Chapter Two
In which there are late nights, Sabrina Carpenter, and unwelcome visitors.
Violet…
I asked Roman Morozov to kill my stepfather.
I said those words out loud to another human being and his expression never changed, as if people ask him this every day and as far as I know, they probably do.
There's no other way. I've begged and pleaded with my mother, Poppy.
I've tried to negotiate with Jack, that douchebag, and he still thinks that the lives of my sisters and mine are his to wheel and deal with, to trade away for a promotion and a corner office.
I'm pretty confident in my ability to fight my way loose from anything, but my sisters, Rose and Iris, are only eighteen.
They're fresh out of St. Mary's parochial school.
They're so sheltered, and not ready for this kind of world.
I can hear music blasting halfway down the hall from my apartment and I groan. The girls are here. Lou in 3C pulls open his door across the hall, glaring at me.
"I see the twins are back," he snaps. "I haven't gotten a fucking minute's sleep and I have to work in the morning!"
"Lou," I wave my hands appeasingly. "So sorry, I'll bring cookies over later, okay? I feel terrible."
"Please," he growls, "for the love of God, turn that shit off. I could endure it if it was at least something that you would wanna blast at 2 AM, like Norwegian death metal. Jesus Christ, Violet!! Who blasts Sabrina Carpenter?"
I feel a deep sense of shame because of course my neighbor is correct.
Sabrina Carpenter's music is something that you listen to on a sunny afternoon, hanging out in the park with your crowd of girlfriends as you talk about boys, and parties.
Not at two in the morning in a residential building, where my neighbors are trying to get a decent night's rest.
Opening the door, I see the coffee table is stacked with boxes of takeout and according to one of the DoorDash labels, they charged it to my card.
My expensive candles are lit, the ones that I've been saving for a spa night, and two bulging overnight bags cluttering my little living room tell me they are here for the weekend.
My stern words die on my lips as Rose and Iris look up with tear-streaked faces.
"What's happened now?" I hurry over, disconnecting my sister's phone from my speakers.
"It's Jack," Rose sniffles. "He says he's taking us to some big corporate retreat next month and told us to go buy some sexier clothes."
"Oh, my god," I groan.
Rose and Iris still dress in matching outfits, the charm of being identical twins never grows old for them.
Tonight, they're in pink leggings and purple t-shirts.
We look a lot alike, the same chestnut brown hair and eyes.
They're a little shorter and more curvy, certainly more blessed than my B-cup bra size.
"Nothing is more guaranteed to make you hurl than having your stepfather tell you he wants you to dress sexy." Iris does look a little green.
We wouldn't get any help from our mother.
The transformation Poppy made after marrying that skeevy bastard was depressing.
She used to have a closet crammed with nice, floaty sundresses, now she's always dressed up in high heels and painfully tight Chanel skirts.
Her hair went from a lovely mass of curls into a heavily sprayed bob cut, shaped like a shield and about as rigid.
"He's really gonna do it," Iris says, eyes wide and hands waving wildly. "He's really gonna make us marry those ancient dudes, isn't he?"
"No," I say firmly, taking her hands and squeezing them. "Absolutely not. I won't let that happen to you."
"Don't get too confident," Rose says dolefully. "Jack said that he was going to make you come to the retreat, too. He was raving about you wasting your expensive education on all those poor kids."
I can feel heat rising like a sunburn on my skin. "You're kidding."
"Oh, no," Iris says. "And then Mother dearest chimed in. She was saying that she's always worried you'll get head lice from working at the shelter and that she always wants to fumigate the house when you come by for Sunday dinner."
That hurts. I expect Jack to be a condescending prick at the best of times. But now our mother? She used to volunteer at the shelter sometimes, helping kids with their homework after school.
"Yeah, the transformation is complete." Rose is tearing up again. "Mother has morphed from a decent human being into a country club automaton."
"Okay…" I run my hands through my hair, trying to force my exhausted brain to work.
"You two are going to get some sleep. Things always look better in the morning.
We'll make a plan of action and I assure you, there will be no corporate retreat weekend for you in sexy, preppy clothes. Do you hear me?"
"I love you!" Rose throws her arms around my neck, not quite strangling me in her enthusiasm.
"Here," Iris says, holding up a takeout box. "We saved some dim sum for you." There are two sad little lumps huddled in the bottom of the box in congealed soy sauce.
"Thank you," I say, shaking the box and watching the dim sum wobble. "You guys can have my bedroom. I'll sleep out here on the couch, I've got some paperwork to do anyway."
Forcing the twins into bed is no easier at eighteen than it was when they were eight, and I'd have to tell them story after story before they would finally drift off into blissful unconsciousness.
Tonight is no better, it's 3:30 by the time the inevitable airing of grievances and barrage of concerns has been addressed.
Lying on the couch, I flip the pillow to the cool side and angle my hips away from the spring threatening to burst through the center cushion.
