33. Avery
AVERY
Sasha drove me into the conference room with the gun eleven minutes ago.
She locked the second door even though the glass wall exposes the whole hall, and I let the useless lock comfort her.
Since then she has asked for the same two objects in four versions of the same demand.
I answer slowly, the way Nadia taught me to answer a question designed to make a witness rush.
My pistol stays beneath my coat. My phone records above it, and the wall microphone catches every word.
“Put your hands on the table,” Sasha says again, dropping into the chair nearest the main door so she can watch the hall. “Then tell me where you sent the originals.”
I brace my fingertips against the legal pad instead of flattening my hands where she can see them shake.
The baby has stopped moving. The child may be asleep, or the gun may have frightened me enough to lose every ordinary sensation beneath it.
I want a kick. I want one badly timed foot under my side and the irritation I always feel before I remember how long I waited for this child.
I don’t press my stomach to ask. Sasha is watching for the thing I love most.
“The phone went to the police after my attorney copied it,” I say. “The route sheet is stored with the state case file, the club copy, and another copy outside Indiana. You can shoot every cabinet in this office and none of that changes.”
“You expect me to believe you trust cops with the only record of your husband begging me to come back?” Sasha sits with one ankle across the other, trying to look as comfortable as she did in the safehouse bedroom.
“He sent messages after you left. He warned me before the club traced the rent. He kept our phone.”
“He kept the burner because he was afraid of what it proved. He also told you to stay away from me, and you mistook fear of exposure for a man choosing you.” I shift my weight against the table when my lower back begins to ache, refusing to let pain push me into the chair where she wants me smaller.
“Read the last thread again. Declan never asked you to come home. He asked what you copied and whether you entered my house.”
Her crossed foot drops to the floor. “He didn’t tell you what he said to me in bed.”
“He did.” The answer comes before she can turn a room I already forced Declan to describe into a threat.
“He told you he couldn’t sleep at home. He complained that I asked when he was coming back.
He said I wanted a baby badly enough to make every month miserable.
Then he came home, slept with me, and let me believe he wanted the same child. I know what he said.”
Saying it still hurts. I remember the disclosure room and Declan admitting Sasha laughed about my thermometer, then remember placing that thermometer beneath my tongue while he showered away another woman’s shampoo.
Sasha meant to humiliate me by proving she knows the ugliest things he said.
Declan already put every one of those words in front of attorneys and watched me write them down, which she has no way of knowing.
He lost the protection of telling each woman a different story.
“You know the list he gave his lawyer,” Sasha says, tipping the chair onto two legs before letting it drop. “You don’t know him.” She needs the claim to irritate me into defending the six years she helped him destroy.
“Then tell me which man you had.” I move the uncapped pen away from the edge before it can fall, giving my hand an ordinary job while Sasha arranges her answer for the recorder.
She leans forward, gun resting against the chair arm while the barrel stays on me.
“The one who didn’t pretend his hands were clean.
The one who could walk into a warehouse and make grown men forget how to lie.
The one who hated paperwork, hated asking for help, and hated coming home to a wife who looked at him like she could see every word he missed.
You got the respectable man at your kitchen table. I got the real one.”
The accusation hurts because I did see every word he missed.
I also saw the man who burned pancakes, loosened every jar after tightening it too far, and read his mother’s recipe cards from memory when the ink faded.
Declan gave Sasha the parts of himself he wanted admired and kept the ordinary work around them at home.
He took my reading, my questions, and the home that expected him to return, then punished me for knowing him when being known became less flattering than being feared.
“You got the man he became when nobody asked him to be honest,” I say. “He handed you a gun, a route page, and every complaint that made him look trapped. Then he left you in the safehouse and came back to the woman he expected to cook dinner. That wasn’t more real. It was easier for him.”
“He trusted me with the part he hid from his own men.” Sasha taps the barrel once against the chair, irritation showing in the movement. “He let me read the manifest. He let me see why he stalled. You knew for years and never made him feel the way I did.”
