The story was true, with details changed because you didn’t tell an eight-year-old about sex trafficking. His tall, broad-shouldered father—who carried lumber with ease, who taught him how to camp, fish, and hunt, who was loving and kind but stern when he needed to be—had always been his hero. But after Aleksei learned the truth of how his mother and father met, his image of his father shifted from hero to superhero.
So, he’d followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the military, getting a job in law enforcement, and working to protect the innocent people criminals preyed upon. But where Dad had succeeded, he had failed.
His mother had been on a path to certain death. It was only a matter of time. She was already bloody and beaten, concussed, and with a broken arm when Dad had gotten her out—but hehadgotten her out. His father had saved his mother’s life.
He had let Phillipe die.
“What are you thinking about? Your eyes have gone sad again.”
His undercover training included learning to control his features so they didn’t show his thoughts, and he’d been told he was damned good at it. Apparently not. At least not when it came to Rosemary and what she could see in his eyes.
Nana Thompson’s voice reappeared at the edges of his mind.And the truth will set you free.Maybe it was time to see if the truthwouldset him free. Silence sure as fuck hadn’t done him any good these past couple of years.
“I was thinking. About my partner. I used to…I was…an FBI agent. Based here in Philly.” The words were sticky and too big in his throat, so they came out stilted with odd pauses. It was so goddamn hard to talk about.
“My partner was killed. Murdered. During our last assignment. It’s been just over two years, but….” He pressed a balled fist to the gaping hole in his chest. “I can’t get past it.The pain, the guilt, the emptiness. They’re like teeth, constantly gnawing at me. I wasn’t enough. I didn’t do enough. And my best friend is dead because of it.”
He’d intended to share the facts, but these words were too stark. Too real. Too bare. He’d always thought the truth of his failure was unspeakable.
But he had just spoken it.
“Do you want to tell me what happened? Would that ease your burden?”
He didn’t detect that undercurrent of morbid curiosity that so frequently crept into questions about Phillipe’s passing, but old suspicions stuck with him. What if Rosemary was like everyone else?
People always wanted the details.
His superiors wanted them for their reports. The psychologists so they could assess his fitness for duty. The press so they could skewer Phillipe’s good name. His colleagues so they could assure themselves they wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Random friends and neighbors because they were sickeningly entranced by tragedy. Everyone said talking about it would make him feel better, but those comments were always laced with a dark hunger for gossip that infuriated him and stretched his self-control to the breaking point. Talking about it had never made him feel better.
The truth wasn’t going to set him free. It was going to kill him.
“You wouldn’t understand. When someone dies, everyone’s obsessed with their death. No one thinks about who they were when they were alive. No one wants to talk about the good times.”
A sarcastichmmphflew from Rosemary’s lips.
“You don’t believe me? Do you think anyone wants to hear about what a great guy Phillipe was? How he always had yourback? How he was the first person to offer to help you move, to let you borrow his truck, to buy you a beer when you had a shit day? No one talks about how he coached Little League, volunteered at the homeless shelter, and spent hours playing in the yard with his kids. All anyone cares about is how he was murdered. They fucking shot him in the back of the head. They cut off his goddamn hands and shoved hundred-dollar bills down his throat. It was a fucking mob-style execution for a thief.”
His eyes were hot and stinging. Emotion kept finding crack after crack to break through, and he couldn’t stop it.
“All anyone wants to talk about are those fucking horrid details. Or if they get past that, it’s how much money they found in his jacket. How his suits and cars were always just a bit too nice. How they froze his assets. How they tried to kick Samantha and the kids out of their own goddamn house, saying Phillipe bought it with mob money.”
He sucked in a ragged breath. “He was like a brother to me. I feel like a piece of me was hacked away. Like there’s a jagged hole in my flesh. Every second of every day, I wish he were still alive. I remember all the good times, but all anyone else remembers is the way he died.”
He’d looked at the fire while speaking, the heat of the flames matching the heat of his emotions. Now, he lifted his head and met Rosemary’s gaze. Her cheeks were flushed a bright cherry pink. The contrast of her pale skin and red cheeks reminded him of the angry cartoon characters from his youth, the ones who jumped up and down and had steam pouring from their ears.
“Imagine living through it.” Her voice quivered with a rage that mirrored his own.
What the hell was she talking about?
“I did live through it. I’m still living through it! I live every day without him, and now, I don’t even get to see Samantha andthe kids. She won’t see me or talk to me because I remind her too much of Phillipe. I have nothing left of him but his death. You have no idea what that’s like.”
“My mother’s dead. Of course I know what it’s like!” she shot back.
His training was screaming that he was out of control. That his anger was misdirected. That he needed to calm down and shut up. But his body wouldn’t listen. His rage was a bullet train with no brakes.
Being back in Philly, going to McGillin’s, seeing Samuel, working with Kemper again. They had all battered at the dam he’d built around his emotions. Sitting here, sharing with Rosemary, thinking she might be different, that she might understand, and then having her respond like that was just too much.
He didn’t know how to stop the deluge of rage and despair pouring out of him.