Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Elizabeth

The storm outside raged, the wind howling like a feral beast, rattling the windows and making my heartbeat thrum wildly against my ribcage. Lightning flashed, lighting up the corners of my darkened office.

A migraine was a vice grip on my temples, squeezing tighter with each clap of thunder. I leaned back in my chair, eyes squeezed shut as I rubbed my forehead in slow, deliberate circles in a futile attempt to dull the pain.

The screen of my computer was blinding to my overly sensitive eyes, piercing into my brain anytime I tried to look at it as the rain pelted rhythmically and relentlessly on the glass behind me.

Every ounce of me wanted to power down and finally head home for the night.

The neon clock at the corner of the screen taunted me. Midnight. The witching hour. Yet another day that passed me by while I spent every waking moment in this office that was steadily starting to feel more like a prison with each passing day.

Was it any wonder the stress had brought on yet another migraine? The third this week alone.

The storm outside and the one inside were fighting for dominance as I reached into my drawer for painkillers, set right there next to my trusty bottle of antacids that I was eating like candy most days.

I downed the pills with a swig of my long-cold coffee, the bitter taste a small price to pay if it would actually ease some of the pain, so I could get back to work.

My desk was a disaster, piles of folders and loose papers evidence of how behind I still was, despite pulling sixteen-hour days.

What can I say?

The reelection campaign wasn’t going well.

Polls were leaning out of our favor ever since a very motivated blue-collar worker from a bad area started her grassroots effort to take down the incumbent.

My boss.

A man who had held his position in the Senate almost as long as I’ve been alive.

Someone who, according to the aforementioned polls, was out of touch with the common man, who was in this for the money and the cushy government benefits, not to actually help the common man.

The thing was, the constituents weren’t even wrong.

That was the hardest part of this job. Running a campaign for a man you didn’t personally even respect, let alone like.

Michael Westmoore was the very definition of a slimy politician. Full of smiles for everyone he shit-talked behind their backs. Making speeches about the plight of the common man while wearing shoes that cost more than the average person made in a month. Preaching the importance of a strong middle class and unions while actively voting against anything that would actually help his people.

He’d also taken up a pretty severe filler addiction lately, on top of one too many facelifts, making his face look pulled too tight and emotionless.

The scandal of the week was him trying to give a moving speech, but his face had been so frozen that he looked like a robot.

The memes, God, the memes.

Hilarious, truly.

But really damning to the campaign.

And, man, the senator had been enraged. The whole office paid for that one. Even if, realistically, the only person to blame was his injectionist.

I was still trying to clean up that mess. Meanwhile the senator was already caught by some random member of the press saying something horrifically misogynistic about the young woman running against him.

If I didn’t need this job so much, I would jump ship and go work for her.

Alas, I’d been here for a while. The pay was good. The benefits… enough to keep me out of complete financial ruin if I found myself in the hospital for any reason.

It was a bad time to try to leave.

I just had to stick this out.

And silently vote for his challenger when the time came.

I clicked on my keypad, lowering the light on the computer in the hopes that I could just power through and get these new social media posts and newsletters drafted before I finally caught some sleep.

I willed the medicine to work faster, to bring me some peace amidst the turmoil.

Outside, the rain showed no signs of letting up.

A crash of thunder had me shooting up out of my chair, my nerves frazzled as I took myself into the bathroom in my office, leaving the light off as I wet some paper towels to press to the back of my neck, the pain making me sweaty and overheated.

I was still standing there when I heard the elevator ping, a sound I probably shouldn’t have been able to hear from so far away, but the migraine was making my hearing almost as sensitive as my sight and sense of smell that had me tossing out my dinner and throwing the bag down the chute before I even got to eat any.

It wasn’t uncommon for many of us to work late. But this was too late even for the most ambitious members of the team.

I heard the sound of footsteps, the stride awkward in the way only the senator’s was.

Michael Westmoore was a relatively short man. I actually had to stop wearing heels because it bruised his ego when a woman towered over him. To overcompensate for being vertically challenged, he had shoes with lifts specially made. The problem was, he wanted to be a lot taller than the standard lift would make him, which meant he added a slight heel to the shoes as well, making it so he ended up walking a bit like someone in high heels, only with flat loafers on.

I slunk back into the shadow behind the door, not wanting to engage with him. Not when my head was still screaming.

A loud ring had me fighting back a gasp before the senator’s voice flooded the hallway.

“Dimitri,” he said, making my brows pinch.

I knew the senator well. Well enough to know the names of every one of his family members—including the illegitimate son he’d never publicly acknowledged but who fleeced his father for money every month that he always sucked up his nose within weeks—but that name meant nothing to me.

“Are you alone?” A deep, heavily accented, man’s voice filled the hallway with the senator.

Michael Westmoore was completely useless with all forms of technology. He had this awful habit of always answering his phone on speaker without even realizing it, leaving one of us on his team to quickly turn the speaker off before he or someone he was talking to said something that would ruin his chances of reelection.

“Ah,” the senator said, and I could hear him turning into my office, likely having seen the computer still powered on. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, coming toward the bathroom, and glancing in, but not seeing me stashed behind the door.

“We need to talk,” Dimitri said, and I placed the accent as Russian as the senator walked back out into my office.

“About what?”

“You were supposed to get that case dropped,” Dimitri said.

In my hiding place, I winced.

I mean, it was an ugly truth of politics that most, if not all, politicians got corrupted eventually. Even the idealistic ones, the ones who swore they would never take corporate money or bribes, the lure money corrupted them all eventually.

I wasn’t surprised my boss was corrupt.

I was a little surprised that it sounded like he was involved in something actually criminal.

Michael Westmoore hated feeling like he answered to anyone. And when you involved yourself with criminals, you were never truly in charge.

“This kind of thing takes time,” the senator insisted. “It’s not like I can just go to the DA and tell him to drop the case against a man caught trafficking women into Brooklyn.”

Trafficking?

My heartbeat was punching against my ribcage, loud enough that I could swear it could be heard even from a room away with rainfall still hammering against all the windows in the building.

It was one thing to look the other way when someone was dealing cocaine to half of the politicians in the game. It was a complete other to try to get a man off of trafficking charges.

Trafficking.

Of actual human beings.

Women, it seemed like. And likely girls.

Lord knew there was only one reason women and girls were trafficked into a country.

“You are costing me money,” Dimitri said, voice getting rougher, a little more accented in his anger.

“I’m working on it.”

“Work harder,” Dimitri bit off. “Or there will be consequences, da?”

There was a pause.

“Yeah. Yes. I’ll see the district attorney tomorrow,” the senator insisted. “But I need proof that—“ he started, but Dimitri had already ended the call.

“Shit,” the senator said, and I could hear his footsteps go into his office, then back down the hall.

I wasn’t sure I released my breath until I heard the elevator doors chime as they opened, and swallowed up the senator.

What the hell?

I mean… what the actual hell?

I didn’t know if it was the painkillers or the adrenaline, but the migraine had started to ease. Not completely, but enough to be able to think straight again.

I stayed in the bathroom for another couple of minutes, wanting to make sure the senator was out of the building before I finally moved out, powering down my computer, grabbing my cell and my purse, and heading for the elevators myself.

I didn’t know what to do with this information.

All I knew was I needed to get the hell out of there, get some space, some room to think. Maybe some sleep. Then I could figure out what my next steps would be.

I didn’t realize, of course, as I exited the building twenty minutes after my boss that the streets weren’t as empty as they looked, that someone was watching me.

That I had now become a target.