The laptop screen flashes to a mostly empty desktop with two folders located in the bottom right corner of the screen with a single color navy blue background.
“What do you see here?”
She clicks his email and the screen populates with a screen showing several emails. Lorena opens a new tab. She doesn’t give a fuck about his email.
“Hey!”
“Wait,” she says. “Felice told me he didn’t use Facebook, but there’s a Facebook page in his bookmarks.”
Michael and I exchange glances as if to say, “Who gives a fuck, he’s dead?”
But Lorena is both grieving in her own way and helping us. Perhaps it’s for the best if she uncovers his infidelity now. The pipsqueak could be potentially useful to us as a spy of some sort when we’re done here. I don’t want her following me back to Buffalo and potentially showing up to ask for money again and again. You have to be careful who you take off the streets.
Lorena opens up a Facebook page and covers her mouth. She makes an anguished gasping sound and then bellows, “He has a WIFE?!”
Neither myself nor my brother are equipped for this crash out.
Chapter Eighteen
Aricia
Ireturn to my office after a lengthy trip downstairs to find Inessa cowering in a corner with her knees tucked up against her chest and Rana standing over her menacingly. The janitor won’t be up here for another twenty minutes to clean the blood on my desk… or splattered on the walls.
I’ll just tell him a client had a nosebleed and hope he doesn’t ask too many questions. My office smells like Inessa’s trashy perfume andfear.The adrenaline makes the room putrid and I want this space to return to being a safe one rather than a potential crime scene.
“This isn’t over,” Inessa slobbers over herself as she scrambles to her feet once I open the door. She yanks down her shirt and fumbles with the minimal extensions Rana left intact while slamming her head into the desk.
Rana folds her arms, staring down at her with fierce satisfaction that is almost enough to get me high too. Even if I have to be the adultier-adult in this situation and not encourage Rana to beat her ass. Inessa sniffles and snatches her brown folder and flinches as Rana lunges towards her just to taunt her one last time.
Rana doesn’t stop her escape this time and I hold the doorwideopen for Inessa to leave. Just looking at her makes me physically sick, but Rana’s victory feels like it belongs to me too. I can’t beat Inessa’s ass, but I can sure as heck enjoy watching it happen.
“It’s over today,” Rana says. “Now get out, before I deflate your other implant.”
Inessa yelps a little and thenrunsdown the hallway, dragging open the door to the staircase emergency exit as she speeds down the stairs. Rana and I listen as her heels clunk awkwardly down the stairs.
“She’s gone,” Rana says, exhaling with relief.
“How badly did you hurt her?”
Rana shows me her knuckles and I grimace. My higher self knows that I shouldn’t have encouraged this, but there’s a part of me that swells with pride seeing how badly she cut herself up.
“It doesn’t hurt that bad. That psychopath deserved it.”
“That psychopath might come after us both in court.”
“Not if you tell your boyfriend from the bar.”
The boyfriend who got me pregnant? I can’t hide that Rana bringing up Peter stops me dead in my tracks. And he’s not my boyfriend. He’s not my anything. He’s just…
BZZT. BZZT.
“Is that him?”
“It’s my phone.”
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Rana says. I reach into the pocket of my navy blue wool work trousers and pull out my phone, trying to hide the rush of heat to my face that feels painfully obvious. It’s Peter. I silence the call and shove the phone back into my pocket.
“Peter is not my boyfriend. He’s… a client. Sort of.”
