29
Jess
Interrogation
“Sit down.” Alex pushes me into a chair and scrapes my still tender side. Oz pushes Laine through the door and sets her down in the chair beside mine. “Speak, Thing 1, and don’t lie to me. We had dinner last week; not once did you mention the criminal you’re dating.”
Silently, disapproval dripping from her every pore, Jules pulls out a chair opposite mine and simply pushes her hair back.
She’s pissed. Super pissed.
“Kane Bishop is not a bad man.” I lift my chin and meet Alex’s eyes. Normally the guys are the last people I’d want to talk to about this, but right now, Jules scares me so much more than Alex and Oz combined.
“He’s a criminal. He’s a fuckin’ murderer!”
“He’s a man thatdealswith criminals. He has never hurt me. He has saved my life more than once.”
“He was assigned to you toinvestigate. To bring down. Not to date!”
I shrug with faux casualness and pretend my heart isn’t bleeding for a man we left in the cells.
He promised he’d never go to prison. He said he’d die first.
“I didn’t set out to date him, X. I was doing my job. I went to the club to try to get inside, then I was attacked outside.”
“You were attacked?” Steam billows from his ears. He doesn’t sit, but instead, he laps the room and runs his hands through his hair.
As an afterthought, Oz takes out his cell and sets it on the table with the microphone app on.
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m talking to my family. I’m not talking to the cops.”
“We are the cops, Jessica!” Alex turns to me. “We are the cops. We went out tonight to catch criminals, and one of them shot at me! Would you still be snuggling up to him even at my funeral? Bullet in my brain, Jules left all alone with a baby, but he has pretty tattoos, so you’ll choose him?”
“You’re being dumb.” I snag Oz’s phone when he refuses to shut it off, hold the power button, and wait for the screen to go blank. “You’re being stupid. Family comes first, X. But he’s my family now, too.”
My heart gives a final squeeze as realization slams over me. Everyone in the room turns paler. Alex’s frantic breaths slow, and his angry eyes turn wary.
But I push on. “He saved my life, X. Multiple times! He protected me from bad people. He protected me from himself. He sent me home a million times. He didn’t take advantage! He saved my life, then told me to go home.”
“He killed a man tonight! He’s a bad man.”
“Not to me! To me, he’s brave and smart and protective and loving and kind.”
“Is this like a Stockholm thing? Has he brainwashed you?”
“No!” I wind my arm back and toss the cell at Alex’s head. “I was in Britt and Jack’s house tonight, dumbass. I’ve been at work, and I was in my apartment yesterday. He’s not keeping me captive! He keeps me safe. He makes me happy.”
Alex leans over the table between Jules and Oz, bringing his eyes down to my level. “He will go to prison, Jessica. He shot and killed a man tonight.”
“Whatever he did, he was doing it to protect me. He never hurt anyone that was good.”
“Are you willing to trade your career on this?” Jules’ quiet voice makes far more impact on my soul than Alex’s screaming. “You don’t get to date a criminal and be the professional you want to be. Not in my firm. Not in anyone’s. The world doesn’t work that way.”
“Are you firing me?” I work hard to hide the quiver in my voice. “Are you asking me to resign, Jules?”
“No. I’m asking you to run far, far away from the man weknowis a criminal.”
“We don’tknow–”