Page 58 of Cruel Lies

"I'm not stealing. We're simply… borrowing."

"Yeah," he agrees with obvious sarcasm. "Permanently.You're not exactly the Good Guy of the Year here, cousin."

I don't answer right away, because he isn't wrong.

But what I don't intend to tell him is that I'm sick of looking for any reason to keep her close. I gave her that napkin as a way out, even though I hoped she wouldn't use it. But she's been teetering on the line of throwing it in my face and telling me to fuck off ever since.

Her insulting me, accusing me of looking at her and seeing dollar signs? She was wrong about that. For too long now, I've looked at her and seen a ton of shit I have no business seeing. Soforcingmyself to see dollar signs when I look at Calista Meadows makes way more sense.

She's just business. Nothing more, nothing less.

Business is clean. Business I can handle. Business is just supply chain issues, fraud and compliance, the sort of thing that spreadsheets and data analytics were designed to handle cleanly.

If I let her be anything more than that… trouble will follow.

"I'm taking the tool because it's the only thing standing between this organization and a federal indictment. Between you and me and a prison cell, cousin."

"What happens to her?" he protests.

"She keeps the house. She keeps the kids. She keeps every cent Todd tried to steal—more, if I have anything to say about it." I lean forward. "The company is all she loses. And it was never really going to be hers anyway, not with the knots Todd tied himself up in. I'm only making sure it lands in the right hands."

My hands, to be specific.

Navi holds my gaze for a long, long moment. Then he sighs and rubs his face and looks, suddenly, tired in a way that has nothing to do with Pyotr.

"You know what your problem is, Ro?"

"Enlighten me."

"You're smart enough to build a cage that looks exactly like a favor." He stands, straightens his jacket, and slouches for the door. At the threshold, he lingers. "But when it comes apart—and it will, mark my words—don't be surprised when she can't tell the difference between you and Todd. Because from where she'll be standing, there won't be one."

With that, he disappears.

I sit alone in the quiet for a while. Then I pull the keyboard toward me and open a fresh document, and I begin, very quietly, to draft the first motion—a request, filed on behalf of a shell that will never be traced back to me, to intervene in the matter of the ownership dispute surrounding a certain Delaware LLC and its founder's interest.

My apologies, Ms. Meadows,I say in my head in a cold, dead voice.It's simply business.

16

CALI

The napkin is going in the mail.

That's the decision I make somewhere on the F train home, wedged between a man clipping his nails and a teenager watching a video at full volume without headphones.

I'm going to buy a stamp, because no one under the age of fifty in the Year of Our Lord 2026 owns stamps, and I'm going to slide that stupid two-cent cocktail napkin into an envelope and I'm going to mail it back to The Akov Firm, forty-first floor, care of Ronan "Manipulative Asshole" Akov.

Not in any way you'd understand.

Notno.

Nothow could you think that.

Not any of the reasonable, humane answers that would match the good guy act he's been putting on.

So, yeah. Napkin. Envelope. Stamp. Done.

I'll find a real lawyer. A fourth lawyer. A fifth, a sixth, however many it takes. I'll sell a kidney to cover the retainer. I'll represent myself in a Halloween costume of a suit if I have to.