by Tessa Layne
“I haven’t said yes.”
Harrison raises his coffee. “That’s okay. We said yes for you.” I start to object, but he cuts me off. “You’ve been moping since all this shit went down, when really you ought to be celebrating that your ass isn’t in jail and that the forensic accountants assigned to your case were able to salvage half your fortune.”
“Too bad they couldn’t salvage my reputation,” I gripe. “Even if I were to reinvest what I have left, I’ve lost everyone’s trust.”
“Not ours,” states Stockton, a serious expression on his face. “We have a proposal for you, but it’s contingent on you saying yes to joining our boat.”
“That sounds an awful lot like blackmail.”
Harrison gives me a look that only a CEO of a multinational conglomerate can pull off. “I prefer to frame it as an opportunity. An above board, legitimate opportunity. But if you want to consider it blackmail, we can call it that, too.”
It’s too early for this shit. My brain feels dull, my synapses aren’t firing together. I take another gulp of coffee and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Okay, fine. Pitch it.”
Stockton’s eyes light as he leans forward, looking to Harrison for the go-ahead. “Provided you say yes to rowing with us again, we’d like you to buy into the Kansas City Kings ownership group.”
I take a minute to let that sink in. “But I’m not a baseball fan.” Roxi is, I remember with a twinge in my sternum. And I promised her a game.
“You don’t have to be,” Harrison reassures me. “Although I’m pretty proud of our guys. This is a purely financial decision.”
“So at the risk of sounding like an asshole, what’s in it for me?”
“I’m glad you asked.” Stockton slides a folder across the table.
“What’s this?” I take the folder. Inside are schematics for a distillery on the center right-field landing called King Tom’s. An anchor business and a tribute to my great-grandfather. “So you want me to start distilling again.” I’m at a loss for words. I haven’t been able to see the forest through the trees since Roxi’s betrayal, and yeah, I get it could have been much, much worse, but losing her, losing what I thought we had, took the wind out of my sails.
Harrison clears his throat. “You need to get back in the boat. You need to remember you’ve got a team of friends pulling with you.”
How can I say no? The choice is clear, and they’ve made it damn easy to say yes. “What’s your timeline?”
“We have the equipment in place. There’s some basic design and construction work that needs to be done, but we think it can be ready by opening day.”
“But whiskey won’t be ready by then.”
Harrison and Stockton exchange a glance. “As part-owners of the Whiskey Den, we were able to claim the barrels as our own.”
I’m not entirely sure that’s above board, but if anyone can find a loophole it’s Jackson. And given the Feds have crawled over all of my assets and then some, if they parted with the barrels, then lucky me. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
Stockton raises his cup. “Welcome to the club. We have a press release ready to go at ten this morning.”
“You were that sure I’d say yes?”
Harrison looks way too satisfied with himself. “Yep. And now we have to get to the gym, because Sparky’s there, waiting to kick your ass into high gear.”
It’ll hurt, training up to row again. It’ll be fucking agony. It won’t mend the hole in my heart, but it’s a step to rebuilding my life.
Mariah — aka Sparky — is waiting for us. “Welcome to the team, Danny,” she says with an evil grin.
“Your smile is making me nervous.”
She waggles her eyebrows. “It should. I love nothing more than fresh meat. And you’re about to discover I’ve been letting you off easy.”
“Bring it.”
Twenty-minutes later, I regret ever challenging Sparky to bring it, as I sit with my head over a bucket, heaving the coffee Harrison gave me.
Mariah laughs maniacally, and hands me a towel along with a cup of water. “Don’t gulp it.”
“Jeezus. Now I remember everything I hated about rowing.”
“It’ll get better,” Harrison says, clapping me on the back. “Think of this as a rite of passage.”
“Yeah, yeah. New Year, new me. Fuck that shit. I wanna go back to bed.”
“So you can lie around all day and be depressed? Fuck that shit.”
He’s right. I need to move on, and my friends have supplied the perfect opportunity. I towel my face and glance up to see a picture of Vincent on the T.V. “Hey guys, check it out. Turn it up?”
