Page 54 of Only for Him (Starkov Bratva #1)

GISELLE

The fluorescent bulbs hiss in the ceiling like they're angry about being here, too. I got the call this morning to come in “to answer a couple of questions.” About Russo, no doubt.

I sit in the narrow chair, spine a ruler against the backrest, hands folded on the table so I look as harmless as possible. Internal Affairs loves a performance.

Detective Lawson sits across from me. He’s got the look of a guy who hates his job but loves catching someone else hating theirs.

Well, he’s in luck. I fucking hate everything right now.

“You know why you’re here, Detective Cantiano?”

I do, but I shake my head anyway. “No, sir.”

Lawson fans open a file. In the photo, Russo’s eyes are half-open, even in death refusing to miss a trick. It’s not the same look I saw on him when he died. Rigor mortis has removed that shade of humanity.

I recognize the warehouse in the background: Long Island. Waterfront. Last month’s auction site.

The same auction that Russo was at.

Fuck.

I remember, suddenly, the vaguely familiar person in the crowd. I didn’t see it at the time. Russo was just a shape then, but Roman saw him. He always sees what I don’t.

I can’t say for sure, but given where Roman dumped the body, I put two and two together.

Turns out Roman’s not entirely done sending me messages in cadavers. Except this one feels like a bittersweet goodbye.

One more puzzle piece, for old time’s sake.

My stomach churns. This is bad timing for such a revelation.

Lawson slides the photo toward me with one gnawed-off nail. “Recognize him?”

“Of course,” I say. My voice doesn’t break. “Captain Russo.”

Lawson’s pen clicks, a little faster now.

“Your prints are all over his office, his car, his house.” Lawson gives me a smile like old milk. “And you have no alibi for the night of his death.”

I take a breath through my nose, slow and controlled, counting to four. My pulse doesn’t cooperate.

“I was home. Alone.”

Unprovable, but hard to disprove, too.

Lawson leans forward. “You’ve been off the grid for a while now, Detective. You didn’t answer any of his calls or texts.”

“It’s been a rough couple weeks.”

That’s a lie.

It’s been a lot more than rough, and for a lot longer than a couple weeks.

“Being a little too edgy to chat with your boss because someone is carving your name into bodies isn’t a crime, though.”

“That is strange, isn’t it? The killer’s fixation on you, I mean. Just for him to lose interest all of a sudden.” Lawson taps the pen against the table. “We found DNA on Russo’s body. Yours.”

I want to laugh at the idiocy of it—how many times did Russo steal a sip of my coffee because he hated the decaf his wife made him drink? We were barnacles on the same damn ship.

And you were there when he died. Don’t forget that, Giselle. You’re being questioned for something you did, more or less.

As if I could forget.

“Is that unusual?” I ask. “We worked together most days.”

The words hit too near the bone. I feel myself fraying at the edges. Grief claws up my chest, meets rage on its way back down.

Russo, you fucking rat bastard. You fucking rapist. You fucking LIAR!

“Word is, he and you were very close,” Lawson asks, suddenly soft. “Closer than you maybe should have been.”

I sneer at the implication. Made all the worse because I know, now, just how close he was to my sister.

“Maybe,” I say. “We had a good working relationship. He looked out for me.”

That one stings. I bite my lip, let it tremble just a little. The performance matters. It’s also not all a performance.

“So you’d say it was more like a paternal relationship?” Lawson pretends to be taking a note.

“Something like that,” I say.

Because he raped and orchestrated the murder of my sister, and he thought he could find his redemption in me.

I start crying, which is good. I really don’t have the self-control to pull this off right now. My best bet is to go full collapse, sob so hard I can’t answer questions. I don’t want to answer any more questions. I don’t want anything.

I feel like a child. I just want to go home.

But home is Roman.

I’m so fucked.

Lawson sighs, shuffles the photos, and sets them aside. He pulls out a legal pad, clicks his pen open.

“We have evidence placing you at the scene.” I don’t know what evidence he means. I also don’t know if he’s lying. Would Roman set me up? Would he leave a trail leading to me?

A betrayal for a betrayal. A shot for a shot.

Lawson lets the silence thicken, see if I’ll fill it.

When I don’t, he continues. “We also have evidence pointing to the killer who’s associated with you.”

The killer associated with me. Manic laughter threatens to escape my lips. I clamp them shut, swallowing it.

Oh, we’re associated alright. He’s been associating himself inside me for a while now. And now he’s associated himself right out of my fucking life.

“You ever hear of the blue shield?” Lawson asks, leaning back.

My mind is too numb to play any more of this game. A part of me just wants to surrender, give up, and let them take me in. I did it. I did it all. Leave Roman alone and take me. Get me away from myself.

“What cop doesn’t?” I say, my hand drifting up to twist Serena’s earring. I force myself to put it back in my lap. No tells. Not now and not here.

Lawson cocks his head. “Are you hiding behind it now, Detective?”

I meet his gaze, gathering my strength. “I don’t hide, sir.”

He considers this, and his jaw moves side to side, like he’s grinding up the words before he spits them out. “Did you kill Captain Russo?”

The question isn’t a surprise. I keep my voice even. “No, sir. I did not.”

He’s waiting for a flicker, a flinch, a micro-expression to sell me out. I give him nothing. I have nothing to give.

Lawson’s pen resumes its tapping. “You understand the gravity of your situation?”

“Perfectly. Am I free to go?”

His eyes narrow but he nods, waiting until I’m standing before he speaks again.

“Internal Affairs will be in touch. Don’t leave the city.”

As if I had anywhere else to go.

