Chapter 16

16

Ivan

A rriving at Annie Knowles’s address in Grand Rapids, I quickly realize that she was generously paid off on top of that tedious NDA. Her house is the biggest and grandest on the block, settled in the middle of a notoriously affluent neighborhood.

Cautiously, I get out of my car and walk up to the front gate.

The gardener spots me and comes over. “Can I help you?” he asks, his black brow furrowed slightly, beads of sweat trickling down his tanned temples.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Knowles. I’m her lawyer,” I reply, wondering if it’ll do the trick.

“Okay,” the guy replies and opens the gate for me.

A minute later, I knock on the front door. I can hear the sound of footsteps approaching from inside while a golden retriever rushes up to sniff me. I get a wag of the tail as a sign of approval, so I grab his tennis ball and toss it. Like lightning, he bolts away to catch it, just in time as Annie Knowles opens the door.

“Who are you?” she asks, suddenly alert, her gaze bouncing back and forth behind me. She sees the gardener working on her bushes and realizes what happened. “Did that idiot let you in?”

“Mrs. Knowles, be kind. The man is innocent. I may have deceived him,” I reply with a polite smile.

Now she looks worried. “What do you want?”

“I mean no harm, I just want to talk,” I say. “About a friend we have in common. A certain Matthew Phelps.”

Annie Knowles appears young for her mid-forties though I can tell that she has had some work done. I can see the faint lifting scars on her eyelids. The lip filler. Definitely some Botox involved. But if there’s one thing that she couldn’t cut away, it’s a deep frown line as she measures me from head to toe, understanding the position she has just found herself in.

“Who are you?” she asks again. “I’m calling the cops.”

“I’m a friend of Paul’s,” I say. “You might know him as Rooker’s boss.”

“Rooker?” Annie gasps, turning pale.

“As it turns out, I have something you need and you have something I need. How about you invite me in for a cup of coffee so we can discuss this in peace and out of sight. I doubt you want your nosy neighbors to learn about your son’s gambling proclivities.”

She thinks about it for a moment, briefly glaring at the gardener again. Something tells me the guy’s going to be out of a job after I leave, but I cannot afford to feel responsible about his fate. My own fate concerns me more.

It takes another five minutes before I’m with a cup of coffee in hand, sitting across the kitchen table from Annie Knowles. The house is ever more beautiful on the inside, but there are signs of wear and tear, layers of grime and dust everywhere. By the looks of it, she could only afford to keep the gardener to maintain the outside appearance. Indoors, the place appears to be too much work for a woman who clearly ran out of money.

“You know Rooker,” Annie mutters, watching me while I sip my coffee with slow and deliberate gestures.

“I don’t. I know Paul, his boss. And I’m offering to pay your son’s debt, interest included, in exchange for some information.”

She cocks her head to the side. “That’s a lot of money, mister…”

“Mr. Sokolov,” I politely supply.

“Mr. Sokolov.” My name sounds familiar to her, I can tell, but she doesn’t immediately register who I am. Good. I’ve got a few more words before the real dread sets in, when she becomes aware of who’s in her kitchen, casually drinking her coffee. “It is a lot of money. Seven-hundred thousand, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Plus interest, another two-fifty,” she sighs deeply.

“Your son went all out, didn’t he?”

Annie scoffs and shakes her head. “I did my best with Henry, I swear, I really did. I paid for everything, his school, his courses, I made sure he had everything he ever needed, and how did he repay me?”

“You gave him too much,” I reply with a wry smile. “Henry never learned the value of money, the effort one puts into hard work. Then again, all of this,” I add, motioning around us, “it didn’t come out of any hard work either, did it?”

“What do youmean?” she sounds offended.

“It’s hush money. How can Henry appreciate hard work when you never set a good example for him?”

Annie’s frown deepens. “Are you here to help me or are you here to insult me?”

“It’s the truth, isn’t it? You can’t even afford a housekeeper anymore,” I say. “And judging by the house—the expensive furniture, the high-end Italian light fixtures, the work you had done on yourself and what you just told me about your son’s every whim having been satisfied—there’s only one conclusion I can draw. You came into a shitload of money and you squandered it, one penny at a time, without any real consideration for the future. You never invested in anything, you simply let your son turn into a monetary black hole. And now, you’re at your wit’s end, desperate and broke, probably looking to sell some of the stuff in the house so you can put gas in that outrageously glossy Escalade parked in your driveway. How am I doing?”

“Who told you all of this? Was it Phelps? The prick wouldn’t even take my calls. What’s this about?” Annie grumbles, crossing her arms. Judging her is finished and it’s time to move on to the next stage of this conquest.

“Mrs. Knowles, I need information from you. In exchange for that information, I will pay off Henry’s debt. That’s all you need to know. And it stays between the two of us. You’ll never get a sweeter deal than this, I’m sure you’re aware.”

I can almost hear the wheels in her head turning, screeching loudly until she reaches the inevitable conclusion. “What do you want to know?”

“Why did you leave Matthew Phelps’s campaign? What happened?”

Her jaw drops. “Oh. No, I can’t talk about that.”