Sparky grabs the remote and turns up the volume. The announcer’s voice comes through the loudspeakers. “In a stunning turn of events, yesterday, a federal grand jury indicted Vincent Ferrari on first-degree murder charges of a seventeen-year-old cold case involving the murder of Loyola University Chicago college student Colleen Reynolds. Ferrari is currently in custody for pending charges of money laundering and human trafficking.”
A picture of a young blonde with curly hair flashes on the screen. I remember looking at that picture and ruling it out after Roxi shared that her sister had been murdered. Because I’d been looking for a Rickoli. It never occurred to me that Roxi wasn’t who she claimed to be. “Turn it off,” I snap, while I take off toward the other side of the gym. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Puzzle pieces drop into my head like dominoes, creating a picture I don’t want to acknowledge, because then it would absolve Roxi of so much, and I’m not ready for that.
“What the fuck, man?” Harrison asks when I return to them. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“That girl,” I point to the T.V. “Is, was Roxi’s sister. I’d bet the last of my money on it.”
“Are you sure?” asks Stockton, expression skeptical. “That’s a mighty big coincidence.”
“She’s our age. And she mentioned her older sister had been murdered when she was fifteen.”
“Okay, so the math works out, but that doesn’t mean it’s Roxi’s sister.”
“Except, when I was in holding, a Fed came in and called her Agent Reynolds.”
Harrison lets out a low whistle. A glance at Stockton tells me he’s already mathing the odds. But he shakes his head. “I don’t know. Are you sure you’re not grasping at straws?”
“Who’s got a phone?”
Both the guys shake their heads, pointing to the locker room, but Sparky offers hers up. I do a quick search for Colleen Reynolds Obituary Loyola. Half a dozen hits come up. The top hit is from a suburb of Chicago. I wrack my brain trying to remember if Roxi mentioned where her dad lives. I pull up the obit, scanning for any crumb that supports my theory. “She was a journalism student. Maybe she was doing some kind of investigative piece.” I keep reading. “Colleen is survived by her father Sean, her stepmother Marsha, and half-sister Jane.” The fledgling butterfly of hope tentatively beating its wings against my chest evaporates to dust. Nothing in the obit points to this being Roxi. She never mentioned her dad by name. Or her mother. Or that her sister had a different mother.
Stockton and Harrison exchange a glance. “I’m sorry, man.” Stockton says, breaking the silence.
I wave him off. “Shut it.” My chest throbs like I’ve been stabbed. And even though it’s been weeks, I’m living Roxi’s betrayal all over again. It’s not like lemon juice in a paper cut — fuck, that would be a goddamn walk in the park. It’s not even like walking barefoot across glass. Maybe I’d equate this with having my fingernails pulled out. Not the worst thing I’ve endured, but pretty damned close. “Are we done here?” I finally ask when I can’t take their pitying stares anymore.
“Training is at six-thirty every morning except Thursdays and Sundays. Those are your recovery days, but I expect you to run a 5k. Minimum. Core workout and light weights are okay too. Make sure your diet is high in protein, healthy fats, and complex carbs. You’re now training to be a high
-performance athlete. Minimal booze, no smoking or banned substances, and adequate sleep.” She eyes Harrison and Stockton as she says this last bit. “You burn the candle at both ends, it’s going to impact your performance.”
“Understood.” I give her a salute. “If you gents are planning on more torture, I’ll Uber back. I’m throwing in the towel today.”
“We’re headed out to Mason and Luci’s for posole. You want to join us and meet the other owners?”
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen most of them at my club at one time or another. “I have a date with a hot shower and Tinder.”
Stockton’s eyes widen. “Are you sure?”
“It’s either Tinder or the Humane Society. New Year, new me, right?” I say with a heavy dose of sarcasm, but it’s enough to get them off my back.
