“Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that you hate cops as much as I do?” I asked.
She smiled. “Hell of a question for a morning conversation.”
I winked. “Hell of a sex session for first thing in the morning.”
She nodded. “Point taken.”
And after drawing in a long, deep breath through her nose, she cleared her throat.
“My sister won’t agree with you, but I believe my father was wrongly arrested and killed in jail by the cops that arrested him.”
My eyes bulged. “Wait, what?”
She rolled over onto her back and gazed up at the ceiling. “My sister will tell you that my father was into some bad stuff, and she wouldn't be wrong. My father was guilty of a lot of things, but not what they pinged him for.”
“What did they ping him for?”
It took her a while to answer me. “Drugs.”
I scoffed. “It’s always fucking drugs. Easiest to plant.”
She rolled back toward me so quickly that it almost caught me off-guard. “Right!? That’s what I keep telling my sister. That’s what I kept telling every single fucking cop that interviewed me when he was arrested. My father was many things: a gang-banger, a gun-runner, a thief. But before my mother had her relapse after Dad died in prison, she was clean and sober. He loved that woman, and he would’ve never done anything that got him anywhereneardrugs. Ever.”
I nodded as I held her close. “My brother died at the hands of a cop. Shot dead in the road, just like that.”
“Jesus, seriously?”
I sighed as my eyes closed. “Granted, he shouldn’t have run. He was pulled over, supposedly, for speeding, and when he realized he didn’t have his license on him, he took off. But to shoot him in the back? With an entire magazine’s worth of bullets? You mean to tell me that it took nine bullets to take him down? They couldn’t have just shot out his fucking knees or some shit? I mean, our fucking military has steps they take to de-escalate shit overseas. At least, that’s what Goose tells me. And you mean to tell me that instead of chasing him down like they do every other fucking time they’re dealing with someone, he’s the one guy they unload an entire magazine into from behind?”
She threaded her legs with mine and tossed her arm around my shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Bender.”
I sighed. “Fuck the police.”
She giggled so softly that it tugged at my ice-cold soul. “Exactly. Fuck the police.”
I turned my head and found her staring at me. “You still looking into the story about our club and Heist?”
She shrugged. “Not sure just yet. Things are a bit… complicated at work.”
“Complicated.”
“Yep.”
I searched her face. “You want to talk about it?”
She grinned. “No but thank you for the offer.”
“Well, if you ever want to talk about it, you know how to get at me.”
She snuggled tightly against my side. “You know, if I were to break a major story like the one surrounding your club, I might be able to repair things with my boss.”
I sighed. “He fired you, didn’t he?”
“Bender—”
“Aria. Did he fire you?”
She paused. “Yeah, he did.”
