmly than she looked. “And as of last week, she knows it too.”

  It took a moment for Gardner to process what she had said. His face grew hot, like a kettle about to boil over. She knew? Which meant…others likely knew too?

  “And, Calvin?”

  He remained frozen as Nina leaned forward, causing her necklace to dangle down toward the ground.

  “What?” he gritted through his teeth.

  She was still beautiful, even if she was over the hill at thirty-one. But he had never wanted to mess up that beauty more than now.

  “I know about Giuseppe,” she said in a voice that was cold as ice. “I know what you did.”

  She knew about… He couldn’t even finish the thought before he took a step back and immediately hated himself for it. Nina was as thin as a mannequin—how could she manage to intimidate him?

  “What’s that?” he demanded suddenly, shoving a meaty finger toward the piece of jewelry dangling from her neck. Some ugly medallion and something else that flashed in the light.

  Nina captured it before he could identify anything.

  “Nothing,” she said quickly. “A good luck charm I borrowed from Jane for the trial.”

  Gardner snorted. “That’s cute. Who would want any of that whore’s luck?”

  A mistake. Nina’s silver eyes blazed. And then, before he could stop her, she had overturned her entire cup onto his white shirt, covering it

  “What the fuck!” Gardner screeched as the iced tea splattered down the front of his shirt and pants. He danced on the sidewalk, and irritably noticed the sound of cameras clicking behind him. “What in the fuck, Nina?”

  “You may have won this battle,” Nina told him bitterly, even haughtily despite the fact that he had just been fully acquitted in this damn trial. “But the war is far from over. You would do best to stay out of my way and respect those I hold dear.”

  “Is that a challenge, princess?” he sneered even as he was picking the wet fabric off his skin. “What do you think you’re going to do? Snub me to death?”

  But she didn’t speak, only crossed her arms and looked him over. The revelations she had just made throbbed in the back of his mind, stunting his speech long enough that she didn’t even deign him with a response. Instead, she turned on her heel and continued down the street.

  As she walked, Gardner was filled with fury despite the victory of the day. She was infuriating. A bitch. Self-righteous when she had no fucking right to be. She had always thought she was better than him.

  And now she was embarrassing him again, revealing the rest of their secrets to the world, threatening him with charges of what, murder? Of her beloved professor more than ten years ago?

  It was laughable. Which had to be the point, he realized. It was all just a game, like she had been doing for years every time she pointed out a stain on his shirt or crumbs on his mouth. That didn’t even touch the early days, when he actually tried to be nice, but she rebuffed his attempts to claim his rights as a husband as if he had suggested she jump into a vat of boiling oil.

  All she had ever done was humiliate him. And for that, he wanted to kill her… No, not kill her. No, death would be too easy.

  He wanted to make her pay. Make her understand, once and for all, that he wasn’t a man to be trifled with.

  And that was just what he would do.

  III

  Dolci

  Chapter Twenty-One

  April 2019

  Matthew

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, Zola. But you’re out.”

  I slumped in the chair next to my former investigative partner, Derek Kingston, while we faced Greg Cardozo, an executive assistant DA and head of the Bureau of Organized Crime and Racketeering. And my—now former—boss.

  It killed me that I hadn’t been able to attend the verdict with Nina or be there on the days she was put on the stand. Eric and Jane had shown up, of course, but I’d been confined to my house, staring at my cell phone like a desperate teenage girl, waiting for text updates while I refreshed the Post coverage of the trial again and again.

  Today, though, Cardozo had been nice enough to invite me to his office to go over the verdict. Out of respect, he said, since Derek and I had been the ones who spent nearly a year building the damn thi
ng—more if you included the case against John Carson and our successful prosecution of Jude Letour. I appreciated it, too. It wasn’t Cardozo’s fault the jury had swung toward Gardner, who had clearly greased the wheels at some point—how, I wasn’t sure, but these assholes seemed to collect the secrets of the judiciary like pennies on the subway. I’d seen it time and time again. The second I heard there was a new judge on the case, I knew they would lose.

  “I’m out?” I asked. “Are you kidding me?”

