by Cora Kenborn
“Someone called QuestTech to let them know about my little side job.” A furious smirk stretches across his mouth. “Oh, honey, don’t act like you don’t know. I’m over this bullshit.” Temper flaring, he slams the folder against his palm while pacing inches in front of me. “Usually, it’s no big deal. You want to ensure a guy is your baby daddy, I’m your man. But getting me fired because your fucking test got rerouted”—pausing, he lets out a humorless laugh—“that’s some dirty, low-down shit.”
I feel the color drain from my face, and my stomach clenches. “What do you mean my test got rerouted?”
The man turns on his heel, a stunned look on his face before his lips part into a sneer. “Son of a bitch. You really don’t know, do you?”
I don’t trust my words, so I shake my head.
He crowds into me again, and suddenly I can’t breathe. “Your boy Dominic paid double my asking price to make sure your test came back proving you were Alexandra Romanov, Miss Smith. Only it never made it to me. Someone rerouted your sample to BioLink.”
“If you didn’t alter my DNA test, then… then…” There’s a sharp stab against my temple. His words are trying to get in, but I can’t let them. There’s no room.
I jump as he slams the folder onto one of the empty desks. “That girl you’ve pretended to be for the last four months? You weren’t pretending. You’re Alexandra Romanov, sweetheart, and there’s the proof.”
My world plunges into an unknown place. It’s dark and lonely, and cold. “No,” I gasp, closing my eyes while backing up. “You’re lying. It’s not true.”
He lets out a heartless chuckle that trickles down my spine. “Oh, it’s true all right. When I figured out what happened, I called McCallum, and let’s just say losing his shit would be an understatement.”
I stop falling, suddenly suspended as if time has frozen. Slowly, I open my eyes and stare at him. “Dominic knows?”
“Oh, sweetheart, not only does he know, he paid me extra to keep my mouth shut.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Dominic
Tightening my grip around the stack of boxes, I pick up the pace, taking the stairs two at a time. I told her thirty minutes but managed to make it back in twenty. Not because I don’t trust her, but I don’t know where her head is at lately, and that’s what worries me. I’ve seen this coming for weeks and hoped being out of the spotlight would reverse the damage I’ve done.
It hasn’t. If anything, it’s made it worse.
When I went to Silverline to get my hands on Rosten, the last thing I expected was to find him gone. Not only that, but then to talk to the night guard and find out he hasn’t been at the studio since Friday.
And neither has Angel.
I pause at the top of the landing, putting those thoughts away for later. I can get her help. She hurt herself last night. This can’t continue.
Whether she wants to admit it or not, we’re tied together. Bound by something bigger than a ruse or a lie. No one can protect her like I can. No one ever has. I won’t let go this time. No matter how hard she pushes or how hard she falls, I’ll be there.
I’ll always catch her.
But to live in the future, I have to stop living in the past. And that starts with leaving Beyond the News behind. Gripping the door, I push my shoulder against it, the boxes slipping from my grip.
“Hey, rook, can you help me with—” The rest of my words get lost as a fist slams into my face, knocking my chin over my shoulder and me into the door. I come back ready to swing until I see Angel standing in front of me, red faced and shaking. “What the fuck?” I yell, rubbing my jaw, because, shit, she can throw a punch.
“How long?” she hisses, one arm hugging a folder against her chest.
Son of a bitch, I knew I shouldn’t have left her alone.
“Twenty minutes,” I sigh, wiping the blood off my lip with the back of my hand. “I was only gone twenty—”
Angel slams the folder down on the desk beside her, flinging it open. “No, asshole. How long have you known?”
Fuck.
I stare at the folder. I don’t have to read it to know what it is. The BioLink logo printed at the top of the page flashes like a hazard light. Only there’s no hazard. This is annihilation. “Where did you get this?”
“Answer the question, Dominic,” she grits out.
I sigh, pressing my thumb against my temple. “Since that night at Amalia.”
