I half-heartedly shrug. “I think that was the table in the foyer. I didn’t give it much attention when I was a kid. Dad always threw his keys on it.”
Phillipa points to a line of picture frames on the table I just referenced. “And the photos on the table? Do you recognize those?”
As my lips curl, I smile. “Yes.” My smile greatens when I recall my dad shoving them into the drawers of the table every time my grandma came over. My mother said she was so obnoxious, she criticized any photograph that didn’t include her.
My eyes lift from the images to Phillipa when she asks, “How old were you in those pictures?”
My nose screws up. “Around three or four? I think.”
“And these?” She pushes across a handful of photographs to reveal one of the stairwells in the old brownstone my parents sold to fund my father’s legal fight. They have similar pictures to the one of the entrance table, but they’re ten times the size. “I don’t know. Around the same age, I guess.”
“Is this not you?” Phillipa asks, tapping on an image of a baby in the far corner of the picture.
I shake my head. “No. That was a cousin of mine. I can’t recall his name…” I stop talking when shock rockets through me. When my grandma passed away years ago, I thought that was the end of my family legacy. I completely forgot about the boy in the portrait at the bottom of the stairwell. “Do you know who he is?”
My wish to be a cooperative witness flies out the window when Phillipa’s eyes shift upward and to the right before she shakes her head. She’s lying, which doubles my hostility. “What is this about? This incident occurred over two decades ago. The people responsible for it are either abolishing their sins with God or rotting in jail.”
Air whizzes out of Phillipa’s nose as she discloses, “All the men responsible for terrorizing you and your mother that night are all abolishing their sins with God.”
What’s she saying? Is she underhandly telling me the third assailant is also dead?
When I fail to read the answers to my questions on her face, I straight up ask them. “How did the final assailant die?”
“We were hoping you’d be able to tell us that.”
“How could I possibly know what happened to him?” I choke on my spit when she slides a familiar photograph over to my side of the desk. It was the one Brandon and Grayson showed me the day my life was upended for the third time. It’s a picture of my father with Henry Gottle, Sr. I know who Henry is better now than I did back then. My position in the DA’s office ensures I’m aware of the number one Mafia figure in the United States. “As I told one of your agents years ago, I don’t know why my father met with Henry that day.”
“But you do acknowledge you know who Henry is?”
I don’t fall for her I’m-your-friend tone this time around. “Of course I do. I’m an Assistant District Attorney for the State of New York. If I didn’t know who Henry was, I’d need a new profession.” After standing from my chair, I run my sweaty hands down the front of my skirt. “Is that all? I have cases to prepare for.”
Phillipa dips her chin, silently acknowledging she understands my frustration, but she’s not willing to let me slip away just yet. “One last thing. Can you confirm if you’ve seen this tattoo before?”
My heart beats out a funky tune when she slides a blown-up photograph to my side of the desk. It doesn’t show the face of the person she wants me to identify, just a tattoo of a family emblem.
“That tattoo belongs to the man prosecuted with setting my dorm on fire seven years ago. The last I heard, he was serving his twelve-year sentence at Wallen’s Ridge State Prison.”
My brows furrow when Phillipa slips away the blown-up image to reveal the original photograph below. The tattoo doesn’t belong to the man charged with setting my dorm ablaze. It belongs to a man lying lifeless in a ditch with a single bullet wound to the forehead. He looks oddly similar to the man my mother sat across from when she testified at his trial for home invasion, deprivation of liberty, and attempted rape. The only man my father left breathing when he and two of his friends forced him to become as violent as they were being to my mother, and the date hidden in the far bottom corner of the photograph reveals he was killed the day of my parents’ accident.
When my wide and uneasy eyes lock with Phillipa’s, she mutters, “Do you think you could spare me a few minutes now?”
If our home invasion didn’t change my father from a loving, caring man to a maniac obsessed with protecting my mother and me, I’d dip my chin without pause for thought. But since that isn’t the case, I shake my head instead. “I’ll be in contact once I’ve spoken to my lawyer.”
I spin on my heels and stalk to the door, halting halfway when Phillipa says, “I’m not here to prosecute you, Melody. I’m here to warn you—”
I whip around so quick, my hair slaps my face. “Warn me about what? That the man who terrorized my mother for over an hour might come back from the grave and haunt me? That that…” I jerk my chin to the photograph of him lying lifeless in the gutter, “… was a much kinder punishment than he deserved? What exactly are you trying to warn me about, Agent Russell?”
“I’m here to warn you that vigilante justice isn’t an appropriate action for anyone to take.”
The heaving of my heart is heard in my shouted words, “Alleged vigilante justice. You’re assuming my father killed a man. You have no proof of that.”
“When did I once mention this was about your father?” Her almost black hair falls into her eyes when she shakes her head ever so gently. “I’m more concerned about who else unearthed this connection.”
My heart falters when she places down a witness statement from my parents’ accident with a blown-up copy of a driver’s license of the man driving the cattle truck that struck my parents. Even with his cheeks a more natural color, I’m confident it’s the same man lying lifeless in the ditch.
“Milo Bobrov was killed two hours after your parents’ accident—”
I cut her off and talk through the bile burning my throat. “How can that be? Why wasn’t he still in police custody? He mowed down my parents, for crying out loud! How could they not have held him for longer than an hour?” I’m yelling, and it’s unacceptable, but when my mind is spiraling, anger seems to be my go-to way to express myself. I’m fuming mad because I asked several times if there was any link between my parents’ death and Crombie’s arrest. I was forever told there wasn’t. It seems as if I wasn’t the only person lying all those years ago. So was Grayson—and perhaps Brandon.
