by Naomi Niles
I looked at Polo, who blinked at me as though he were really listening. “But now… Now I don’t know anymore. I’ve made mistakes, I’ve lied, and I’ve broken every code I believed in. I think I’m doing the right thing, I feel I’m doing the right thing but who’s to know? I certainly don’t.
“The truth is, Polo… I’m scared. I’m scared of the future. I’m scared to lose Madison. And, I’m scared to compromise my ethics as a police officer. I’m scared of everything.”
After a moment, I broke out of my thoughts and laughed. “Oh God, I’m talking to a dog. What is happening to me?”
I stroked Polo’s head as he burrowed into my side as though he were searching for warmth. It was late, and I was tired. My body was sore, my limbs were aching, and my mind was still trying to process everything that had happened. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to sleep as soundly as I once had.
“Dad,” I whispered. “I wish you were here. Sometimes I need a father.”
My brothers were right outside, and I knew that if I went to them, they would give me all the support I needed. That was what we had always done for each other. But I wasn’t up to explaining everything to them. It was all too fresh in my mind, and I was scared that relaying it again aloud would mess with my head.
“It’s too late to go back now,” I told Polo. “What’s done is done. There is no going back now.”
I wanted to see Madison. I wanted to speak to her, hold her, and touch her. I wanted to feel the warmth of her body, and I wanted to savor that feeling. I didn’t know where she was and like I had said before, it didn’t matter.
I picked up my phone and checked the battery. It had charged only two percent, but it was enough for me to make a call. I let the phone charge as I bent down and dialed Madison’s number. It rang for a long time, but she didn’t pick up.
I felt a prick of worry ignite inside me. Why wasn’t she picking up? Was something wrong?
Suddenly a stray thought hit me and I felt as though the wind had been knocked out of me. What if she was deliberately not picking up? What if she had taken my advice to heart and she was leaving…not just leaving, but running? What if she simply disappeared with Victor and I never saw her again?
“Oh God,” I said aloud. “Have I just made a terrible mistake?”
I tried to remember what I had told her when I had asked her to take Victor and leave town. I tried to remember if I had given her any reassurances or made her any promises. I couldn’t remember anything specific that I had said. Would she trust me now? Would she listen to me?
I typed quickly into our personal chat. “Madison, come back to town tomorrow. Come to my house. Bring Victor with you. Trust me.”
Trust – the word lingered on my tongue. Trust was a tricky thing. It was a complicated thing. It was hard to give, but easily broken. It could make a relationship or break one.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Madison
“We’re really going back?” Victor asked for what seemed like the tenth time that morning.
“He told me to,” I replied, keeping my eyes fixed on the road ahead.
Victor fell into a deep silence, but I could feel every tenor of emotion he was feeling. There was worry and uncertainty, but chief among them was fear.
I wanted to reassure him. I wanted to tell him everything was going to be all right. But the truth was, I didn’t know myself. I was going back because Peter had sent a text in the night telling me to. He hadn’t said what had happened after we had left or what would be awaiting us once we got back to Fort Collins.
“Did you speak to him?” Victor asked abruptly. “I mean, did you actually hear his voice?”
I sighed. “No, Victor,” I replied. “I didn’t.”
“What about all the calls you received?” he asked. “Were they all from Peter?”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
In the clear light of day, everything looked different.
Last night, I had been prepared to clear out my bank account and run with Victor. But I had woken up with the clarity of distance. I would be giving up my entire life, including my college degree and any hopes of a better life. Not just that, Victor and I would be forced to keep a low profile, which meant we probably wouldn’t earn much in the way of jobs.
I was starting to realize that without the support of a healthy lifestyle, Victor would probably fall back into old patterns. Drugs were the most profitable business to get into. And if we were on the run, then it would probably be the easiest, too.
The alternative for Victor was jail, however, and I had yet to really consider that possibility. I knew I couldn’t lose him to a prison cell, but I had resolved that whatever awaited us in Fort Collins, I would stand by Victor’s side and testify for him in court if I had to.
I was no lawyer, but I was already forming justifications and defense pleas in my head. It was self-defense, temporary insanity; it was a reaction to years of abuse at Kameron’s hands.
I glanced at Victor’s face. It looked a little better, but the bruises were still bright and prominent. His left eye had sealed shut the previous day and didn’t look like it was going to open anytime soon. He had a purple bruise snaking up his jawline and a yellow bruise on his right cheek.
“Let’s get some breakfast?” I suggested, as we came up upon a food stop.
“I’m not hungry,” he said with finality. “You can stop if you want.”
“Okay,” I nodded and just kept driving. I probably wouldn’t be able to hold anything down, either.
“Madison?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you know what Peter’s going to do?” Victor asked cautiously, finally addressing the elephant in the room.
I was silent for a long time. “Honestly, I don’t know,” I replied slowly. “He pulled a gun on you for grabbing me. I don’t know what he’ll do at this point.”