She flinches. “The night we…that we…”
She can’t get the words out, so I do it for her. “Fucked. Yes.”
As if my words flip a switch in her head, she lifts her chin, steel glittering in her green eyes. “Did you know before?”
“No. I found out the next morning.”
Silence stretches between us, and then Angel blinks. Her pupils dilate, and she sways as if suddenly knocked off balance by the truth. “Oh my God. I’m her. I’m really Alexandra Romanov. But how?”
“Angel…” I can see it coming, and the blood pumps faster through my veins. The door is opening wider, and the thread holding the past from the present is severing.
She glances up, blinking so rapidly she almost looks asleep. “Is this why I can’t remember anything before the group home? What, did I just block it out? Am I just going to wake up one morning and remember? I don’t want that, Dominic! I don’t want those images in my head.” Spinning around in a circle, she grimaces while slamming the heel of her palm against her temple harder and harder and harder. “It’s already too crowded in here. There’s no more room. No room!”
Jesus Christ.
Grabbing her wrist, I pull her against me. “Rook, just listen to me for a minute.”
I’ve heard of lightbulb moments. I always thought it was just shit people said. But it’s real, and when you see it, especially when it damns you to hell, it settles in the pit of your stomach like a rock.
“Oh my God,” Angel gasps, shoving her other arm into my chest, forcing me to release her as she stumbles backward. “You knew. That day in the bar. You knew who I was, didn’t you? That’s why you came for me.”
I scrub a hand down my face. “I didn’t. I swear. I knew there was something special about you, but even I’m not that good.”
“Then why hide it?” she demands, her emotions switching off like a faucet. “What aren’t you telling me, Dominic?”
“I know what I did was wrong. I’m not trying to justify it. But you have to believe me when I say there’s a reason why I didn’t tell you, and it’s not what you—”
“You want money?” she yells, and I can see by her riotous expression she didn’t hear a word I just said. “Here.” In a flurry of movement, she rips off her jewelry and starts hurling it at me. “Take it.”
“It has nothing to do with your goddamn money,” I shout, batting away a ruby necklace and barely dodging her diamond ring clocking me in the eye. “Will you fucking stop?”
I get that she’s pissed. I deserve her anger, but damn it, I also deserve a chance to explain without being assaulted with family heirlooms. I’m an asshole, but I’m not a monster.
At least not about this.
“Rook, listen to me. You don’t know everything. I’ve been protecting you from—”
Grabbing handfuls of hair, Angel doubles over and lets out a gut-wrenching wail so tortured and painful, I’ll hear it for the rest of my life. “I don’t want to hear any more of your lies,” she cries. “Ruining my life once wasn’t good enough for you, so—what? You thought you’d give it another go? I’m Alexandra Romanov, Dominic! We did this as a team, and you’re still you, but I’m not me anymore. I’m her.” Releasing her hair, she presses the back of her hands to her forehead, squeezing her eyes closed as mascara rolls down her cheeks. “Oh my God, I’m her. Her. The girl in the mirror. I’m her, and now I’m lost. I’m so lost, and it’s dark. I don’t know if it’ll ever stop being so dark.”
She’s breaking. I see it, and I fucking pulled the trigger.
>
I always thought I didn’t have a heart, and if I did, it was incapable of anything but hate. Yet the woman standing in front of me stole it. She holds it in the palm of her hand, and even if she throws it at my feet or rips it in two, I have no regrets.
I step forward, reaching for her.
“No!” she shrieks, stumbling backward. “It’s not fair, Dominic! This skin,” she holds up her arm, pinching it. “I’m trapped in it. It’s not mine anymore. It’s hers.” Tears stream down her face, and it feels like jagged shards of glass are tearing at my chest, shredding the skin, ripping at my heart. Her fingers pinch tighter, tugging and twisting her own skin until it turns red. “And…I…want…it…off!”
Jesus Christ. She’s about to draw blood.
