“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Fuck!” I shouted, startling her back a step, as well as a group of pigeons that had been pecking their way around us.
“Matthew, you don’t need to shout.”
God, the woman was infuriating. How could she stand there, so impossibly placid, after she had literally stalked me all the way to Red Hook and then walked over two miles in those shoes just to find me? What the hell was going on?
“Look,” I said, trying and failing to maintain an even tone. “Nina, I’m on a date. I’m trying to move on because you told me to leave you the fuck alone, doll. For once in my life, I’m trying to be a decent guy. I’m trying to be more than just the other man.”
“Oh, Matthew…”
There was that look again. She hated when I talked badly about myself, just like I did with her. But this time, her concern wasn’t wanted.
I batted it away like a fly. “Did something change? Did I miss something here? Because I meant it, Nina. I’ll only stay away from you as long as you ask. But you have to keep your end of the bargain.”
She opened her mouth to make another cutting reply. And for a second, I thought she might say yes. I prayed she’d tell me to leave Annie at the restaurant and go with her. Back to my house, back to some privacy, where we could hash out whatever the hell was happening between us without interruptions. Figure out a future where we didn’t have to stay away from each other.
But instead, maybe as my final remark sank in, her upright posture deflated right along with my bravado.
“No,” she said quietly. “No, nothing’s changed.”
“You sure about that?”
Her body shrank even more.
“And where’s Calvin tonight? What the hell is he doing letting his wife get blisters chasing another man across the Brooklyn Bridge?”
“I didn’t walk across the bridge.”
“I’m serious,” I said. “What is he doing while you’re out here?”
“Don’t make this about him.”
“Why not? Seems to be he’s pretty central in all of it.”
“Because it’s not about him!” she cried. “It’s about you, and I don’t know what to do!”
“You should leave him!” I shouted. “It’s actually pretty damn simple, if you ask me. You don’t love him. He obviously makes you fuckin’ miserable. So the real question is, why the fuck do you stay?”
Her temper flared. “You have no right to ask me something like that. Especially when you know the answer.”
“Oh, no? I think I have the right when you’re stalking me all over the fucking city, Nina. Good husbands don’t leave their wives alone this much, Nina. They don’t jilt them at the opera and let other men make them come. They don’t make them cry to strangers in the middle of the street either.”
“Stop.”
“Jesus!” I paced on the sidewalk like a trapped animal. Despite being outside, despite having a million streets to escape into, I really did feel like a lion in its cage. “I’ve never met anyone so visibly unhappy and willing to do fuck all about it! You have the world at your fingertips, Mrs. Gardner. Why in the hell won’t you do anything to take it?”
“Because I don’t deserve it!”
“What do you really owe him?” I asked, more quietly this time. “I don’t understand it. So he sat next to you at a clinic nine years ago and gave your baby a name. Do you really think that’s worth a lifetime of misery?”
“Spoken like someone who has never had to question giving up that life otherwise.”
“He is not good to you!”
“And how do you know that?”
“Because if he was, you wouldn’t follow me halfway across Brooklyn just because I’m on a date with another woman! Because I’m pretty sure the most graceful woman I’ve ever met is not as accident-prone as she would like everyone to believe! Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Nina, how many more times do we have to have this conversation?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” she screeched, making a pedestrian up the street jump. “You make me—you make me do things I never would have done before. You make me absolutely crazy, Matthew. Look at me! I don’t even recognize myself anymore!”
She pulled a tube of lipstick out of her pocket and hurled it at me. It bounced off my chest and into the street. I didn’t even have to look to know the color was bright red. Just like I’d known from the start, she’d worn it for me. Even when I wasn’t around.
If I’d ever needed one indication that I’d seeped into her soul as much as she’d become a part of mine, that was it.
I grabbed her wrist. Nina swallowed and wiped at her face with her other hand. One tear, then another spilled over her cheeks.
“I don’t want to feel this way,” she said in a voice that quavered on the wind. “I thought, maybe if I saw you with her, I could accept that we’ll never work. That’s why I wandered around that museum like a fool. And watched you at the Empire State Building. And followed you here after I stood at your house like a lunatic wondering if you were…with…her.” She closed her eyes, like the unspoken image caused her physical pain. “I believed that if I saw you with someone else, then I could finally let you go.”
I inhaled. The scent of roses filled my nose, and for the first time in over a week, I felt like I was breathing again. “And is that working out for you?”
“It has to.” Nina shook her head sadly. “I have no other choice.” She pressed her hand over her face and rubbed her skin until it all turned pink. “Why? Why did I have to meet you now?”
I gazed at my hand, wrapped around her delicate wrist. I loosened my grip, but I didn’t let go, instead pulling her closer so we stood only inches apart.
“I ask myself that every day,” I said quietly.
She swiped at another tear. “Do you?”
“Sometimes I think it would have been better if we’d never met,” I replied honestly. “I wish to God I hadn’t fallen in love with the one woman on this planet I can never truly have.”
Her gray eyes widened, the color of storm clouds. “Oh, Matthew…”
“But then…” I shook my head. The alternative made me feel like there was a knife shoved into my chest. “Nina, then, I’d never have known you at all. And I can’t fuckin’ fathom a world anymore without you in it. That world…baby, that world’s just not worth being in.”
