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Detective Andrews was now long dead, a loss that Harris had mourned quietly and privately, with the help of the cheap vodka he drank out of a coffee cup. As if the act of drinking out of chipped ceramics would’ve made it okay. He never missed a workout or a day of work, so he didn’t have a problem.
His partner, Lucia, was twenty years younger than him. She’d risen up the ranks quickly with determination, one of the youngest detectives the force had ever had and one of the few that were female, straight and attractive. Her parents brought her over from Mexico when she was a baby, looking for a better life for their daughter. Harris knew that this violent, dangerous job was not what they wanted for their little girl. He knew this because she told him, smoking naked in his bed.
Fucking his partner was bad. Arguably worse when she was twenty years his junior and there was a significant power balance according to the last sexual harassment seminar he attended. But Lucia was one of the most powerful women he knew, and she had made it clear she wanted to fuck him from the moment she was assigned to him. Harris was not in a position to say no to a twentysomething with beautiful, bronzed skin, wide hazel eyes and a great fucking rack.
She fucked him like they were going to die the next day, to the point that Harris was certain she would kill him. What a way to go.
He’d discovered that she wanted to bring the Catalano family down after that first night, when she was lying on her back, her body covered in a thin sheen of sweat. They’d killed her father when she was nine years old. He’d testified against them in a murder case. One that they’d beaten despite the eyewitness testimony from a respected, churchgoing business owner.
Bullet in his head the next week.
Everyone knew who it was.
Everyone knew what it was.
A message.
Her mother had not burned with the same anger that drove her daughter into the force, into this career. She’d become a shell, doing only what was necessary to feed her family. Harris knew their relationship was strained because Lucia resented her mother for not being angrier.
Harris suspected that her mother was resigned to what most of the city had accepted. You did not fight the Catalanos. You did not speak against them. You put your head down and lived your life, protecting your family with silence and inaction.
Harris also knew the reason his twentysomething partner was in his bed, naked and smelling of sex was because she had some unresolved father issues.
And he didn’t give a fuck.
He had once been a good man. A man with values. Morals. But that man had been beaten down, chiseled at, melted away with the acid of working in a crooked department for years.
So he’d fuck her until she realized that screwing an old man wasn’t going to do shit for her issues. Until HR found out and fired him. Until he got a break in this case, put the fucker behind bars and could retire. Or he was killed in the process.
“Greg?”
He looked toward Lucia, who was holding his desk phone. “Call for you.”
“Officer Harris?” a female voice asked when he answered.
“That’s me,” he replied, looking at Lucia’s tits, thinking this was another bullshit case his captain put him on. He was not Greg’s biggest fan. Not by a long shot. It made sense since his captain had been in bed with the Catalanos since he was a rookie. Harris had made it clear he couldn’t be paid off and continued to pursue cases that had Catalano written all over them until he was moved from them, until a scapegoat was found.
The FBI had come sniffing around a couple of times, and Harris had thought that finally meant justice would be served. But they’d gone quickly, muttering about lack of evidence. Another agent told him they weren’t focusing on organized crime anymore. It was all about terrorism. As if the Catalanos didn’t terrorize this entire fucking city.
It was up to him.
“My name is Sienna Ridges, and I have some information regarding Cristian Romano that I think you’ll be interested in,” the woman on the phone said, her voice strong, confident.
And just like that, his hope was renewed that his career would maybe mean something. Maybe he really would bring down this organization before he died.
Sienna
I was playing with fire, I knew that.
Risking my life.
Risking Eli and Jessica’s lives. Cristian could be having me followed. I’d taken the subway, gotten on and off three different times, doubled back just to make sure. But a spy I was not. I figured that if Cristian did have someone following me, they’d be a professional, likely able to spot my amateur attempt at evading them. And if they were following me, they’d see who I was meeting, and it would all be over.