“And we’re going back because…”
As I had suspected, things had changed for Victor in the clear light of day, too. He had been ready to take the blame and the punishment for Kameron’s death last night. But now that daylight had sprung and his courage had left him, he was scared of the consequences.
I couldn’t blame him. I’d be scared, too. And I knew Victor well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to survive jail. He didn’t have the temperament or the resilience for a place as unforgiving as jail was.
He had always had a habit of attaching himself to people who were stronger than he was, which meant he was under their protection for as long as they deigned to give it to him and for as long as he was useful to them. It had served him well over the years, but now, with Kameron gone, there was no one left to stand in front of him.
“Because he asked me to come back,” I repeated again. “And, he told me to bring you.”
“What if he arrests me the moment I walk into his house?” Victor asked.
“Then we will take our case to court,” I said. “And you will plead not guilty and we will fight like hell to make sure you go free…”
“What makes you think they will even believe me?” Victor asked, in a small voice. “Kameron and I have a long history together. What if they think I’m just a disgruntled employee who wanted a bigger cut? They’re not going to trust me once they know I’m a drug dealer.”
“Peter said he would testify for you,” I reminded him. “I will, too.”
“You’re my sister,” Victor pointed out. “And Peter’s sleeping with you. What makes you think a jury is going to trust either one of you?”
“We’re going to fight like hell to make sure you don’t end up in jail, Victor,” I said.
I saw his face go pale. Pity spread through my body, and I desperately wanted to reach out and hug him. He looked so much younger, sitting hunched in the passenger’s seat as though he were scared of the world. Sometimes it was hard to believe that he was the older sibling.
“Victor,” I said, trying
to make my voice as soothing as possible. “Don’t overthink it, okay? Not yet. We don’t know what happened after we left, and Peter is a good man. I don’t think he would have turned you in.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because… I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Just because.”
“If he considers covering up what I did, it’s because he cares about you that much,” Victor said. “But the fact still remains, he doesn’t care about me. Why should he go out of his way to help me, especially considering he’s a police officer who, by all accounts, has always followed the law?”
“By all accounts?” I repeated, raising an eyebrow at him.
“I did my research, Madison. After he beat the crap out of me and I was forced to leave your place with my tail between my legs, I looked him up. Peter Burbank – the guy who threw his own brother in jail.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel. I had almost forgotten about that. “Talen,” I said, under my breath.
“What?”
“Talen was his brother,” I explained.
“The one he threw into jail?”
“That was different,” I said, coming to Peter’s defense.
“How?”
“Talen didn’t murder anyone.” Victor cringed at my words. “He was caught in possession of drugs, and Peter knew that the only way to get him out of that gang was to single him out and cut him off from them completely.”
“Did it work?”
“I think so,” I nodded. “Talen went to jail for a short time, but he was released. And I do believe he’s turned his life around. I met last night, before…everything happened. He’s a little rough around the edges, but he and Peter actually seem to get along…considering.”
“Okay, and given what happened between Peter and his own brother, don’t you think Peter might feel that the best thing for me is jail?”
I fell silent. His logic was sound, and it did seem like something that would make sense to Peter. In all honesty, it had made sense to me until my brother was the one in the line of fire.
“I trust Peter,” I said, but it sounded as though I was trying to convince myself.
Victor sighed deeply. “I don’t know; maybe it’ll be a good thing. Maybe I’ll finally learn to be a man while I’m in there.”
“We don’t know that you’re going anywhere yet, Victor,” I said quickly. “Stop being premature about things.”
“It’s good to be prepared,” he said, in a soft voice.
“Don’t-”
“I want you to know something,” he said, cutting my off, as we got closer and closer to Peter’s house.
“What?” I asked, feeling my nerves ratchet up a notch.
“I wasn’t lying last night when I said I didn’t regret killing Kameron,” he said. “He would have made your life miserable – and Peter’s, too. He probably would have killed you both that night. I did what I had to do.”
“I know that,” I said softly.
“And I also want you to know one more thing,” she said.
“Okay?”
“Whichever way this goes, I’m going to turn my life around somehow. Whether I end up in jail or I walk free, I’m going to change for the better. I’m going to make better decisions and I’m going to be the brother I should have been from the start.”
“You promise?” I said, suppressing the tears in my eyes.
“I swear to you,” Victor said, with conviction in his voice.
We turned up the road, and I pulled to a stop outside Peter’s house. There was no sign of anyone else around. Only Peter’s car was parked outside. I felt my heart beat faster, not knowing whether that was a good sign or a bad one.
“Come on,” I said, once we had sat in the car for a full five minutes without saying a word.
We walked up the porch, and I knocked the door with a shaking fist. Almost immediately, the door swung open and I found myself face to face with Peter. His expression was calm and smooth, but there was no smile there.