I leaned closer. I knew I shouldn’t. I was so fuckin’ angry with her. My life was fine before this woman entered with the grace of a flower and the blast of a storm. I’d been empty, maybe. But I knew what I was. Who I was.
Now the only thing I could think of was the way Nina tasted after a bottle of wine.
The way her lips puckered just so when she was upset.
The way her lip felt clenched between my teeth.
I didn’t really give a shit if there was another girl waiting for me at the end of the block, or another, or another.
None of them would ever be her.
And suddenly, I needed to feel her kiss like I needed air to breathe. I leaned in. But just when my mouth was about to brush hers, she slipped her hand out of my grasp and pressed both of them to my chest.
“No,” she whispered. “I—we—we can’t. You know we can’t.”
Rage bubbled up inside me. Was this how she was always going to be? Fuck around with me until we couldn’t take it anymore?
Well, good news for her. I was there. This was it. I was fuckin’ done.
“You know what, I was wrong. This is worse than not knowing each other. It’s so much worse.” I scrubbed the almost-kiss off my lips like I was going at one of Nonna’s pots with steel wool. “Go home, Nina. Get the fuck out of here, out of my neighborhood, out of my fuckin’ life. We’re not friends—you just nailed the coffin on that one. And come Monday, God willing, all this shit with your family will be behind me, and I can pretend you never existed at all.”
I turned and walked back to the restaurant, listening to my
heels echo on the pavement while the rest of the world blurred. But before the restaurant door closed behind me, my name floated through the air, a mewl as soft as an abandoned kitten’s and twice as broken.
“Matthew.”
It took everything I had not to go back to her. But I didn’t turn back. Because I knew if I did, I’d be lost for good.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“It’s Letour. No doubt about it. Look at that.”
Derek handed me a set of pictures as we walked up Fifth Avenue toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was the Sunday before the gala and our planned arrest of John Carson. The grand jury had come through on Friday with the indictment we sought, and now we were meeting at the museum to go through the final plans with Jane and her boss. Derek needed to tour the exhibit and other finalized gala spaces before tomorrow. And as the prosecutor assigned to the case, I was there to make sure everything was done good and legally. There could be no chance of any part of this case being thrown out. We were David going up against Goliath. We had one chance to put out the giant’s eye.
When he wasn’t prepping his squad of NYPD officers, Derek had spent the rest of the week gathering any last bits of information from The Hole that he could add to our case. This morning, there had been a breakthrough.
In the photos, a tall, dark-haired man in a very expensive-looking suit stood outside a big black Escalade, looking from side to side while a few kids from the neighborhood shuttled a row of young women out of the house and into the back of the truck. Probably there to make plans to change the operation, now that Roscoe “disappeared” with our help. Into a state-run rehab facility, but I wouldn’t be shocked if he didn’t make it through trial.
“Yeah, that’s definitely the slimy motherfucker,” I said, eyeing a picture of Jude Letour. “Eric showed me a picture of him before. How you doin’, Jack Sparrow?”
Derek chuckled. “He does look like a wannabe pirate.”
“It’s the chinstrap. Straight out of 2005. Money doesn’t buy class, that’s for sure. Do you know where he took the girls?”
“Big truck out in Flushing where they unloaded a bunch of other boxes. One that had plates registered to Chariot. Once it crossed the Connecticut state line, though, we couldn’t follow. The state troopers lost it pretty quickly after.”
I perked up. “Chariot? Really?”
“Yep. It looks like a simple trade—Letour and his associates orchestrate the dissemination of guns to local gangs on behalf of Carson in exchange for the girls, which Letour and Carson sell outside the U.S. at a premium.” Derek snorted with disgust. “Animals. I’d wager the truck was on its way up to Maine. Looser regulations up there, and outside of the De Vries Shipping ports.”
“Who is that?”
I pointed to another suit on the other side of the car. I could make out his shoulder and the edge of his shirt, but his face was obscured through the tinted windows. He was obviously not one of the local gang members, but more likely a new compatriot of Carson and Letour.
“I’m having someone in the photography unit see if they can’t suss that out,” Derek said. “I don’t know if they can, but I’d like to know who it is too.”
I held the photo up closely. I could just make out the outline of a man’s face, but there was no way to see who he was. Maybe someone in imaging could figure it out. Maybe not.
“It’s probably another one of those pricks from that Janus society,” I said, handing the photos back to Derek. “Let me know if anything comes up. Even if tonight goes perfectly, something tells me it’s not all going to end for us with John Carson’s arrest.”
“Tip of the iceberg,” Derek agreed.
He tucked the stack into his bag as we approached the museum entrance. The entire front had been transformed with temporary tents, barricaded press sections, and a huge pink carpet covering the famous steps. I didn’t really know much about shit like this, but anyone could see this was a big fucking deal.
“You got any other photos? Or IDs of the kids helping them?” I asked.
It wouldn’t do us good now, but discovery was a bitch. And if we got to the kids tonight or tomorrow before the party, there was a chance they wouldn’t disappear before trial.
