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Chapter Three

CHAPTER THREE

Elizabeth

I didn’t sleep all night, tossing and turning, trying to decide what I was supposed to do.

Did I go to the police?

With what proof?

All I had was my word on what I overheard.

Sure, I had the name Dimitri. But I had to imagine there were more than a few criminals with that name in Brooklyn or the city as a whole.

And who was going to believe a random woman running a reelection campaign over an incumbent, highly respected, senator?

It was in the shower the next morning that I decided that my move would have to be to get evidence.

New York was a one-party consent state. Meaning if I was a part of a conversation involving corruption, I could record it without the other party knowing. But I couldn’t record a conversation between two other people without permission.

Short of finding actual paperwork proving a connection to Russian criminals that I could turn over to the police, my only choice was to try to get Michael to speak to me about it.

Or, of course, just record him illegally and then anonymously upload it to social media. Let the internet take it from there. Though, I’d have to make sure I could upload it without it tracing back to me. There were hefty fines for that kind of thing. Not to mention the several year prison sentence.

Or, of course, I could make sure there were no fingerprints or anything… and drop it off at a news station.

There were options.

Ways for this to get out there.

Without it tracing back to me.

But the public had to know that the politician they voted in was corrupt.

It would be risking my job. Especially if his fall from grace was swift.

But I’d get unemployment.

And I could freelance until I found something more permanent again.

It would be okay.

“Right, bud?” I asked my geriatric cat as I passed him on my way to the kitchen.

He’d belonged to my grandfather before he’d passed. My family had come in from all corners of the United States to clean out his condo, eyes on the money they could sell it for in the current market. No one cared about the eclectic art collection he’d built over sixty years in the city since most of it was from no-name artists who never really went anywhere. Or the journals he’d kept of all the crazy and wonderful things he’d witnessed in this city he loved so much. And they’d been minutes away from dropping Kevin off at the shelter where he would likely stay the rest of his life, never knowing love again.

My entire guest room, that served as my home office, was full of said art and journals. And my entire apartment was now full of Kevin’s favorite things. A treehouse that stood out hideously against my more muted decor. A suction-cup hammock in the window. Three separate beds in specific corners. A scratch post beside the couch that he’d already done some significant damage to.

I felt bad when I’d taken him in, knowing I work ridiculously long hours. But he was seventeen years old. He slept pretty much all day.

And, I reminded myself, even alone in an apartment most of the time was leaps and bounds better than in an overcrowded, stressful shelter.

“We’ll be okay no matter what,” I said after setting up my fancy automatic espresso machine to make myself my favorite cookie batter hot latte with oat milk and an extra shot.

I didn’t care if it was eighty-five degrees with seventy-percent humidity at six in the morning, I was always going to have my hot coffee treat first thing.

I rubbed Kevin’s silky black fur, feeling his body vibrate as he purred. “How about some mushy, disgusting loaf for breakfast?” I asked, walking back to my marble counter, taking out his plate—because, apparently, he had an aversion to eating out of a bowl—opening a can, and plopping a square of smushy wet cat food onto it, using the edge of the container to smush it up a bit because I couldn’t bring myself to use one of my forks for the task.

I grabbed my latte before going back to my bedroom to pick out an outfit as I tried to think of how I might get Michael to confide in me about his… less than legal dealings.

He did tend to be candid with me. Often too candid, to be honest. I was the unfortunate keeper of the knowledge that anything with cumin tied him to the toilet for half a day afterward. And that he was trying out a new erectile dysfunction pill to use with his mistress since his wife, who lived full-time in D.C., wanted nothing to do with him anymore.

If I approached it in a way where I was asking about any other skeletons in his closet that I would need to cover up, or try to deflect attention from, I might be able to get him to mention wanting to call in a favor to the district attorney.

Or I could mention someone named Dimitri calling the office asking for him. See if he confessed then.

Whatever I wanted to do, I had approximately only ten more days to do it. The Senate would be back in session in eleven, and Michael always took one full day to travel back and get settled.

I sipped my latte while I hemmed and hawed the professionalism of wearing shorts, even dress shorts. Ultimately, though, the little weather station I kept on my makeup vanity told me it was literally getting hotter and more humid by the moment, so I opted not to care what people thought as I slipped into the shorts, put on a tank top, then added a lightweight blazer on top, reminding myself that I would only be sweating on my commute, and that the air conditioning in the office was always set to arctic.

I used a light hand with my makeup, shoved my tablet with its folding keyboard into my purse along with my planner, notebook, and a small makeup bag.

With that, I headed out, mind on catching my boss in a criminal scheme. Which, by late morning, proved impossible when he refused to drag his ass into the office, even though he was supposed to have a meeting with all of us and then two video calls with big political vloggers.

Which was what I was arguing with him about when I stepped out of the office, the humidity hitting me like a wall as I listened to Michael wax on and on about how vloggers weren’t worth his time, not even if they had eight million followers on their socials, and the young people polled said they got most of their news from them rather than the actual news these days.

I wasn’t paying attention to my surroundings. I was too busy choking on my frustration while my boss yelled in my ear.

Not that I would have seen anything.

I mean, as a woman, I was raised to be aware of strange men looking a little too hard at me, of cat calling me, of suspicious parked vans. That sort of thing.

Not to be on the lookout for random guns aimed in my direction.

The first two pops only managed to confuse me.

It wasn’t until others on the street started to scream, run, and duck for cover that I realized what was happening.

A shooting.

Then there was this blinding sort of pain across my arm, making me drop my phone to the ground as I just stood there. Frozen.

