“I thought this club was legitimate,” she says.
“Cut the bullshit,” I say. “I know why you were here. I know that your father wants to bury me and I’m not going to let him do that.”
“I was here because of him—”
“You came to my nightclub on the chance that a criminal was here?” I retort.
“No, not exactly, but—”
“You haven’t noticed yet, have you?” I ask.
She throws her hands up, letting them smack down onto her thighs. “Noticed what? That you’re insane?”
I turn and point upward. Her eyes follow in the direction that I’m pointing to. Three camera lenses point down toward us like sentries’ eyes.
I glance back down at her. Her face is stark white.
“I don’t even need to go to the police,” I say. “I can take this video straight to the media.”
“It … it shows that I hurt him in self-defense. It shows that it was just pepper spray.”
“It shows you here, not calling 911. How long has it been since he started dying? Certainly long enough that people will wonder what the fuck your father did wrong while raising you. The court of public opinion does not operate on innocent until proven guilty, Allison. All it takes is the shadow of a doubt. You’ll never outrun it.”
Her fingers sink into her hair. She grips onto it.
“You’re a piece of shit,” she whispers.
“Sure. I’d consider that a step above murderer.”
“I need time,” she says. “Give me a day.”
“I’m not giving you anything. You either marry me or this city will be screaming for blood over your family’s hypocrisy. Let’s all hope that every defense lawyer in the city doesn’t realize they could use this to claim that any crime your father presided over should be null and void. That would be a significant number of released criminals and it would retraumatize victims’ families. And the press … I shudder to imagine.”
I drop her bag near the dumpster. “The offer ends in the next minute. I need to know if I should call the police or call someone to clean up the body.
“If you call the police, I’ll just tell them that you threatened to throw me in prison.”
I get on my knees. “Those cameras don’t have audio. Does it look like I’m begging you to not blackmail me?”
“I hate you,” she whispers. “You have no idea what you’re asking from me.”
“I’m asking your hand in marriage,” I counter. “It is a good deal. You should take it.”
Her fists clench. “The defense lawyers would never have a case. Those criminals wouldn’t walk free.”
“It wouldn’t be difficult to plant some doubt into people’s minds. You sound like Daddy’s little girl. You two must be close if he sent you here and you did it. So, I’d bet that you two have talked recently. If you talked to him at all today, it’s going to point to the idea that he was involved in killing this man. And an idea is all the public needs to start questioning how corrupt your father is.”
She stares at me. Still on my knees, I pretend to propose to her. She smacks my hands down before grabbing one of them.
“I’ll marry you,” she whispers hoarsely. “Until death do us part. Let’s fucking hope that happens soon.”
5
Allison
I sit in the center of my room, staring at the window. In the apartment below us, I hear Andrew Straub, a four-year-old with an attitude problem, screaming. I have no idea why he’s awake at 5:13 a.m., but he’s always up before the sun.
My morning is a hazy blur.
5:25 a.m. The sound of car doors slamming shut and speeding toward the center of the city.
5:40 a.m. The sound of a man pissing in the apartment. Julia must have gotten Jonathan to come over.
5:50 a.m. The sound of the creaking floorboard in front of the door. The door softly closing behind someone.
5:55 a.m. I stand up. I pull out the business card that the asshole—Lev Alekseiev—gave me. He wrote his address on the back, telling me to visit at 7 a.m. to talk about our arrangement. The place is on the rich side of the city, just above the reach of the law.
Lev warned me that if I tell anyone about our deal, the security camera footage will be sent to every news station in the city. All night, I’ve told myself the facts: it was self-defense, I didn’t mean to murder him, and there was a minimal chance that the pepper spray would kill him.
But he did die.
And I’m an accomplice in hiding the crime. Maybe, if I had called the police right after it happened, there could have been minimal repercussions. The moment got away from me. My mind was flooded by the chaos and Lev took advantage of it.
While Lev escorted me back to his office, he called someone to take care of the body. Afterward, he laid down his threats like appetizers—casual but with refinement and if one of them wasn’t to my taste, there was another one that would be.
It certainly didn’t help that while we talked, he leaned against his desk, making the lines of his body discernible through his white dress shirt. Away from the dead body and in the glow of his office’s lighting, I saw his jade eyes, the granite-sharp jawline, and a level of indifference bordering on sociopathic.
And yet when his hand touched my arm, my body wanted nothing to do with the warnings in my thoughts. It just wanted more. Sex, to me, has always been a chore, nothing more. It’s never been like this, where a single touch can turn me feral.
As the memory overwhelms me, heat flushes under my skin. I open my door and take the four steps to the kitchen. I fill a glass of water, drinking all of it before setting it in the sink.