“The Meridian Observer published a story about it,” I continue, watching her closely. “They promised a follow-up with more details, having already done an interview with you at the time. But then they were bought and shut down. Said interview never saw the light of day, and you signed a non-disclosure agreement in the meantime. Shortly afterward, you moved here. I have eyes, Mrs. Knowles. I can see what happened. I just need to know the whole story.”

“No. You just said it. I signed an NDA. I can’t break it. They’ll sue me. They’ll ruin me.”

“But Henry will be debt free and no longer in danger of losing his life. Isn’t that a price worth paying? Your son’s life? Because we both know Rooker will start cutting body parts off that boy until he’s paid.”

“Can’t you talk to his boss?” Annie asks, growing increasingly desperate. There must be quite the conflict unraveling inside of her. “Can’t you give Henry more time?”

“Why would I talk to Paul or anyone else about your son’s misfortunes? The only way I help you is if you help me.”

She’s reached the dead end that she’s been dreading. It’s written all over her face in tiny pearls of sweat. “That stupid boy,” she mumbles, closing her eyes for a moment. “He did it. He fucking ruined me.”

“I think you ruined yourself with your lack of foresight. Henry’s problem didn’t emerge overnight,” I say. “Anyway, these are the terms of the deal I’m offering. Henry’s life and physical integrity in exchange for information.”

“Mr. Sokolov, you have to understand, that NDA—”

“Was signed after you gave the interview with Meridian. I just want the content of the interview. That’s all.”

Annie blinks several times. For a moment, she looks relieved. But then another bout of despair takes over. “I don’t have the tapes. I don’t have a transcript, I don’t have anything. They destroyed every single document and recording at Meridian after they were bought out. I know, because I tried to get copies when I heard about the takeover. I needed an insurance policy.”

“Why?”

“Because Matthew’s fixer was waiting for me to sign that fucking NDA and take his dirty money, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I figured I could cover my ass somehow, but it didn’t work. I had no choice but to sign and take the cash.”

“You sound real broken up about it,” I reply flatly.

Her lips twist with bitter contempt. “You had no idea what I went through, what I had to deal with. I was a single mother, living from paycheck to paycheck. I believed Matthew when he promised me the fucking world, when he…. No, I can’t. I can’t do this. I’m done covering Henry’s ass. I have to sell the house, he’s on his own.”

“He’s your son,” I insist. “Rooker won’t forgive him.”

She’s crying now. Struggling not to, but the tears flow freely, anxiously down her overly tanned cheeks. “I did the best I could.”

“Mrs. Knowles, you need to understand something. No matter what you do or say, even what you don’t do or don’t say, somebody is going to get hurt. If you help me, I promise that Henry won’t be the one, and that you’ll have something to fall back on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can throw in an extra couple hundred grand to make your life easier. But if you keep saying no today, Henry will get hurt, and so will you,” I say, leaning back into my seat.

Finally, her shoulders drop in shameful defeat. “I could tell you a lot of things about Matthew Phelps, but I wouldn’t be able to prove it. He was rather good at covering his tracks over the years, even when I was working for him. But I heard rumors through the grapevine while I was trying to reach out to him recently.”

“Rumors?”

“Yes. That’s he’s getting a little too close to one of his aides. Shelby something,” Annie says, and I catch a hint of bitterness in her voice. I know the Shelby working for Phelps that she’s talking about. Lyric’s best friend. “And if I know Matthew, I’ll say this—when he gets close to someone, when he gets intimate, he lets his guard down. There’s plenty of incriminating material in his private study. You’ll know it when you find it. But you have to find it first. And if the Shelby thing is real, she can tell you where it is.”

“Look at you, singing like a little bird,” I reply with a cocky grin.

“I can’t breach that NDA, Mr. Sokolov. I’m afraid of those people. If my life sucks now, it’ll suck even worse if they find out I’m talking to you. Please, understand.”

“No, no, I get it,” I say.

I get up and text Paul to confirm, along with a screenshot of a wire transfer. “Your son’s debt is cleared.”

“Thank you,” she mumbles, relief changing the color of her cheeks ever so slightly.

“Just do yourself a favor and send that boy to rehab, otherwise, you’ll keep ending up in the same place.”

I walk out of the house with a weird sense of accomplishment. It didn’t turn out exactly the way I had hoped, but I still got something out of it. Technically, it’s a rumor, but rumors aren’t born from thin air.

Someone in that campaign office saw something. Someone heard something. Conclusions were drawn, whispers were cast into the wind until one of them made it into Annie Knowles’s ear. The woman is bitter and disgruntled, desperate enough to pass it on.

Whether it’s accurate or not remains to be seen. It’s better than nothing. We’ve got a different starting point for what comes next, and I intend to see it through to the end. I need this nightmare to be over. I want our lives to be ours again, without the Feds tailing us everywhere. I want Lyric to feel safe with us. She deserves love and happiness, peace and room to flourish. We can’t give her that, not with Smith, Bowman, and Phelps grilling us from every direction.

They came after us, looking for a fight.

We’re coming to them now, and we’re bringing the war to their doorstep.

I’m done playing it clean and safe.