Chapter 2
LENI
I’m shoved into the back of a patrol car and left with a prime view of the men inside being escorted out one after another in cuffs. My heart squeezes painfully when I spot Ethan among them. His mouth is pressed into a thin line, that mutinous expression making him look so much older than eighteen.
Where did I go wrong?
My lungs burn with unshed emotion, and more tears threaten to spill, but I blink them back furiously.
I’m not some weakling who falls apart at the first sign of trouble.
Still, it feels like a personal failure.
I practically raised this kid from nothing, so is it a mark against me that as soon as he becomes of legal age, this is what he chooses to do?
His gaze lands on my scooter, and he immediately starts scanning the area with sharp, desperate eyes.
When those familiar baby blues finally meet mine through the patrol car window, his lips part in what might be surprise or horror.
Something that looks suspiciously like guilt flickers across his features, but he quickly looks away before I can fully read him or decode what’s going on in that thick skull of his.
Coward. My head falls against the window with a defeated thud.
A female detective—different from the one who cuffed me—slips into the driver’s seat.
I sit up straighter, putting on my most reasonable voice.
“Do you suppose you or one of the other officers could strap my scooter to a car?” I nod towards it.
“I’d really hate to have to come back here for it.
Most taxis don’t want to drive out this way. ”
She scowls at me, but something in my expression—probably the sheer desperation—makes her face soften, just a fraction.
With a muttered curse, she climbs back out.
I watch her walk towards her colleagues, gesturing at my scooter.
One of them glances at me, and I force a smile even though it’s the last thing I want to do. Gotta soften them up.
I really, really don’t want to come back to this hellhole.
He looks away, and after several minutes of conversation—precious minutes I don’t have to spare—they finally approach my scooter.
They circle it, inspecting the beat-up little thing like it’s some mysterious artifact.
Then they just… walk away, every single one of them, without making any move to strap it to their vehicle.
A moment later, all the cops pile into their cars, and mine returns to the driver’s seat while a male cop takes shotgun.
I gape at her when she turns the ignition. “What about my scooter?”
“There’s no way for us to transport it with our vehicles. We’ll have it towed to the station.”
If I had the luxury of time to think this through, maybe I would have reached the same conclusion myself.
But not now. Right now, all I can think about is how they didn’t even try.
How I’m on the verge of losing the only job I’ve managed to keep for more than a few months.
How I don’t have the money to pay for the towing.
How I’ve been arrested for—I don’t even know what yet.
How I might end up with a criminal record.
I’m a woman balanced on the razor’s edge of sanity.
That’s my only explanation for why something inside me finally snaps, and a dam bursts.
“Is the police department going to cover the tow cost? I’m going to lose my job tonight because I only have an hour's grace from my boss, and I doubt I’m going to be released by then. Am I even going to be released at all?”
What if I spend the rest of my life rotting behind bars? The thought unlocks a new level of terror I didn’t know existed.
“Oh my God.” My voice breaks. “I’m going to be one of those people who spends years in jail without doing anything wrong. I’ve never even gotten a speeding ticket in my life!” Partly because my scooter isn’t exactly designed for speeding, but still. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
The male officer twists around to face me. “Ma’am, you need to calm down, you—”
Ma’am? “I’m only twenty–three!” I wail, thumping my head against the window.
Have I aged that badly? I’ve always thought that taking on so much responsibility after Dad disappeared and Mom spiraled into addiction made me mature quickly, but did it make me look old too?
Do I look like some weathered old woman?
The car hits a pothole, and my head slams against the window hard enough to rattle my teeth. The sharp pain snaps me back to reality. What the hell am I doing right now? I can’t go to jail. If I go, that means Ethan is going as well. I need to pull myself together.
“My brother and I are innocent,” I say as calmly as I can. “We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you had come to that… place an hour earlier—or any other time—we wouldn’t have been there.”
Oh, why couldn’t they have done that? Why couldn’t the universe have cut me this one break?
The officers exchange a glance. “You have the right to an attorney, you know?” the female officer says. “If you’re truly innocent, you won’t get locked up. You’re just being detained right now.”