“Come on,” he said urgently.
We walked into the living room and stood there awkwardly. I could feel Victor slink closer to me, and I knew he were scared of what was coming next.
“Sit down,” Peter said.
Both Victor and I sank to the couch in a daze, without really thinking about our actions. Peter stayed standing. He was quiet for a minute and then he started talking.
“What happened last night, I’m not going to lie…it was huge,” Peter started, and I felt my heart sink. “And as a police officer, it’s not something I can easily overlook. I thought a lot about this last night after you left. I wondered what the best decision I could make would be. I wondered what decision I could live with. And I came to the realization that as a cop, I couldn’t and shouldn’t let it go.”
I felt Victor tense beside me.
“But as a brother, I knew I had to,” Peter sighed. Then he turned to Victor. “If you were one of my brothers, Victor, I would have looked the other way. I went to the station last night and filed a report. The report states that you and Madison were out of town, and I heard a noise coming from the house.
“I went to investigate and came face to face with someone I thought was a burglar. He pulled a gun out on me, and I was forced to shoot him before he shot me. That is the official story.”
The news hit me like a ton of bricks, and I jumped off of the sofa and barreled into Peter’s arms. Relief flooded through my body, and I felt a thousand times lighter. I clung to Peter, who held me, rubbing my back in soothing circular motions.
When I finally pulled my face away from his neck, I kept my hands firmly wrapped around his torso, refusing to let him. I glanced over at Victor, who had his head in his hands. He was breathing deeply and his body shook ever so slightly.
A million different questions barreled through my head and I sobered immediately. “You’re taking the blame for this?”
“Something I was only able to do because of where Kameron was shot,” Peter said. “He was shot in the chest, not the back.”
I wrinkled my brows. That night had become a nightmarish blue to me. “But Victor shot him from the back?”
Peter shook his head. “Victor called out his name remember? Kameron turned and then Victor shot him. In the chest.”
“So…”
“I claimed I was the shooter and I was acting in self defense,” Peter replied. “You were right. If Victor had been the shooter, too many questions would have been asked. There’s too much history between Victor and Kameron to hide. And even if he had been absolved of the murder, he might have been brought up on charges of drug dealing. This was the only way to keep Victor out of it.”
“Oh God…”
“We need to go to the police station,” Peter said. “You and I.”
“Right now?”
“Right now,” he nodded. “They’re going to question you. They’re going to ask you if you can identify the burglar.”
I looked at him in alarm. “What should I say?”
“The truth,” he replied calmly. “Tell the police that Kameron was your ex-boyfriend. He was abusive. You left home to get away from him. But he called you. He threatened you-“
I gasped. “I think I have a message on my phone from Kameron, right after I left him and came here. He threatened to make me suffer when he found me.”
“Perfect,” Peter said. “Show it to them. Tell them you were scared for your life. And above all, act surprised when you see his body. You’re going to have to be convincing. As far as everyone else is concerned, I have no idea who he is.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
“Good,” he nodded. “The police will decide that Kameron was here to harm you. Why else would he have had a gun? Except that you weren’t at home. I interceded and when he pulled the gun out on me, I shot him first. With a little luck, this case will be closed soon.”
I breathed a tiny sigh of relief and turned to Victor. He was loo
king at both Peter and I, and his eyes were wet with tears of gratitude.
“Thank you,” he said, looking at Peter. “I don’t know how I can thank you for this.”
“There is one way to thank me, but it’s also a condition of my helping you,” Peter said. “Turn your life around. Make better decisions and find an honest way of making money. If I hear from anyone that you’ve been dealing in drugs again, or keeping company with anyone who’s involved with drugs, then I will find you. And I will drag your ass to jail myself. And I’m completely serious about that. You understand?”
Victor held Peter’s gaze for a moment and then nodded. “Completely.”
“Good,” Peter said.
I sighed deeply, clinging onto to Peter as though he were my lifeline. And in this particular instance, I genuinely felt that he was – my savior, my lifeline and my hero.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Peter
As I stepped onto my porch, I turned and noticed the lights on in Madison’s house. I could see her silhouette in the window of her living room. I just stood there a moment, admiring the beautiful contours of her body before I walked back into my empty home. I sat down on the sofa in the darkness and contemplated my decision.
Our visit to the station and gone better than I had hoped. Madison had identified Kameron from pictures straight from the coroner’s office. She had given the police her official statement, including the message Kameron had left on her phone. The Chief questioned her himself, but I could tell from his manner and his expression that he wasn’t suspicious. This would be an open and shut case.
Now that everything had been settled, I had the time to sit and reflect, to ponder if I had done the right thing or if I had made a mistake I would come to regret.
Nothing was ever as simple as it seemed. Sometimes a decision could be both good and bad in the same breath. Sometimes a decision was made up of a thousand different facets, each of which contained their own complexities.