  On some level, I’d expected it, of course. But after months of silence, a small part of me had hoped that with my careful discretion, the whole thing had blown over. Gardner was free, yes, but the DA was now absolved of a conflict of interest when it came to his prosecution.

  And yeah, it’s one thing to expect. Another to hear it out loud.

  “Greg, come on,” Derek put in. “He’s paid his due. It’s been almost eight months since de Vries confessed. She pled and served. It should have been done a while ago. Do you really think people will care?”

  “Ramirez seems to think so,” Cardozo replied. “Considering he was voted back in by the skin of his teeth, I think his exact words were ‘the last thing I need is a goddamn sex scandal.’”

  “Really?” Derek replied. “Didn’t that public defender sleep with his own damn client? He got, what, a month off, and then he was right back to work.”

  “That’s the Bronx,” Cardozo said like he was referring to a cockroach. “Not Brooklyn. We got different standards here.”

  “So it’s not enough the fucker somehow bought the judge and won?” I cut in. Usually I was happy to get into a pissing match over the differences between boroughs, but right now, I didn’t give a shit. “He has to get me fired too?”

  “Give us a little credit, Zola. This isn’t coming from that bastard Gardner,” Cardozo said. “It’s from Ramirez. I’m sorry, but someone told him about you and Ms. de Vries. He got a call from someone in Italy, I think, checking on your credentials. Woman named Ruggeri. She mentioned your girlfriend.”

  I slumped further down into my chair. Fuck. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said. Technically I wasn’t lying.

  “What were you doing in Italy with Gardner’s wife, Zola?” Cardozo pressed.

  “I—her cousin hired me as an interpreter. I went with her to Florence to…interpret.”

  Derek’s mouth dropped. Cardozo looked like he wasn’t sure whether to sock me or congratulate me.

  “Not your girlfriend, huh?” was all he said in the end.

  I ground my teeth. “Well, if I’m fired, does it really matter if she is?”

  Cardozo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I think I’m supposed to say it would look really unprofessional and we certainly don’t condone it,” he said evenly. “But I’ve heard of worse, like Derek said. I mean, we aren’t the Bronx, but we aren’t perfect either.”

  I snorted. “Give me a break.”

  Greg reached across the desk and offered me his hand. “Done. You’re a good man, Zola. And a damn good attorney. You’ll land on your feet. And I’ll provide any reference you want. That’s a promise.”

  I sleepwalked out of the building, but only after I was given the other bad news: that in six months, I’d be losing my exemption license to carry as well. Under New York’s strict gun laws very few people were allowed firearms outside their homes, but prosecutors could have them, depending on the DA. I’d taken my military-issue Beretta with me to and from work for seven years, having heard too many stories of guys jumped by former defendants or their associates in a madcap vendetta.

  Jesus, Ramirez must have been really mad. Why didn’t he just chop off my balls while he was at it?

  Outside, the sky darkened with the threat of thunder. Usually I liked the spring storms. They pooled in the sky and opened up with a deluge of water to wash away the city’s sins, give it another chance to start over.

  But today it felt like nothing could wash away the filth of the last year. For the first time in my life, New York didn’t feel like a problem I was meant to solve. It felt like a damn trap. And I was a mouse, caught in the cage.

  “Zola! Zo!”

  I turned to find Derek jogging down the street after me.

  “Hey,” he said. “You all right?”

  “I just lost my job and my gun. Would you be all right?” I said.

  Derek had the decency to look contrite. “It’s a low blow, man. It really is.”

  “It’s not even an election year,” I rattled on. “And do you know how many ADAs fuck around with each other? Half of 350 Jay has, and the other half is just waiting to.”

  “Yeah, I was, ah, aware of that.” The look on Derek’s face told me he was most likely part of that particular population.

  “It’s fucking bullshit,” I said. “I recused myself. I went on leave. I’ve been pouring drinks and moping around this city for eight fuckin’ months, and for what? So I could get canned after giving them everything I had for the last eight years? Fuck!”

  I kicked a stray can and considered pummeling a mailbox nearby. I had never wanted to hit something so badly.

  “Sorry,” I said once I had cooled down. “I just needed to get that off my chest.”

