Page 54 of Corrupted By You

Twice I had cheated death.

First, with the help of Yves when I was thirteen.

Second, with the help of Donovan when I was twenty-seven years old.

A business deal had gone sour in the abandoned laundromat beside MacGregor and I’d been shot by an agent posing as the Bratva but was actually a member of the MPD. I’d managed to crawl over to the parking lot and that’s how Donovan found me. He listened to my half-delirious commands to not call the cops and dragged me into his bar at 3:15 a.m., where he dug the bullet out, patched me up, and gave me a cookie like I was a ten-year-old.

He didn’t know me, yet he’d saved my life.

I owed Donovan Shaw an unrepayable debt.

I handed him a box wrapped in a gold bow—courtesy of Évangéline, who had a big crush on Don and was more than happy to wrap his birthday gift—and he took it with raised brows.

A huge grin broke over his face when he pulled out the DLC gun. “Thank you, Zeno. She’s a beauty.”

“De rien, mon ami,” I replied. “I figured we needed to upgrade your old one.”

Donovan put it in a locked drawer. His wife and kids liked to visit him at work sometimes and I doubted he wanted any of them to stumble upon a firearm. “Now let’s cut to the chase. Tell me why you’re really here.”

I released a martyred sigh. “Can’t a man just come to visit his best friend?”

“Sure, he can. But you forget I know you better than anyone else.” His voice dropped low in a conspicuous manner. “What’s bothering you, Zed?”

I explained how Armel Lancaster—who Don hated too—was Mayor Hill’s godson and how she and the MPD wanted to lock me up.

I also explained how Darla was, in fact, Mayor Hill’s daughter.

“As you can see, I no longer have to worry about Mayor Hill and the MPD.” I mentioned paying my mother-in-law a visit, sans telling him the dirt my private investigator had on her family. “However, I do need your help in finding out who tipped them.”

“First of all, you’re absolutely fucked, Zeno. Marrying Mayor Hill’s daughter? That’s not going to end well. And my intellectual guess is you actually like the girl. Otherwise, you would not have gone through such lengths,” Don said it so flippantly, I clenched my jaw. “Second of all, if you didn’t kill Armel, you have nothing to worry about—”

One look at my face confirmed what I’d done.

Don simply shook his head. “Always the punisher, eh?”

I smirked and deposited my glass on the coaster. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Death was an intrinsic part of life.

There was nothing else that we could predict with certainty, except for the fact that we would all perish one day.

Violette Toussaint hadn’t deserved to die so young. At merely twenty-nine years old, having partied too hard and fallen to her death from the roof top of a skyscraper.

Today would have marked her thirtieth birthday and almost a year after she passed away, so I knew where to find Benjamin.

The cemetery was cold, the grass beneath my loafers wilted under the heavy pour.

It was ironic how I always found myself near the playground of dead souls. Whether it was burying bodies or coming to collect relatives who just couldn’t break their connection to the ones who’d already passed away.

Ben stood at Violette’s grave, a blurred silhouette against the force of the rain. It glittered and fell off his umbrella like chinks of shaved ice. I quickened my pace until I stood beside him with my own umbrella.

I clapped a hand over his back.

He faced me, eyes tired. “Hey.”

“Céline has been calling you for the last two hours,” I said, refusing to stare at the tombstone that beckoned me. “I knew I’d find you here.”

Out of respect for his dead best friend, I stayed quiet, letting him soak in a few more ruminative moments.