I fixate on the idea of a dog. I scan the Humane Society website as the Uber whisks me the ten-minute drive from the Briarcliff to the Crossroads. As soon as I push open the door to my penthouse, I stop, hair on the back of my neck rising. Something’s off. I scan the hallway. Nothing seems out of place, but my spidey sense is going crazy. “Fuck, I do need a dog,” I mutter to myself as I make my way to the kitchen. It’s not even nine a.m. I could turn on the Rose Parade, I could make a breakfast cocktail, or I could go back to bed. Bed sounds pretty damned inviting.
I decide on a recovery shake and sleep. I make my way to the kitchen but stop short when I spy a guest sitting at my table, rearranging the coffee cups leftover from my conversation with the boys a few hours earlier. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
All the hurt comes rushing back into my chest when I see Roxi sitting at my table. In spite of that, I take her in like a man starved for nourishment. She looks… like water in the desert. If I’m critical, I can see that her cheeks are hollowed — like she hasn’t been eating enough. Her mouth is pinched, and her eyes have lost the sparkle that made my stomach do flip-flops. Her hair’s pulled back into a low ponytail, and she’s wearing a leather motorcycle jacket over jeans and a white tee-shirt. But damn if she isn’t as lovely as always, in spite of the stress she wears.
She flashes me a tentative smile and opens her arms. “I’m not armed.”
“What are you doing here, Roxi?” I’m wary. How could I not be? The last time we saw each other, I was in a holding cell, life crumbling around my ears.
“I… ah… wanted to return your key.” She pushes it to the center of the table.
“You could have mailed it.”
“I know,” she says in a small voice. “I was hoping—” She shakes her head and sighs. “I also wanted to give you this.” She pushes a Manila envelope forward. “I wanted you to know the whole truth.”
“How thoughtful of you.” She winces at the sarcasm in my voice.
“I’m not sure if you saw the news yet. But—”
“I did.”
She pats the envelope. “There are several pictures of me and Colleen— her high school graduation. The two of us the Christmas before she died.”
“Stop.” I hold up a hand. “I read the obit, Roxi. We both know it’s not you.”
She shoots me a look full of anger and anguish. “I’ve also enclosed both my birth certificate and a copy of my passport,” she says, voice trembling. “I was born Roxanna Jane Reynolds. Thanks to Sting, I was teased mercilessly about my name. When I was ten, I asked everyone to start calling me Jane.” She digs into her pocket. “Here’s my driver’s license.” She tosses it on top of the envelope.
“Feds can make you any I.D. you want.”
“They can. But I have no reason to lie to you. Not anymore,” she adds in a whisper, pink flushing her cheeks. “Lastly, someone I know who’s working on Ferrari’s case did me a favor before I left. My sister was a journalism major, and unbeknownst to us, was working on a human trafficking exposé that involved college campuses. Ferrari thought she was getting too close. But when they raided his lair, they found a safe with… trophies.” She grimaces. “There was a thumb drive in his safe with her article that was set to print the week she died.”
It’s a fantastic story. But how can I believe it when she’s betrayed my trust like she has?
“I wasn’t about to cost my co-worker his job, but he at least let me view the article.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I want you to know the full truth,” she snaps. “There will be another indictment handed down tomorrow. The suicide of Colleen’s journalism advisor three months after she died has now been ruled a homicide.”
I fight to hold onto my anger, my hurt. “You make a compelling case. But why now? Why not when you first found out?”
“Because as of last week, I no longer work for the Bureau.”
Whoa. I let that bombshell sink in. But I don’t know what to say, because it’s not like I even fucking knew.
She continues. “And… in light of that, I’ve decided it’s time to move back home. To Downer’s Grove, outside of Chicago. I think my parents could use some extra support right now.”
Her news lands like a punch to the gut. I realize that even though we’ve been apart, that I don’t move through the city without thinking of her, of imagining where she is or what she might be doing. The thought of her gone for good… is unsettling. “What will you do there?”
She picks at her thumbnail. “There’s not much work for forensic accountants outside of the F.B.I.” She lets out a humorless laugh. “Good thing I know how to tend bar.”
