“You did your job. And you didn’t get her killed. Your brother was crazy.”
“I shot him in the heart, Pri.” Now my voice is raspy, my throat burning with acid. “It was instinct. Shoot to kill. I get that. I get that it happened so damn fast. But I could have shot him somewhere else.”
She wraps her arms around me. “A split-second decision,” she says. “He pulled the trigger. Had you taken one more second, you’d be dead, not him.”
“He was my brother. My brother.” Those last two words are torn from the very core of me.
“I know,” she says, her hands pressed to my chest. “I know. But he would have killed you. Why didn’t you tell the FBI what happened? What did you tell them?”
“That he disappeared. That’s all I told them.”
“Why?” she asks, confusion in her voice, a slight lift in her tone. “Why not tell the truth?”
“He’s my brother, Pri.”
Her head tilts and her eyes narrow a moment before she says, “You don’t want them to know he was dirty.”
I give a short nod. “Right now,” I say, “he’s a hero, just like Dad.” I cup her face. “Do not tell anyone. You are the only one who knows. You are the only one I’ve told.”
“I won’t. You know I won’t.” She tears up. “I can’t believe you’ve carried this burden alone. You’re safe with me, remember?”
God, I love this woman, and I thumb away her tears. “I haven’t told Rafael. I have to tell him. I know that.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “I think you do, but when the time is right. Now is not that time. He won’t hate you, I promise you. Just like I could never hate you. I love you, Adrian.”
“I love you, too, Pri, but you need to hear it all.” I stroke another tear from her cheek. “I need to tell you everything. And no matter what decision is made about how we handle Waters, my testimony needs to be on file. I want you to take my deposition. Now. Tonight. I have the equipment.”
“And if I don’t hate you after?” she challenges.
“We’ll talk about it after.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
PRI
Somehow the storm that just won’t end seems an extension of Adrian.
Thanks to his fancy generator, we heat the pizza and manage to talk about things other than Alex and Waters. I get him to tell me about Rafael’s success and he perks up. “He was always singing and dancing,” he says. “And damn good at it. Which is why he always had the ladies at his heels.”
“Does he have a special lady now?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “If we find a way out of this, we’ll surprise him and show up to a concert, and then afterward, I’ll find out what he’s really up to when he’s not on the stage.”
If we find a way out of this. He means when he kills Waters. I try not to think about that reality. I tell myself there’s another way. The problem is he’s not wrong about anything he’s said. Waters will remain powerful, even behind bars. I don’t know how we fix that. It feels like a conversation I should want to have with Ed, but funny thing is that I haven’t thought about Ed at all these past twenty-four hours. “Is Ed here in New York?” I ask, finishing off a second slice of delicious pizza, while Adrian is on about his sixth. “He is, right?”
“He’s staying in one of the safe houses,” he says, “but honestly, I haven’t gotten an update on what the team thinks about him. We’ll update you on everything tomorrow.”
I nod, and sip the bottle of water I’m drinking, but Ed is on my mind and bothering me.
He’s the DA. He’s handled high-profile cases. He should have been more prepared for how out of control this case has become. Why wasn’t he? Is he incompetent? Or was it intentional? I think about my connection to my father, and how I was moved to lead on this case. If my father is dirty, and Ed is dirty, what if—God. I glance at Adrian. “What if my father and Ed are dirty? Adrian, what if I was put on the case because my father promised he could control me?”
He set his plate aside. “I want to tell you your father isn’t involved, Pri. You now know just how much I understand how much you want your father to be a good man. But I won’t be anything but honest with you.”
“It’s possible,” I say. “It’s more than possible.”
“It is,” he agrees. “But you didn’t let your father control you. And that’s a good thing.”
“A good thing that feels like it’s going to end badly.”
“Not if we can help it,” he promises.
But some things can’t be helped, I add silently. Or stopped. As Alex proved when he fired on Adrian. And in some ways, I feel like that’s exactly what my father did to me in that restaurant.