“You mean useful?” I ask, and the correction offends her more than disbelief would. If he needed her, she mattered. If she was useful, the operation could replace her.
“Needed.” Her eyes brighten at the correction, and she leans over the table as if I have finally asked the question she came to answer. “He needed me.”
“You found a man embarrassed by one page and offered to read it. Three weeks after you brought him information about a stolen shipment.” I slide the legal pad away from my fingertips, leaving the blank paper beneath the recorder as if this were another interview and Sasha another person too pleased with her answer to notice the next question.
“Did your handler tell you about his dyslexia before April second, or did you figure it out at the safehouse?”
Sasha’s mouth curves. She has spent months treating that fact like a private piece of Declan she stole from me, and pride makes the truth faster than caution. “He told me Declan was hiding something about the manifests. I thought he was taking money until I watched him skip the same line twice.”
The recorder has her. I keep my face on hers and refuse the urge to look toward the wall. “So you were working for the handler before you met Declan.”
“I was working before your husband noticed me.” She uncrosses her legs and stands, the chair rolling backward into the glass. “The information I gave him was true. The club did have a leak. He was smart enough to use me when his own men were guessing.”
“You gave him a win so he would bring you inside.” I keep my attention on her face instead of the gun, though the barrel moves every time she breathes.
“He brought me inside because he wanted me.” Sasha walks along the end of the table, holding my gaze while she tries to reclaim the answer. “I was supposed to find the routes. Fucking him was my choice. Going back was his.”
“Yes.” I let the agreement stop her more effectively than an argument. “Declan chose the affair every time. He destroyed our marriage. You didn’t make him do it.”
She wanted me to defend him so she could prove I am pathetic enough to take him back.
My answer takes that fight away from her.
I won’t hand Declan’s guilt to her merely because she is standing here with a gun, and I won’t hand hers back to him merely because he owed me more.
Sasha knew I existed. She read my name in the family file, listened to my calls, wore my clothes, slept in my bed, then pointed men toward my doctor and my home.
Both of them knew exactly whose life paid for what they wanted.
“You expected me to blame only him,” I say. “I don’t. He owed me vows. You owed me enough basic humanity not to help a criminal crew use my address and my unborn child. You made your own choices. Today you answer for yours.”
Sasha’s gun leaves the chair and rises toward my chest. “Do you think a recorder makes you brave?”
“No. I think it makes you recorded.” I glance at the legal pad instead of the wall microphone, letting her follow my eyes toward the wrong object.
Her laugh comes out too loud for the small room. “You always did need paper to tell you who won.”
“Then tell the paper why you asked for the safehouse logs after you already had the routes.” I turn the blank pad toward her as if Nadia might use it to prepare a complaint tomorrow.
“Family schedules were worth more.” She circles the table again, too angry to realize what she admitted until the words are out.
“Your club protected cargo better than women. School pickups, doctor visits, shift changes, houses nobody expected us to know. Men pay when you prove you can reach their families.”
“And the eastern parcel insert?” I ask before she can hear how much she has already admitted.
“It shows the transfer point Cruz buried outside the normal books.” She stops near the conference-room door, realizing she has answered, then points the gun at my face. “Enough.”
“You inserted the false route page so the diverted shipment would look like Declan approved it.” I phrase the accusation as a conclusion, leaving Sasha only the urge to correct the part that insults her work.
“He did approve it.” Her anger makes the correction immediate. “He let me read it, carried it to the table, and told Cruz the route was clean. All I did was put the page in front of him.”
“He approved what he didn’t read, and you wrote what moved the shipment.” Declan is part of every fact, not as a rescuer but as the man who made the weapon Sasha used. “The recorder can keep both names.”
Sasha hits the table with her free hand. The legal pad jumps, and the uncapped pen rolls to the carpet near my shoe. “He let me do more than read.”
“I know.” I keep my fingers on the table even when the old answer hurts, refusing to let her mistake pain for new information.