CHAPTER 1
Ravenna
One Year Ago
I lied under oath.
That was pretty much my job description. All the years of studying the human brain and the psychology behind our nature, the meticulous training, the catcalls, the spitting—prisoners were big on hauling their bodily fluids, and I was glad it was only saliva I’d received so far—the threat of violence every time the door buzzed locked behind me as I entered the interview room, and the confinement with the sickest and dirtiest of minds weren’t to make me a forensic psychologist. They were meant to make me a perjurer.
Why, did you ask?
Because I was a debt payment. To the Mob.
No, not the kind that was pretty enough or important enough to be collected in marriage. My flat chest and nerd glasses didn’t inspire made men to use me for their sick pleasures and call it a day. Neither did my no longer rich or powerful, drowning-in-debt corrupt ex politician of a father.
Instead I was given the best education to become the shrink who would lie under oath to free convicted mobsters in the state of Illinois.
That’s what you get when you skip two years and nerdly blurt out in a school built by the Mafia for the Mafia you wanna be a doctor instead of asking for a boob job like any normal teenager.
God, I fucking hate Chicago.
“Doctor Berlusconi?” Adam Polanski, the defendant’s attorney, yanked me out of my thoughts.
I shifted in the witness stand, clearing my throat. “Yes?”
“Can you tell us what the culprit was thinking when he didthis?” He pointed at a magnified projection image of a bloody corpse of a woman with multiple stab wounds. The defendant’s murdered wife.
“Objection, Your Honor. The witness can’t know what the defendant was thinking,” the prosecutor said.
But I did. Thedefendantkilled his wife after she knew he was cheating on her so she wouldn’t sue his ass and take his money. He’d told me himself with a proud smirk.
“Doctor Berlusconi is an expert witness, Your Honor. She was called in because she’s the defendant’s psychiatrist and she’s an expert in her field,” Polanski said.
Wrong. Despite my intelligence, dedication and Master’s degree, I wasn’t qualified to be an expert. I needed, at least, five more years in the field and a real PhD, not one that was falsified like my new birth certificate—I was almost twenty-two in reality, not twenty-seven—to make me more legitimate for the role. Just like Polanski was paid heavily to make sure a guilty murderer avoided jail time, I was called in to lie for the same reason.
“Overruled. Proceed,” the judge prompted.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Judge DeLuca was particularly selected for this case, too. He and my father played poker together and had bonded over a long history of gambling debts and shady favors. “After examining the defendant, Viktor Safin, who has been my patient for the past three months, my professional diagnosis for him is schizophrenia with paranoia. His paranoid delusions in particular focus on the constant fear of being poisoned. In my professional opinion, on the day of the crime, Safin, in a paranoid delusion of his, believed his wife was trying to poison him.”
“And in your professional opinion, do you believe Viktor intended to murder his wife?” Polanski asked.
“No,” I lied without batting an eye. I’d learned to lie without a single quiver to my body or voice since the moment my father was tied helpless, a knife to his eye, and a gun barrel was shoved into my mom’s mouth right in front of me and my baby brother. “In that moment, Viktor was unable to distinguish reality from delusion. He felt threatened in the midst of his delusional state, and, in his mind, he was defending himself.”
“Thank you, Doctor Berlusconi. No more questions.”
Shame and revulsion tugged at my conscience, but I had to numb it or rather smother it. A violent murder had occurred, and the man sitting at the defendant’s table was as guilty as it got. I wasn’t any less guilty for helping him go free.
But I had no choice.
Well, I did. Everybody had a choice. I chose to free murderous monsters so other violent murders in my family wouldn’t occur. Selfish? Weak? Immoral? Absolutely. But what would you do when the lives of the people you loved the most were at the mercy of brutal criminals, and you were the only one that could spare them?
Say no? Fight? I did, at first. The result was a broken hip, a kidney that couldn’t be salvaged and a scar across my back that would never go away. Then I fought again, which made them realize I didn’t care enough about my life if I’d have to live it with blood on my hands. So they took a life I cared about. My baby brother’s.
Now, what would you have done next?
Yeah, that was what I thought.
“Doctor Berlusconi.” The prosecutor looked me in the eye as it was his turn to cross examine me. Could he see through my blatant lies? Did he know I was nothing but a tool passed among the hands of monsters? Would he do something about it? “You’ve provided a speculated reason as to the murder. In your professional opinion, how do you explain why Viktor Safin instead of simply walking away from the allegedly poisoned dinner chose to stab his wife, who was almost half his size, twelve times to defend himself?”