I can’t take seeing her so shattered and broken. Instinctively, I grasp at the broken pieces crumbling before my eyes. “Angel, baby…”
“No!” Her arm shoots out, forcing space between us. My heart beats with the seconds of silence that pass as a calm, unfamiliar smile slowly spreads across her face. “Haven’t you heard the news? Angel Smith never existed. My name is Alexandra.”
Closing the door to the interrogation room, Detective Rubio scans a curious eye down my ripped jeans and dirty T-shirt before taking a seat across the table. “You’ve taken a step down in the world, McCallum.”
“I don’t wear my tux to move shit, Jav. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Tossing a folder on the table, he lets out a chuckle, as if my answer amuses him. As if he didn’t call Angel minutes after her world flipped upside down to tell her we both needed to come to the station immediately.
Maybe she hasn’t been completely on her game lately, but my girl is no idiot. No one gets called to a police station for good news. And as much as she hates me right now, she still needs me, and this asshole has kept me sitting in a metal chair for over an hour.
I fist my hands against the desk. “Where is she?”
“She’s fine,” he mutters, flipping open the folder, but I see the twitch in his eye. He’s lying.
“I want to see her. Now.”
“You’ll see her when we’re finished.” Folding his arms over the papers, he bends forward. “When that time comes is up to you.”
Another pain stabs me in the chest. She needs me there to ground her. Angel is straddling a razor thin line between her life as Alexandra and her life as Angel. It’s unbalanced, and it only takes one wrong step for it to snap and send her spiraling inside her own mind.
Everything I’ve done has been to keep this from happening. I didn’t want her to know she was Alexandra Romanov out of fear, but not for myself. For her. Because once those memories come back, she’ll never force them out. She’ll never unsee them.
She’ll never forgive herself.
I slump back in the chair. “What do you want to know this time?”
“Violet DeLuca’s body was found at the bottom of the Hollywood Reservoir.”
I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. She’s been missing for three weeks now. I stayed positive for Angel’s sake, but I knew it was only a matter of time.
“You don’t look surprised, McCallum. Why is that?” He fans the crime scene pictures out in front of me to incite a reaction. I admit, they’re hard to look at. Violet’s face is purple and bloated.
But instead of giving him what he wants, I glance back up at him. “I’m sorry, is there a certain protocol for this kind of thing? It’s my first time; maybe you have a pamphlet I can read.”
Rubio shakes his head, gathering the photos and setting them aside. “Humor, that’s good. You’ll need it.” Digging through his little folder again, he pulls out another photo and slides it toward me. This one makes me grip the edge of the table with both hands. “Because security footage has you and Violet arguing outside of Silverline’s main executive offices. And wouldn’t you know it?” He taps his finger against the picture. “It’s time stamped the same day she disappeared. You failed to mention that before. Why is that?”
I shrug. “Didn’t think it mattered. I can’t control what she does.”
“I guess not. Still, it looked like it got pretty heated. Like right here.” He points to the picture again, and I want to grab his finger and snap it in two. “You had her pinned against the wall. Were you angry at her, Dominic? Angry enough to hurt her?”
“No.” He’s provoking me on purpose. He wants me to snap. He’s banking on it.
“Where were you that night around 11:45?”
“I was with Alexandra.” Smirking, I gesture toward my dick. “Would you like a blow-by-blow description of what we were doing, Jav?”
“That won’t be necessary,” he says, brushing off the innuendo. “Luckily for you, Alexandra backs up your story. Although she doesn’t seem too stable right now, so maybe she’ll say anything if she’s afraid of the consequences.”
A marked silence fills the room, and we both know he hit a chink in my armor. Taunting me with thoughts of her slipping away from me shifts the balance of power into his hands. “I’d never hurt her.”
“I don’t know,” he says, cocking an eyebrow. “People die around you, Dominic. Freddy Wiseman, Violet DeLuca. Now, Greg Rosten is missing.”
I still. “He’s what?”