Apparently, when it came to fight-or-flight, I was born with neither.

Until a sleek black sedan with dark windows pulled out in front of the cars parked on the street, the door flying open, and a man telling me to get in.

There was never a time in my life when I thought Oh, hey, a strange man in a car; I should jump in with him.

But I found myself ducking and running, throwing myself into the seat, and dragging the door shut as the driver peeled off, getting us out of the area of the shooting.

My heartbeat was punching against my ribcage as the driver took several quick turns.

“What—“ I started when we pulled up to a red light.

“You’re hit,” he said at the same time.

He had a smooth, rich voice, conjuring up images of coffee and leather and cigars. For reasons that made absolutely no sense to me.

But, then again, nothing was making sense right then. Sitting in a car with a stranger after being in the middle of a shooting.

I figured I was allowed to not be thinking clearly in that moment.

“What?” I asked, turning to look at him for the first time.

He was tall and seemingly fit under a dark gray golf shirt and a pair of pressed black slacks. His black hair and golden eyes offset his olive skin. And his square jaw and brooding brow were almost universally considered attractive.

He was.

Attractive.

I mean, the man belonged on billboards.

Not in getaway cars.

“You’re hit,” he said, reaching for my elbow to lift my arm from my side.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to glance down to see what he was looking at.

It wasn’t until I saw the little rivers of red slipping down my skin to drop onto my shorts that I remembered it.

The pain that had me dropping my phone.

I’d been hit.

Shot.

I’d been shot.

“My shorts,” I heard myself say, looking at the material that was surely ruined.

“Baby, I think you should be a little more worried about your arm,” he said, voice soft as he was forced to release me, a chorus of horns behind us letting us know the light had turned green.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at my arm, though. My gaze stayed fixated instead on the way the blood slipped off my arm and dripped onto my shorts.

“They were targeting you.” I was aware of him speaking, the sound of his voice shivering over my skin, but I couldn’t seem to focus on the actual words. “Hey, stay with me here,” he said, doing a couple snaps that had me looking over. “Why were they targeting you? Who are you?”

“I’m… nobody,” I said, slow blinking at him, sure I wasn’t understanding him.

Because no one would be targeting me.

No one would want to shoot me.

“I think I need a doctor,” I said, the pain finally starting to pierce through the shock, a sharp, burning sensation.

“I know,” he said, taking another turn, going the opposite direction of the nearest hospital.

“You’re going the wrong way,” I said.

“There’s a clinic right there,” he said, pointing out of the windshield toward a building with a line of people out front.

“What if I need surgery?” I asked.

“You don’t. It’s not that bad,” he told me. “I don’t know why you’re bleeding so bad.”

“Blood thinners,” I heard myself murmur, watching the blood continue to trickle, not seeming to slow down much. “My migraine meds are blood thinners,” I told him.

“That makes sense,” he said, pulling the car into a spot half a block up before cutting the engine and rushing out and around to help me out.

Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion as he grabbed the elbow of my good arm and led me back toward the clinic, cutting in front of the people who had clearly been waiting around for a while, sweat stains darkening their armpits, collars, and chests.

“Hey, there’s a line,” a man with a clipboard said as he moved through the doors.

“Tell Dr. Conti that Elian Lombardi needs to see him,” he demanded, tone brooking no argument.

The man with the clipboard looked dubious, but he walked up to a woman who was standing behind a sheet of plexiglass, mumbling to her, then waiting for her to walk away. She came almost running back a moment later, unlocking the door.

“Let them back,” she demanded, tone almost frantic.

My brain wasn’t computing why that little interaction happened as I was led through a slightly rundown, but very neat clinic, and into a small exam room where the man, Elian, urged me up onto the vinyl exam table with the strip of paper that crinkled as I shifted my position.

I absentmindedly remembered then to finally reach up and remove my sunglasses.

I didn’t even get a chance to ask him anything before the door was flying open, and a young, handsome doctor came rushing inside, looking first at Elian before glancing at me.

“What happened here?” he asked, his calm tone belying the tension in his face.

“She was shot,” Elian said, making my gaze shoot over to him. “You’re okay,” he told me. “You’re in good hands. Right, Doc?”

“Of course,” Dr. Conti said as he slipped on a fresh set of gloves before coming over to gently touch my arm.

“She’s on migraine medicine,” Elian supplied, since I didn’t seem capable of advocating for myself right then.

Shock, I guess.

“Blood thinners?” Dr. Conti asked, looking at me, waiting until I gave him a slight nod. “Okay. Well, it looks worse than it is because of the blood loss,” he told me, grabbing some gauze, and pressing them against the wound, trying to stem the flow. “You are just going to need to get cleaned up and a few stitches. It just grazed you,” he told me.

A graze.

If this was what a graze felt like, I had a whole new level of empathy for people who got bullets lodged in them.

“Can you hold this here for me?” he asked, but I must not have registered that he was talking to me, because Elian moved over to press the gauze as the doctor moved away, removing his gloves. “I need to go grab a suture kit. I’ll be right back,” he said, waiting for Elian to nod at him before he left.

“What’s going on?” I asked, shaking my head. Nothing was making sense. I was just shot . I should have been in an emergency room. I should have been talking to the police. Not sitting in a clinic with a handsome stranger and getting treated by a man who seemed afraid of said stranger.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Elian asked.

“Elizabeth,” I supplied. “Riley.”

“Elizabeth,” he said, and I had just half a second to enjoy the way his voice curled around my name. Like something familiar. Like something intimate. “Do you want to tell me why a Russian enforcer wanted to shoot you?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling like the world had just fallen out from underneath me.

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