ARCHER
“Icould put you on a plane and send you somewhere else.”
Time passes like sand through an hourglass. Is it fast or slow? I don’t know. Do I want to pause right here in the slums of hell, or fast forward until whatever comes next?
Don’t know that, either.
But while I walk a path in the floor of our new bedroom, tempted to tear the skin straight off my bones if I knew it would relieve the pressure building in my chest, I stare at Minka lying on our bed, her feet on the floor and her belly partially exposed because of how her arms stretch above her head.
Right here, right now, she’s safe. And more importantly, she’s protected.
But for how long?
“I’d normally send you to New York. But that’s not gonna work this time. What about Jamaica? That would be nice, don’t you think?”
“No, thank you.” She speaks in a monotone. Bored. Bland. And, fuck me, she looks a little unconscious. Because while my heart thrashes painfully out of control, it seems she’s already worked through the dump of emotions Cordoza’s demands have left her with. Now, she’s content to take a nap. “Jamaica will be insufferably hot, and besides, you won’t come with me, anyway.”
“Ican’tcome with you. Shipping you out means defying Cordoza.Defying Cordoza means I need to stay and help my brothers contain the fallout.”
“Which is precisely why I’m not leaving.” She pats the bed beside her hip, peeling her eyes open and peeking along her length until she stops on me. “I’ll run the autopsy and write it up. Hell, I can write whatever the hell I want in my report. It’s not like he’ll know any different.”
“He thinks I killed that motherfucker, Mayet. He’ll expect you to point him away from me.”
“You didn’t kill him, so it’s a moot point.” She leverages up onto her elbows, her hair dangling toward the mattress. With firm, flat lips and a dark stare, she searches my expression. “It’s my building, Archer. I’ll bring him in, perform the autopsy, figure out what the hell I need to say to Cordoza to send him away, then life goes on.” She flops back again. “And I’ll call Ellie. Tell her to put her pet back on a leash.”
“You’re not taking this seriously enough!” I stride to the bed and set my knee on the mattress between her legs. Crawling over top of her, I place my fist beside her head and stare. “You’ve been dragged into a world you never agreed to be a part of. You didn’t marry me when I wasNew York. You didn’t fall in love with me when I was one of them. The vows you spoke? You spoke them when I was firmly anti-Malone dynasty bullshit.”
“First set of vows, I spoke while you were out. Second time around, we were sailing the Caribbean Oceanona super yacht funded by the family dynasty.” She pauses for a beat, clicking her tongue. “A regular cop doesn’t own boats like that, Detective. Which means I came into this family with my eyes wide open.”
“So that’s it, then? You stumble into this bullshit, and you’re okay risking everything for a man who lives on the wrong side of the law? You said it yourself, babe. Your career. Your staff. Everything you’ve ever worked for. It could all go belly up if the wrong person catches wind you’re runningthisdead body through your facility.”
“No one is auditing me.” The ferociousness she shot toward Cordoza is all but gone. Now, she rewards me with a sweetness. A gentleness few others witness. “Everything stops with me inside the George Stanley. I’ll do the autopsy between a couple of others. I’ll send samples to tox in batches, mixed in with others, so Raquel will be none the wiser. Not even Lawrence will notice anything is up, since his interest in my building extends only to financials, not bodies.”
“His interest goes far further than money, and you fuckin’ know it. But all of that is beside the point. If you do this, you’ve officially steppedacross the line. You’ve become an asset to the criminal underworld. You do it once, he’ll call you to do it again.”
“Jesus, Archer. I’m alreadyin.” She grabs my jaw and digs her fingers in just deep enough to let me feel her nails. “I was there when they hurt Pastore, remember? I was there when we negotiated Micah’s release. When Felix took the helm. When he married Christabelle. I literally delivered the next mafia freakin’ princess and handed her to Debbie. I’m already involved. You’re splitting hairs at this point.”
“And you’re… you’re…” Frustration bubbles in my throat, burning my esophagus and sending my brain spinning. Because I have no solution. She doesn’t want to be sent away, and even if I could convince her to go, disobeying Cordoza will lead to a guilty verdict anyway. When he finds me guilty, he’ll have me killed. And killing me will piss her off, which is good for no one. “Fuck.”
“It’s going to be fine.” She loosens her grip on my jaw, but she pulls me closer and kisses my lips. “It’s just a body. I’ll slice him open, draw fluids, tick all the boxes, and move him along. The reality is, I do these three or four times a day, every single day. I can compartmentalize better than anyone you know.”
Compartmentalize? Or dissociate?
And the fact that itappearsto be death by suicide?
“I’m more concerned with how I’ll explain Cordoza’s security detail to my staff. And then, whatever answers I give him, will he be satisfied?”
“I don’t know.” I lower onto her chest, squeezing the oxygen from her lungs. “According to Lix, it looks like suicide. But Cordozawantsto find a homicide, and then he wants to punish whoever did it.”
“Well…” She scratches my hair, gently scraping her nails against the back of my neck. “I suppose we should be thankful he hasn’t assigned you as the detective, too. Finding COD is relatively easy. Finding who did it is a whole other mess we don’t want to get caught up in.”
“Whoever whacked him did us all a favor. Anthony Agosti was a shit-stain on society and lived half a century longer than he deserved.”
She snorts, shallow and wheezing, considering how little space I give her to breathe. “It’sdefinitelygood you’re not the detective, then. Doesn’t sound like you can be unbiased on the matter.”
If it were ten o’clock at night, I’d walk my wife into the shower, dirty us both up before cleaning the mess I made, and then I’d put her to bed and fall asleep with my face on her bare chest.
But seeing as how it’s barely five and we still have guests, we wander down the stairs again, quieter now than we were this morning, and head toward the rear of the house.