Rubio doesn’t miss my reaction. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I not mention that part? No one has seen Greg Rosten since Friday night. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” I say nothing. I’ve done enough damage as it is. Unbothered, Rubio gathers all his photos and tucks them away. “No worries, secrets have a way of coming out anyway. Even if it does take fifteen years.”
For the second time, I allow him to provoke a reaction out of me. “What did you say?”
He knows he’s got me, so he toys with me by spinning a pen on the table. “I was going through my old man’s files. It’s all I’ve done for years since he died. And there’s one thing I’ve never understood.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, there were assumed to be two shooters,” he continues, spinning the pen faster and faster, and I can’t stop watching it. I don’t know if he’s doing it on purpose, but it’s driving me insane. “Forensic determined one bullet fired from one gun killed Katerina Romanov, and six bullets fired from another killed the rest. Two hit Nicholas; four hit the children.”
Slamming my hand down on the pen, I meet his raised eyebrow. “Do you have a point to make?”
Scowling, he jerks his hand away, his fingers wrapping tightly around the pen. “What I don’t understand is although a bullet from Nicholas’s gun hit the assailant, it wasn’t the one that killed him. That honor came from the gun that killed Katerina.”
There’s a loud buzzing in my head, so I distract myself by tilting the metal chair onto its back legs. “You really need to get out more, Jav.”
“The second shooter killed his own partner,” he says. “Now, why would he do that, Dominic?”
“Maybe he’s an equal opportunity homicidal maniac.”
He huffs out a brusque laugh. “Maybe. Know what else I’ve wondered over the years?”
“Why you have no friends?” He’s just shooting fish in a barrel now. He might think he has the answers, but all he has are the tiny fragments of Angel’s broken mirror. Jagged shards that will never fit together to form anything but a distorted picture.
I made sure of it.
Rubio’s lip curls up. “Cute. No, it’s about Hilda. When my dad interviewed her, she swore she saw nothing, but she was right next door, less than fifty feet away.”
“I’m done,” I announce, my chair scraping across the floor as I rise to my feet.
He extends his leg, blocking my exit. “I’m not. See, I don’t trust you, McCallum. Never have. So, I did some digging and found out you have an aunt in Phoenix. I had some time, so, I paid her a visit. What do you think she told me?”
Years of deception spiral out of control. Turning around, the monster Luciano created div
es for his jugular. “You son of a bitch!”
Rubio bolts out of his chair, meeting me with a hard shove. He’s no longer shooting fish. He’s hooked one right through the eye. “I won’t stand by and let you manipulate that girl all over again,” he growls. “Either you tell her, or I will.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Dominic
Guilt is a perception of one’s own reality. I’ve always believed transgressions of the past have no bearing on the future. What’s done is done. Always move forward, because looking back only makes you run into walls.
But what I really meant was that my transgressions have no bearing on my future. Because if you transgress against me, it’s never done. I’ll make sure your guilty ass gets what’s coming to you.
Now, I realize what’s done may be done, but it’s never forgotten. Especially when sins are never confessed, and truth is never told.
I’ve avoided guilt because allowing myself to feel even the slightest bit forces me to question a choice I made when I was seventeen years old. A split-second decision that changed the course of two people’s lives.
I brought this on her. If I’d just left her alone, none of this would’ve happened. But it’s too late for regrets. Rubio gave me forty-eight hours, and that countdown clock that’s been ticking since I dragged Angel outside a bar in Chula Vista is nearing zero.
I’m out of time, and so is she.
I find her where she’s been since we got home from the police station—outside on the main balcony staring out at nothing. She’s still curled up on the chaise lounge, mourning her friend, her identity, the family she never knew, and the life she can’t remember.
She looks so innocent in her black leggings and oversized gray hoodie that if I close my eyes just enough, I can almost imagine her as eight-year-old Alexandra Romanov.
Swallowing the guilt I’ve chewed on for the last hour, I sit across from her. “Angel, we need to talk.”