“We got a gallery, Zo, and Cliff is already out there with a team hauling them in. Four members of the Crew, in and out of that safe house like it was a fuckin’ merry-go-round. I think they were getting things ready. Waiting for Daddy to come home and say good night.”
I nodded. “Good. It’s all good. And when he does tomorrow night, you guys can cart his ass straight to Rikers.”
“Mr. Zola?”
Derek and I were greeted at the top of the carnation-colored steps by a cute skirt I recognized as Jane and Eric’s personal assistant.
“Heya, Bridget. Just here for the final walk-through with the de Vrieses and Ms. Spring.”
Bridget nodded with a peppy smile. “Yes, they are expecting you and Detective Kingston. Follow me.”
Derek and I trailed Bridget around the gaping halls of the museum. Even if you weren’t a museum-goer, you could appreciate the grandeur of the high arched ceilings and stone work, not to mention the priceless art everywhere. Bridget turned down one hall, sidestepping the crews still hard at work on the new exhibits, and led us through an employees-only door and to an elevator bank.
“Don’t use that one,” she pointed to one of the two elevators. “Apparently, it hasn’t been working well, but they haven’t put a sign up yet.” She wrote something down on her notepad—I guessed a reminder to tell “them” to get on that sign.
We rode down to the basement, then followed Bridget through a maze of corridors to the Costume Institute in the far corner.
“Wait right here, please,” she said as she opened the door to a small conference room inside. “Mrs. de Vries is upstairs overseeing the seating with Cora, but she’ll be down in a moment.”
“Sure, honey. We’ll just entertain ourselves.”
I winked at the girl, who blushed as if on command before scurrying off into the bowels of the museum to find Jane.
“Now I know why you stay single,” Derek said. “If I had women eating out of my hand like you do, I’d never settle down either.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a matter of meeting the right ones.”
“And you haven’t?”
I have, I wanted to say. She just belongs to someone else. It had been three days since Nina’s and my little screaming match on the street. Three days of silence. Three days of trying and failing not to run every part of that tantrum through my head on repeat.
But before I could respond, the door opened, and Jane de Vries entered with another woman I took to be Cora Spring, the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine and director of the event they were organizing.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. “I have a million things to do other than walk a couple of policemen around the museum. Jane, thank God you came on. You absolutely saved the Westwood exhibit.”
“Just the one,” I clarified as Derek and I got up to shake her hand. “Ms. Spring, I’m Matthew Zola, investigator prosecutor with the Brooklyn DA. This is Derek Kingston, chief detective on this case. He’s the one who needs the layout for his team tomorrow night. After you’re done showing him around, we can all go through tomorrow’s plan together. We’ll do our best to keep it short and sweet.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” Cora nodded curtly at Derek. “I’ll walk you through the entire setup myself, Detective. That way it will be finished even more quickly.” The edge in her voice demonstrated just how much she was looking forward to negotiating a squadron of NYPD in a hall full of celebrities.
“She’s pissed,” Jane muttered as the door shut behind them. “This isn’t exactly what she was expecting when Nina elbowed me onto the committee.”
“She seems to like you, though. My sister says that’s a miracle in and of itself. She’s pea-green with jealousy, by the way. Apparently Cora Spring is a
pretty big deal.”
Jane gave me a look like I’d grown a couple of extra heads. “Um, she’s probably the biggest deal in fashion. The woman has been making careers in this industry for literally forty years. Ever seen The Devil Wears Prada?”
I nodded. “Kate made me watch it with her.”
“Well, Cora partly inspired the Meryl Streep character. The rest of it was toned down. A lot.”
I raised a brow in awe. “I’m surprised she is letting us do this, then.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when Nina promises to match the net fundraising of the event,” Jane replied. “They allow an amateur to help organize the thing and let us do pretty much whatever we want with the rest of it. Like bring my mother and best friend to hang out with the Vogue girls during the event.”
“Skylar’s coming?”
More new developments, and not particularly welcome. Skylar Crosby and Brandon Sterling were good friends from Boston—the reason I had gotten to know the de Vrieses in the first place. Under normal circumstances, I might welcome their presence. But not right now. Not when anyone else might complicate things. Or end up in the line of fire.
Jane nodded. “She and Brandon arrived with my mom last night. They’re staying with us, more for moral support. You should come say hi tomorrow. After…everything is taken care of.”
I gulped as I returned to one main detail. That Nina was the one who had made all of this happen. I was right, then. She not only turned over her grandmother’s coveted spot on the committee out of guilt and love for her family, but also personally greased the wheels for the biggest sting I’d ever been a part of.
Goddamn it. Just when I was almost about to hate her, the woman made it impossible.
“Out of curiosity, how much does an event like this pull in?” I asked. “A few hundred thousand, maybe?” Chump change for the de Vries family, which, according to Forbes, was worth billions. The Sterlings too. I wasn’t sure how I had come into such close proximity with this kind of wealth over the last several years.
Jane snickered. “Oh, you’re funny. This event fully funds the Costume Institute for an entire year. That doesn’t happen on a few hundred grand.”
The Other Man (Rose Gold Book 1) Page 30