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“How do you-”
“I’m sleeping with the cop, remember.”
“Aiden told you?”
“Not that Drakos lied. Just that he was with you on the night Lizzie died, which we both know isn’t true.”
“Shit.”
“I won’t say anything,” I add hurriedly. “It’s not like you killed Lizzie, and it won’t affect the case.”
“Cat…” I tense as Toni searches for the right words. “If you’re really going to do this, you need to start being honest with him. About everything.”
“I am where it counts.”
“That’s not good enough.” Toni counters. “That’s how I approached my relationship with Drakos and look where it got me.” Her voice, laced with genuine panic, rises an octave.
“Everything I’ve told him about me is true!”
“And everything you’ve told him about us…about the case?”
“We agreed we would wait…”
“I’ve changed my mind. Tell him.”
“Toni, I-”
“You won’t be sabotaging the business,” she insists. “And if the heat comes, we’ll fan the flames and burn it to the ground, build from the ashes after.” She sighs. “I’ve done it before.”
“I don’t want you to have to.” But the guilt that I’ve carried around with me since I last saw Aiden is heavy and permanent.
“Cat, I love you. Like a sister. But you need to wake the fuck up. Men like Aiden Flint don’t happen to women like us, and if you let that go...Cat, if you run away from this,I’llnever forgive you. You have a chance at somethingincredible, something people like us rarely stumble across.”
Pain lances my chest as her words tear through me. “I just want to protect you.Allof you.”
“I know that. I do,” she insists when I start to argue. “But you’ve been playing it safe for long enough. At some point, you have to stop living in the past. You have to start looking forward to the future again.”
Didn’t I tell Aiden that exact same thing? That I was excited for the future for the first time. It was so easy too, to say those words to him. When I was with him, I meant them. It’s only with distance, with time away from him, that Clementine Lane and my fear over what could happen to the girls ekes in. When I’m withthem, it seems so selfish that I’d put myself, that I’d putAiden, first. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Just live, Cat. Live unashamed. The rest will sort itself out.”
Her words should calm me, but the tight panic in my chest does not ease. And there’s one last question I have to ask. It’s stupid, juvenile even. But I have to know. “Will you still love me if everything falls apart?”
“I will absolutely always love you. You girls, Nonna, and Cass—you’re all I have.”
I wonder how she’s so certain of that. How she can be so sure that her future doesn’t include more. But I don’t ask. The gravity of what I’m about to commit to steals my ability to talk further. So, instead, I expel a choked, “Okay,” and I hang up the phone before making my way to the parking structure and my parked car.
Utilizing the privacy that the adjacent vehicles provide, I sit in myJeep, slip out of the little gold dress, and tug on the jeans and a red halter top I threw on the back seat before my date. If escorting has taught me anything, it’s that it’s better to always be prepared. And that anything bad that could happen on a date is much easier to deal with if you have a change of casual clothes handy. You can cover up almost everything that’s happened to you, even shame, with a good pair of blue jeans.
Chapter 25
Aiden
When my doorbell ringsjust after nine, I close the file on a new infanticide case I’m working on and push up from my small dining room table, exhausted. Last week was one of those weeks where the work never stopped, and the punches just kept coming.
None of my cases made any headway.
I added three new ones to the pile.