“But why not stay here, and visit more frequently?” It’s a selfish request, I know. My closest friends all have family in the area, and I’d never consent to living across the country with mom still in nursing care. But I can’t help but hope she might want to stay for something else.
She looks straight at me, agony written in every line on her face. “There’s nothing left for me here.”
My stomach hollows. There’s nothing left for her because I told her to go away. “What if there were? Something here? Would you stay?”
She shuts her eyes, as if she’s trying valiantly to keep her shit together. The look in her eyes when she opens them nearly breaks me with its bleakness. “I don’t expect you to forgive me for keeping secrets.”
“You mean lying.”
“Fine. Lying. I don’t expect you to forgive me. I won’t be so bold as to ask for it. But I do hope you can understand how desperately I want justice for Colleen. I studied math, then forensic accounting with the sole goal of getting into the F.B.I. so I could find her killer. This has been the single focus of my life since the day we got the awful call. It wasn’t until I was sent into the Whiskey Den that I realized we’d met before. And I should have recused myself right then and there. Disclosed that we’d already… er… met. But I wanted in on bringing down Ferrari.” She blushes, color racing from her neck to her hairline.
“But why couldn’t you have told them you knew me?”
“I’m really good at what I do — finding needles in cyber haystacks.” Her face turns beet red. “I knew if I was on the inside, I could hack into the accounting system you used, and with the information I discovered, I knew I could trace Ferrari’s transactions — not just to the Whiskey Den, but to … other places.”
“You hacked my computer? Jesus, Roxi.” I run a hand through my hair.”
“Only your books. I swear I didn’t look at anything else.”
I snort. “Honor among thieves?”
“I was jut doing my job. And I knew I could do it better than anyone else. And if my bosses knew that we’d… um…” she waves between us.
“Fucked like rabid bunnies in the restroom?” My mouth turns up at the absurdity of it all.
“Something like that,” she mumbles, face still bright with embarrassment. “They’d have kept me off this assignment. There was a tenuous link that Ferrari was related to Colleen’s murder and I wasn’t going to pass up that chance.” She sucks in a ragged breath,
and instinctively I brace myself for more bombshells. “And I wanted to see you again,” she whispers, dropping her gaze. “I… wanted more.”
“I suppose I should feel flattered,” I say wryly.
“I didn’t count on falling in love with you.” She draws a circle with her finger on the envelope, still keeping her gaze averted. “I regret not being able to tell you. More than anything. And you have to know that I wanted to. I regret hurting you. But I don’t regret bringing in Ferrari. And—” she glances up. “I don’t regret for a second anything that happened between us.” She grimaces. “Everything I said about how I felt— how I feel, is the truth. I love you.”
“And that’s why you’re leaving?” I snap, jaw clenching tight.
“I’m leaving because I couldn’t continue the lies at my job anymore than I could live with the lies I had to tell you. You are without a doubt, the best thing that has ever happened in my life. And I stupidly, naively thought I could have both you and justice for my sister.” Her voice grows thick with tears. “You are a good man, Danny. And someday, I know you’ll find someone worthy of your love, and who sees what a good man you are.” She sucks in a ragged breath. “But I can’t be here when that happens, because it will remind me of everything I lost.”
She rises and taps the envelope. “Read it, don’t read it. Tear it up, burn it. It’s yours to do with as you wish.” She takes a deep breath and promptly lets it out. “Thank you for hearing me out.” Her smile is forced. “I’ll let myself out.” She slips by me, and I make no move to stop her, mind reeling with everything she laid out. The click of the door sliding shut echoes with a finality that resonates in my bones. I’m not sure how long I stand there, leaning against the wall and staring at the Manila envelope, half waiting for it to self-destruct.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I snatch it off the table, fumbling with the brad and shaking out the contents. All it takes is one look at the first picture — an awkward pubescent Roxi grinning at the camera, already showing hints of the woman to come, squeezing a smiling Colleen — for it to hit home in the deepest part of me that she was telling the truth about everything.