  “It’s no problem,” Derek said. “I don’t blame you. It is bullshit, plain and simple. You’re the best man they have. Cardozo said it himself. Now you’ll just be the best man somewhere else. They’ll be sorry once they have to face you in court.”

  I grimaced. Was that where I was headed? I still couldn’t totally imagine myself defending shitheads like Calvin Gardner for a living.

  “I, uh, I meant to ask you,” Derek said. “Have you heard from Frankie lately?”

  I frowned. “Have I heard from my sister whom I live with?”

  Derek shifted on his soles. “I just tried to call her a few times in the past couple months, and I haven’t heard from her. I was wondering if…well, is she seeing anyone?’

  I sighed. Originally, I thought Derek and Frankie would be good for each other, but my sister had been acting funny for months now. Ever since running into Sofia’s dad, actually. She staunchly refused to tell me anything about that interaction—only that the guy was not in Sofia’s life and never would be.

  But she had disappeared that night at Jane and Eric’s well before I left. And I never did find out if she left in the company of the big Brit, who for some reason called her “Francesca.”

  “I don’t know, man,” I said truthfully. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, um. Good, I guess.” Derek toed his sneaker into the pavement. “So, you and the heiress, huh?”

  I sighed. “Don’t act like you didn’t know.”

  “Well, knowing and suspecting isn’t the same thing.” Derek shoved his thumbs into his pockets.

  “Was she worth it?”

  I didn’t have to ask what he meant. But I still didn’t like it.

  “I can’t answer that. It’s like asking whether you prefer life without air or water. You need them whether you want to or not.”

  Derek looked taken aback. “Need, huh? That’s deep, man.”

  I sighed. I wasn’t feeling particularly deep. I was feeling pissed off. And frustrated. And kind of lost.

  But underneath all that was a fact that hadn’t been there a year and a half ago.

  I could lose my job. I could lose my house, my car, whatever else the world decided to take away from me. But I wouldn’t lose the fact that I was completely in love with Nina de Vries and always would be.

  Like the air. Like the water.

  “Yeah,” I agreed with Derek. “It runs real deep.”

  He nodded, almost as if in awe. “Not a total loss, then.”

  “No,” I said. “Definitely not.”

  He gave me a sharp slap on the shoulder. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear?”

  I nodded. “Thanks, man. You too.”

  I dropped my briefcase on the floor with a smack when I returned home, half-inclined to kick
it clear across the floor.

  “Shoes off, Zio!” called Sofia from the living room, where she was happily ensconced on the sofa watching TV while she chattered to a couple of dolls. It was the tail end of Frankie’s spring break, and she and Sofia had been enjoying a week-long “staycation.” Which also meant I hadn’t seen Nina in just as long.

  “Hey,” Frankie said as she looked up with surprise from the kitchen, where she was making coffee. “That was quick. How’d it go?”

  I slumped onto a barstool and scowled. “They found out about Italy.”

  Frankie grimaced, though it wasn’t with much surprise. When I had told her my plans to be an interpreter for Nina de Vries, my sister had tried to talk me out of it for over a month. It wasn’t until I threatened to tell Sofia the name “Xavier” that she finally shut up about it.

  “Ah, Mattie. I…”

  “I swear to God, Frankie, if you say I told you so, I will strangle you with that apron you’re wearing.”

  My sister just rolled her eyes, and went about pouring herself a cup of coffee. She held up the pot. I nodded, and she poured me a mug.

  “So, what does that mean?” she asked tentatively as she doctored hers up, then handed me mine black.

  “It means I’m officially a career bartender until I get some interviews lined up.” I shrugged. “Cardozo said he’d give me a reference, even if the DA won’t. I don’t know. I’ll check the public defender’s office. Maybe there’s something there, if not at Legal Aid.”

  “Will that...will that be enough?” Frankie asked tentatively. “To cover everything, I mean?”

  I stared into the bitter black liquid. Right now, I sort of wanted to drown in it. I hated that she even had to ask me this, that she couldn’t just trust me to take care of her and Sof like I always had. Right now I was a failure in more ways than one.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Well, I have to ask, though,” Frankie said. “Are you going to learn from this?”