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“Something like that.” I closed my eyes briefly as I thought about what happened when I was fifteen. What I was about to tell Annie was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced. It had changed the trajectory of my life, and while it was public knowledge, it wasn’t something that I generally spoke about. Over the years, people had forgotten about it.
“When I was fifteen, my father got a huge case. The Blanchi patriarch was on trial for murder. He’d killed Katarina Petrov’s father. Allegedly anyhow. It was the first time that anyone had been able to make a case against of the main players. They’d gotten sloppy over the years. Their hubris had gotten the better of them, and they hadn’t bothered to clean up evidence.”
My throat felt thick as I recalled the moments that led to the worst moments of my life. I appreciated that Annie sat quietly, allowing me time to gather my thoughts. “The case was basically a slam dunk, and everyone knew it. My father was good—better than me. He was going to make sure that Blanchi went away for the rest of his life. Doing so would have crippled the Blanchis and probably the Petrovs.”
“How?” Annie asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since I started talking to her about my father.
“Blanchi’s sons were still too young to take over, and the Petrov’s were dealing with a power vacuum. The whole house of cards was on the verge of tumbling down. They were already on the edge because of the wars between the families. They couldn’t afford too much more loss.”
I’d spent my life turning over what could have happened had things gone differently. But they hadn’t.
“Wouldn’t the Blanchi’s just pay off the jury?” Annie asked. “Isn’t that what you suspect Marco did?”
“Maybe,” I said, with a shrug. “In the early days of my loss, that was what I wanted to believe, but truthfully, Marco had a compelling case. Sasha Blanchi’s, his sister-in-law’s, testimony helped him.”
Annie nodded. Her face was blank, which was odd. I’d learned a long time how to read people, and though Annie liked to think she was mysterious, she wore her emotions on her face. Except for right now. She was expressionless—-one purpose. It gave me a moment of pause.
“It was the last day of the case, and my father was walking out of the courthouse. My mother had dropped me off earlier that day. They were finally separating after years of misery. He was taking me out to dinner to break the news to me…” I trailed off slightly. I felt the tightness in my throat migrate to my chest. I looked away from Annie, as I attempted to get myself together. I hadn’t vocalized what had happened to my father since my mother threw me into therapy years ago.
Annie must have sensed my distress. She reached out and took my hand. Her long, soft fingers curled around my own. The feeling of her touch brought me out of the past and back to the present.
I took a deep breath as I tried to speak. “The shot came out of nowhere. I hit the ground. I don’t know how long I was there, but when I looked over, my father was laying on the steps, blood pouring out of his chest and onto the snow.”
Annie’s mouth dropped open, and she made a small sound in the back of her throat before she slapped a hand across her mouth to stifle it.
“As I looked into my father’s dead eyes that day, I knew that one day I would take down the people who’d taken him away from me. I thought I could do that as a prosecutor but losing Marco’s case taught me otherwise. The Petrovs and the Blanchis learned from their mistakes. They’ve got half the court and half the NYPD on their payroll. They’ve rebranded over the years. Now, they want people to believe they are corporate hustlers instead of gangsters.”
I expected to see Annie’s face full of pity, and when I looked at her, it was in her eyes, but there was something more. Her jaw was tense, and the space between her brows was creased. She was thinking. Hard. And not for the first time, I wished that I could read minds.
Unlike most people, Annie rarely spoke without thinking. I’d noticed that about her one of the first times we’d crossed paths. Unlike most people, when she spoke, she meant what she said.
“Okay,” she told me.
“Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay,” she repeated. “I’ll go along with this crazy plan of yours.”
A smile broke out on my face. “Really?”
She nodded. She looked grim, but the fact that she’d agreed to do this out loud, meant that she would.
“I want to establish some ground rules though.”
I nodded. “I expected nothing less.” I had come prepared to give Annie a great deal of anything she could ask for if she agreed to do this. I wasn’t an idiot. Most women like Annie weren’t content to marry for money. They believed in love and romance. That type that they’d read about in books their whole life. Annie deserved that, and I almost felt bad about asking her to give it up. But I remembered why we were here. We were going to take down the mob – together.
CHAPTERELEVEN
I felt as though there was a target on my back as I walked down the street. Every time someone looked at me for more for more than a few seconds, I was sure that they knew about the large wad of cash burning a hole in my pocket.
I’d left Ezra two hours ago after agreeing to his ridiculous plan. Even now, as I scurried down a mostly abandoned street, I was sure that I was going to regret agreeing to marry him. I had every intention of walking out of the restaurant when he told me that he needed a wife to lock down the mayorship. Being the wife of a politician was the exact opposite of anything that I wanted or needed. I didn’t want to be anyone’s wife.
For the first time in my life, I had freedom. And while aspects of it were shitty, like the fact that I was currently without employment, and Julia and I were likely to be evicted next month, it was still better than being tied down to some man.
But when I’d heard his story, it awakened something inside of me, and as I watched his face, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to say no. It was clear that Ezra was still in pain, even after all these years.
I couldn’t ignore the fact that I owed him. He was right when he said that there were a lot of people who’d been harmed by the Petrov/ Blanchi war. I shuddered as I remembered the bodies of the men and women who’d been caught up in the last bout of it.
Ezra wanted to stop that when he became mayor, and I thought that it was a noble cause. It was one that I couldn’t ignore, which was why I said yes.