The hallway smells like old coffee and cheap disinfectant. I instantly feel the eyes, dozens of them, tracking me from behind half-open doors. The gossip machine is already churning.

None of these people really liked or knew me, anyway.

I’ve always been on my fucking own. Even when I thought Russo was at my side but he wasn’t. He was waiting ahead of me, one foot out to trip me as soon as I gained too much momentum.

I hate him for being my friend when I needed one more than anything.

I walk the precinct, slow, letting the humiliation wash over me. When I pass my desk, my drawers are open, files rearranged, even my mug turned upside down. They searched everything, right down to my last stick of gum.

My hands shake a little, but I clench them into fists.

Stay professional. Stay above it.

Two uniforms pass behind me. I catch the tail end of a whisper: “Always thought she was hiding something.”

The other one snorts. “I don’t see what her boyfriend sees in her. That pussy can’t be worth all those bodies.”

I turn to go, but something on the bulletin board stops me. It’s a photo me and Russo the first day he brought me here. He’s got his arm around me, both of us grinning like idiots. Someone circled our heads with a red marker and drew a giant question mark over the whole thing.

I rip the photo from the board, crumple it, and drop it in the trash. I think about what Lawson said, about the blue shield. There’s no shield for me. Not anymore.

I’m not trapped in Roman’s mansion, but I’m not trapped in NYPD protocol anymore, either. It’s only a matter of time before they tell me to turn in my badge and gun.

Neither of those cages were locked, though. You could have walked away at any time. You didn’t, because they held the only things you really care about: justice, and revenge.

Freedom has never felt so much like a death sentence.

I’ve been walking downtown Manhattan for a while now, trying to see the city as a civilian would. Just people. All of these people are just people. Not killers or victims. Not shadows, monsters, angels or ghosts.

I miss Serena. I miss Roman. I miss a version of myself I’ve never met. It’s past sunset, the blue gone gray, every streetlight flickering like it wants to die.

My phone buzzes and my pulse goes ballistic.

Because it’s not my phone that’s going off. It’s the burner.

The one I shouldn’t have brought with me today, because it does nothing but associate me even further with Roman. But I couldn’t leave it home.

What if the world ended and I need to speak to him one more time?

Tell him the words that have been percolating inside me since last night with Ida?

Three words I never wanted to be true, and think I’ll only ever be able to say when death is at my door and I know there won’t be any more words, ever.

“Roman?” My voice is breathy and sharp, optimistic enough that I cringe at myself.

A slow, thick silence, then a voice I don’t know.

“Detective Cantiano.”

Male. Russian accent. Tight, like the hiss of a fuse burning down.

I don’t break stride. “Who is this?”

“A man with your best interests at heart.”

The world blurs and someone bumps past me with a curse.

It’s not Roman, and not Afanasy either.

It couldn’t be… why would he… how would he even have this number?

Pavel fucking Starkov.

My heart should pound at the knowledge that this dangerous man is calling me on my phone. But it isn’t. Now, it’s just a cold-blooded thing with no heat left.

“Do you need a clue? Detectives like clues, don’t they?”

“I know who you are,” I snap.

“I see you’re out of work,” he says, like he’s reading headlines off the ticker. “Suspended. Under investigation. The American dream.”

“Wrong. I’m not?—”

“The decision’s been made,” he cuts me off, smug and impatient. “I should know. I’m the one who made it.”

My blood ignites. Of course Russo wasn’t Pavel’s only pawn. He has more strings to pull. I push the phone harder to my ear so I can feel the post of Serena’s earring dig into my flesh.

“There’s paperwork to file, calls to make,” Pavel goes on. “You know how it is. Bureaucracy, yes? Enjoy your final hours with your badge, Detective.”

I know he’s right. Hell, if I were IA, I’d have suspended me a long fucking time ago. I had a tryst with a suspect in the evidence locker. Talk about contaminating a crime scene.

“You sound like a man with a purpose, Pavel. Why don’t you get to it?”

He laughs again, low and wet as a gutter. “Straight to business. Very good. I can help you.”

“Help me?” I stop on the sidewalk, step out of the flood of people.

“Yes.” A pause, then: “You are not as clever as you think, Detective. I know all about your extra-curricular activities. I know who you sleep with. I know about the man you hunt with. He’s a problem. For both of us.”

I look up. Neon shivers across the wet street.

“You want me to hand him over,” I say.

I clench the phone, knuckles white as Pavel chuckles. This bastard profited off Serena’s death, made money with her innocence. He raped and murdered Anastasia because she chose Roman over him. I didn’t know her, but I don’t need to know her to want justice for her.

“I want you to say his name, officially, on the record. Then I will provide evidence to clear your name. Simple.”

Fuck you, Pavel.

“Never,” I say. And I say it like a fucking amen . I don’t know if I love him, but at least I know I don’t hate Roman. If I hated him, I’d give him up. I’ve killed men for less, haven’t I?

If I hated him, this choice—get my badge and life back or stay true to Roman and keep him safe—would at least be taken under consideration.

But it’s fucking not.

It’s easy.

So easy I want to laugh.

A bittersweet relief blossoms in my chest, so visceral my fingertips tingle. Because at least I know, now. It’s too late. But if I know my heart is broken, I can at least start to learn to live with it.

I won’t give him up because I need to know he’s alive, still out there ripping the world apart. Let them take my badge. Let them take my life. I’ll still have this: the knowing. That I chose him. That I belonged to him.

I owe him more than that, but for now it’s all I have.

“How unfortunate,” Pavel sighs. “If you don’t accept my help, you’ll go to prison. Or the river. Either way, you lose.”

The line clicks dead.

For once, I know exactly what comes next. War.