Then her.
“If you must know,” Leigh replies, “You don’t just walk out on my father. My mother proved that to me years ago when I found her hanging from a ceiling fan.”
He taps the recorder as the sound warps.
“We lose them for a minute here,” he says. “Signal interference. Picks back up right about now.”
The static clears and Finnic’s voice fades back in.
“I thought this started as revenge,” he continues.
“It did,” Leigh replies. “Marco took something from you. You took him from us. That debt was never going to stay unsettled.”
“And your father?”
She seems to pause for a moment before responding, “That part is my business.”
The recording suddenly clicks off.
He watches me closely now as he raises a brow. “Did that sound like an uninvolved bystander to you?”
I exhale slowly. “Victims return to their perpetrators all the time for answers. That doesn’t make them collaborators.”
He leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “We have this,” he raises the recorder in the air before putting it back in his pocket, “and actual video footage of her meeting with the man who killed her father, with absolutely zero visible fear on her face.”
“You don’t think you’re overthinking this?”
His jaw tightens. “No, actually. If anything, I think you’re too close to her to see her for what she truly is.”
“Or you’re too eager to get a big payday.”
His jaw tightens. I can tell I piss him off. Though I couldn’t give two flying fucks.
“Listen,” he says finally. “You’ve been chasing Genovese’s shadow since before you had those few grey hairs. We were building something that could take down the entire crime syndicate in New York City. But then Gabriel Genovese dies and everything that we worked for dies with him.”
“I get what you’re saying,” I reply, “but pinning this on a girl who hasn’t been proven guilty just because she might know something doesn’t exactly make us look like heroes.”
“Maybe not,” he agrees. “But she’s standing right in the center of a distribution web we can’t crack without her.”
I glance down at the second photo.
Her brown waves cascade down her back over the black coat she wears everywhere. Her usual red-bottomed expensive shoes are vivid in the picture since one of her feet is lifted as she takes a step up the concrete steps into some type of business.
“You’re asking me to believe she orchestrated this,” I say. “That she let her father die just to take his place.”
I know that. I helped her accomplish it.
“I’m telling you, she’s up to something,” he says. “Andnow she’s moving product with people who used to answer to him. The same exact routes and the same drop points. It’s not a fucking coincidence, Rivera.”
My chest tightens again, and this time it isn’t the wound.
“And Lawson?” I ask.
His mouth curves slightly. “Collateral. Or a liability. I’m not sure what she’s up to with him.”
I stand, pushing the chair back with a scrape that makes me cringe internally.
“You’re wrong about her,” I say.