An attorney. Right.
I sigh heavily. I’m not going to have a job when this nightmare ends. And because we live hand to mouth—my hand to three mouths—I have zero savings.
“If you can’t afford one,” the male officer adds, “the state will assign one to you.”
The final nail in my coffin. A state-assigned attorney. Some overworked, underpaid public defender who’s going to do the bare minimum. I’m going to rot in jail.
“But it’s not necessary if you’re innocent,” the female officer says, exchanging another glance with her partner. “You only need an attorney if you’re charged with a crime.”
I bite back my response. No point in explaining that innocent people get railroaded by the system every damn day.
The rest of the drive, I stay silent, clutching what’s left of my composure.
I don’t even know which precinct we’re going to, but I breathe a small sigh of relief when we turn towards East New York.
The hole exists in this weird border territory between Brooklyn and Queens, so the cops could have been from either borough.
At least if I'm going to jail, it will be on the soil I’ve spent my whole life on.
We pull up in front of the small, unremarkable police station building, and I’m herded out with the rest like sheep to the slaughter.
I’ve never been inside a police station before—unless you count what I’ve seen on TV—so I glance around with morbid curiosity, meeting the stares of several officers who are eyeing our group with obvious disgust.
“I’m innocent,” I blurt to the nearest cop, a tall man holding a stack of paperwork.
He immediately looks away, pretending he didn’t hear me.
My stomach twists. Of course he doesn’t believe me. Then I realize how this must look. I’m the only woman out of about a dozen or so men who were just arrested in a trap house. They probably think I’m the house whore or something.
I sigh, my shoulders sagging.
We are led into an open area filled with rows of cubicles where some exhausted-looking officers sit typing away at their computers, chugging coffee like their lives depend on the caffeine.
Beyond the cubicles are two small holding cells.
One is packed to the brim with women in various states of drunkenness—some slumped against the wall, others yelling curses or giggling uncontrollably.
The other cell has only a handful of men, most of them silent and sullen, sitting with their heads down like they’re trying to disappear into the benches.
The guys from our group are taken to the male cell while the officer holding me casts a look of weary exasperation at the chaos in the women’s cell.
“You think there’s space to squeeze one more in there?” he asks the room in general.
What? If I get stuffed into that sardine can, I swear I’m going to pass out. Am I about to add fainting to my growing list of firsts tonight?
“No,” someone answers, and I glance back with gratitude. It’s the female officer who arrested me. “You can just cuff her to the chair over there.”
The man holding me—Detective Granger, according to the ID badge hanging from his neck—guides me to said chair and unlocks my right wrist, hooking the cuff to the armrest.
Great. Now what? I slump back, taking in the overcrowded and noisy station.
“Do you think he might be innocent? They were friends, after all. How could he kill that poor boy?”
My head snaps towards the officer who just spoke. He’s standing a few feet away in front of a coffee machine, speaking to another officer. I quickly avert my gaze so they don’t think I’m trying to eavesdrop. They’re probably talking about one of the guys in the male holding cell.
“Did you see the look in that fucker’s eyes when we arrested him? He did it. And I’m going to be on the prosecutor’s neck to make sure he rots in jail,” comes the response—not from the officer beside him, but from someone across the room.
I relax slightly. Their voices carry easily over the constant noise from the holding cells. Even if I wanted to ignore them, it would be impossible with how loud they’re speaking. But then my blood runs cold as it sinks in: there’s a potential murderer sharing a cell with my little brother.
Ethan might be an idiot, but he’s still just a kid. A kid who’s probably scared out of his mind right now.
Before panic can swallow me whole, a new officer walks in holding up a cell phone, shaking his head as he catches the tail end of the conversation. “Unfortunately, he’s not going to jail. I just got a call that his attorney is on the way.” He pauses. “It’s Romero Lombardi.”
Most of the officers groan in unison, and the room actually quiets down a little as even the detainees fall silent to listen. The sudden silence is almost more unsettling than the noise.
Romero Lombardi. That name sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?