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The problem isn’t what I’m doing, the size of my fucking boobs, or anything in this picture. Nothing except the date and time.
April fifteenth.
Four years ago.
The exact night Vladimir Volkov was murdered.
Time? 11:31 p.m.
“This one is from an ATM camera. The Kings won the fight in the Death Cage, and a few hours later, Kayla King is strolling through the South Bank.”
He puts another picture in front of me and keeps on talking like a bad voice actor documenting a true crime show.
“At thirty-six past eleven p.m., she enters this burger place called Dirty Good Burgers. It stays open late. Do you know why? Because there’s a club across the street, and they want money from all the starved drunk kids who leave in the middle of the night. This is the CCTV from the club.”
He taps my black-and-white figure on the paper. “Caught in the act of eating burgers with your dad and Sawyer. Probably to discuss the meeting your dad will have with Emma’s dad the next day.”
For the second time, I look up, wishing my eyes could annihilate him.
He picks up the last picture. “I know you were with them because at two thirty a.m., you leave the restaurant with both of them.” He adds it to the others in front of me.
I press my lips together. I had no idea those CCTVs were there, no idea those photographs even existed. Who did he hire while he was in prison to find them?
I’m not surprised they weren’t found before. The trial was swift. The city wanted to take him down, and they didn’t question my testimony. They jumped on the chance to put Nathan White, known Cosa Nostra criminal, away for good.
I struggle to swallow past my dry throat.
Even before he talks, my fate is sealed. Nate knows I would do anything not to be sent to jail. I have more enemies there than on the streets of the North Shore, and I would have no protection from people who want me dead. No weapons, no allies. My crew has spent the last four years under police immunity, theirs hasn’t. Anyone from NSC who committed a crime and got caught was sent straight to prison. Joining them would be signing my death warrant.
I hold my hands together, entwining my fingers so Nate doesn’t see them shake, but I’m pretty sure that exact gesture is already a tell of my mounting anxiety.
“Tell me, Kayla,” he purrs. “What period of time did the coroner estimate Vladimir Volkov’s death?”
My eyes flutter shut, my mind refusing to accept I’ve already lost against him.
I hear him round the desk, and the next thing I know, I feel his hand in my hair, pulling so I’m forced to look up at him.
“Go on.”
“Between midnight and two a.m.,” I grit out.
“Huh.” He pretends confusion, pointing at the time on the picture of me coming out of the burger place with two members of my crew who are now dead. “Then how did you see me kill him in a warehouse on the North Shore of Silver Falls if you were eating burgers on the South Bank?”
“If a judge saw this, then why am I not being tried for perjury?”
With a scoff, he releases my hair and leans on the table to face me again. “Because I paid a lot of money to punish you myself. This whole release was done under the table. The only one who caught us was the prosecutor, but she only knew I was being released, not what the evidence was. She did her best to stop us, but she simply didn’t have the power against old, established judges who like extra money and protection, and who have been working with the mob for as long as they can remember anyway. That’s why she tried to get you to testify again. To fight the real bad guys. She had no support to send you any official letters or get any help from authorities.”
I shake my head. “So that’s what you’ve been doing for almost four years? Finding out where I really was that night so you could prove I lied, and planning what you’d do to me once you got out?”
He looks at me, deadpan. “The other prison activities weren’t for me.”
He reaches inside his pocket again. “You lost, Kayla. You lost the moment you put me in prison. You lost before you even tried to play, believe me.”
Pulling a black velvet box out of his pocket, he puts it on top of the pictures.
“Choose your punishment, little sunflower. Prison”—he opens the box and pushes it closer to me—“or marriage.”
I shake my head, unable to talk. This can’t be true. This can’t be the only two solutions I have. Without a word, I stand up, pulling violently at the cuffs. I’m becoming stupid, attempting to defy physics because I refuse to accept my predicament.
