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“Mara—”
She silences me how only she can, by flattening her hand on my chest, right above my heart, and whispering five words that will forever stop my crusade. “You can trust me, Ark.”
I can, and I do.
After curling my hand over hers, initiating firmer contact, I grant her permission to flourish the strength brewing rapidly in her beautiful eyes.
She thanks me for my support with a quick peck on the side of my mouth, both fueling my campaign to protect her as much as it adds gas to the fire Detective Pascall is attempting to light under her ass.
“I thought you were unaware of Miskaela Palkova’s whereabouts?”
Mara hits me with a wordless plea to play nice when my fists ball. I do. Somewhat.
“I guess I have you to thank for our coupling?” When Detective Pascall peers at me, confused, a smirk tugs at one side of my mouth. “I had forgotten about our run-in until you reminded me. Then, when it was only right that I warn Miskaela of your campaign to discredit her undoubtably clean character, I was reminded again in person how exceedingly beautiful my cab-sharer was.”
She doesn’t believe my lie for even a second, and her annoyance that I tried spoils my plans to Mara. “So I’m meant to believe you handed over every asset you have to someone you only met a week ago? No one is that stupid, Mr. Orlov.”
I pretend not to hear Mara’s exasperated gasp.
“I guess you’ve never been to Vegas,Mrs.Babkin.” I sneer her title in the same way she sneered the last name I am no longer associated with, shocking both Rafael and Detective Sonova. “People there don’t even wait a day.”
I could be honest. There’s no need for me to hide anymore. The only reason I’m remaining cautious is because I don’t trust Sanya’s motives. How could I when she’s going after one of her husband’s victims as if she seduced him instead of being terrorized by him?
There’s something we’re missing from this puzzle, but I’m almost out of time to admit what that is. A member of Myasnikov PD is in attendance of our meeting, and she knows it has something to do with Mara’s father’s disappearance.
I lower the severity of my scorn when Mara reminds me that she invited Detective Pascall back into our lives. “I couldn’t work out where I had seen you before. It took hours, combing through footage in my head I wish to never see again, before I finally worked it out.”
She assures me she feels my silent comfort with a ghostlike grin before she moves to my desk and spins my laptop around. The footage Easton was supposed to remove from Veronika’s phone and destroy is on my laptop screen. Except it isn’t stopped at the segment where Mara flees the motel with Tillie hidden under a bulky coat. It is the last known footage of Dr. Babkin still breathing.
“Don’t,” I plead, warning Mara against airing incriminating footage in front of witnesses bound by a code of conduct. It will defeat the purpose of my endeavor to hide it and give no reason to further delay handing myself in.
There are no witnesses to Dr. Babkin’s exit of Mara’s motel room. No evidence he was still breathing when she left. This footage could put her away for years. It could steal Tillie from her as her father threatened to do when he thought he could convince a God-fearing judge that he, an upstanding Christian man, was a better guardian for his granddaughter than a woman who birthed a child out of wedlock.
Against my advice, Mara hits play.
I’ve seen this footage a hundred times since Mara’s father uploaded it to Veronika’s phone for safekeeping in case I reneged on the agreement to pay him three million dollars, but I look at it from a different angle when Mara highlights someone in the far back corner of the frame.
“That’s you.”
“No,” Detective Pascall denies, shaking her head. “I…”
She stops talking when Mara plays another clip. This one leaves no denial as to who is stalking Dr. Babkin’s arrival at Mara’s motel room. It shows every horrified thought that filters through her head when Mara freezes upon Dr. Babkin’s illegal entry of her room.
She isn’t excited to see him. She’s petrified. But Detective Pascall’s rant exposes only those who know Mara well can read her expressions. “I gave him over a decade of my life, I birthed his child and helped him set up his practice, and he repaid me by sleeping with a woman who was barely legal.”
My fists clench so fast my knuckles pop when she has the gall to sneer at Mara at the end of her sentence, but before I can add words to my nonverbal response, Mara says, “I wasn’t legal the first time he raped me. I was just a child.”
Rafael’s cuss is faint.
Mine is nowhere near as quiet.
I want to hold her again and promise I will never let anyone hurt her, but when a bull wants to charge, you must let it charge.
Mara needs this. She needs to dispel the fear, which hasn’t stopped weighing down her shoulders since she learned how close her father was to Tillie’s school, so she can start living again.
Her father was in the same town as Tillie, but he wouldn’t have gotten close to her. Darius would have never allowed that to occur, and neither the hell would have I.
“I wasn’t even the age your daughter is now.” Tears gloss Mara’s eyes as they flicker through horrid memories. “The first timetheyhurt me, I rode my bike to the emergency department.” I have no regrets for what I did when she whispers, “My father used the hardness of my bike seat and the length of my trip to excuse the blood in my underwear when the hospitalcalled him to advise him that I had sought medical assistance. The second time…” I’m at her side in an instant when she chokes on her words. “He blamed the saddle on the ponies he hired for my birthday party. The th-third?—”