Roman has to take this job. He has to.
***
There are always surprises at Hope House.
An unexpected hike in the power bill. One of the volunteers will inevitably call in sick and I'll need to jump in and cover their shift.
The worst is the old New York classic; rats where you really don't want rats to be.
Sometimes, there are nice surprises, like an unexpected donation, or a grant that I'd given up on was awarded to the shelter after all.
I'm not sure if Roman Morozov sitting in my office chair is a good surprise or a bad one.
"I'd ask how you got through two locked doors," I say, glaring at his smug expression. "But maybe that's a good recommendation for your skills."
"Charming operation you have here," Roman says, his Tom Ford suit looking very much out of place in my shabby office. I got my office chair off a furniture pile placed on the curb and the desk was left here by the former tenant.
"Why spend money where it doesn't show?" I shrug, dumping my laptop on my desk. My office is scrupulously clean and there are potted orchids sitting on my windowsill in a colorful line. I painted the walls a soft lavender shade and crammed them with pictures of my graduates. I'm proud of it.
"Hope House…" He's reading something on his phone.
"Founded three years ago after you graduated early with honors with your Master's in Social Work from Columbia University.
You partner with the Midtown Community Center and the women and children's shelter so the kids have somewhere to go after school.
The program survives on a combination of grants and donations after you used your inheritance from your late father Brent Monroe for seed money. "
"We serve over three hundred kids every year," I say proudly, taking a framed photo off the wall and showing it to him.
It's a big group of kids in graduation gowns, grinning and giddy.
"Ninety percent of the kids in our program graduate from high school.
The average in this area of the city is closer to fifty-five percent. "
"You're a saint, Violet Monroe," he says with a sardonic little grin that I want to smack off his face.
"Apparently not," I snap, "since I hired you to ki- to do a job for me."
"About that…" Roman stands, stretching elaborately, long arms spanning my tiny office.
I can hear his heavily muscled body creak.
He has a face that Botticelli would sell his kidney to paint; thick, sensual lips, pale green eyes like ocean water, and his halo of dark curls.
The man is almost unjustly beautiful. I suspect though, that while he may be smiling and joking, those eyes miss nothing.
"I did some poking around, I can see why you'd like to see your stepfather six feet under. He is a complete and utter piece of shit. Do you know he's under investigation for tax fraud?"
My knees turn to water and I sit down abruptly. "He's what?"
"Oh, yeah," he agrees cheerfully. "Jack Barton never met a corner he couldn't cut, eh? Then, there's the girlfriend he's been bankrolling-"
"Jack's cheating on my mother?" I screech.
"Would you like to see her picture?" Roman asks solicitously.
"No! It'll just make this worse." I massage my temples.
"Oh, it does get worse than the nineteen-year-old girlfriend," he continues relentlessly. "There's a couple of domestic violence charges - ugly ones - from before he married your mother. He's in deep with the Italians with an impressive gambling debt."
"I… I knew he was despicable." My hands feel numb, like they belong to someone else. "But this?"
"It's clear Jack's counting on some advantageous unions for you girls to get him out of trouble," he says, putting away his phone.
"I don't understand this marriage plot of his. He'd get someone to pay for us?" I ask, still incredulous. "No one does arranged marriages in this century. Well… I mean, maybe your people do. But not The Chads."
"The who?" Roman bursts out laughing.
"The Chads, it's what my sisters and I call them, the upper management douchebags at Jack's firm. Country club cut-and-pastes with their matching golf pants and sweaters draped over their shoulders." I shudder. "I think they all get their teeth whitened by the same dentist."
"Yeah, that tracks," he nods. My neck's getting sore looking up at him, and he takes pity on me, perching on my desk. "I can see why they'd be interested in you, Violet. A nice, well-mannered girl with a good education and superior breeding."
"You make me sound like a race horse," I say sourly.
"If that were true, darling, I would have mentioned your long, gorgeous legs." He gives me a smile that could more accurately be characterized as a leer, and I flush brick red.
Smooth, Violet.
"To men like that? That's exactly what they're looking for.
Someone pretty and well-behaved to have their babies and arrange their dinner parties.
" Roman shakes his head. "These are not men who like to take a walk on the wild side when it comes to a wife.
Their mistresses, sure, but not the lady who's going to bear their precious Little Chads.
Especially if they're confident that you can't walk away in a divorce with 50% of their assets. "
"And now I can feel my skin trying to crawl off my body, so thanks for that," I say. "Jack can arrange something where we'd be forced to marry these men? No filing for divorce? That can't- this doesn't happen."
"Oh, it's possible," Roman says. "You'd be surprised at just how easy it can be."
"You can see why this is so important. I thought at first that maybe I could hire you to scare him off, make him leave the state.
" I'm stumbling over my words, trying to make him understand.
The walls of my little office feel like they're closing in on me.
"But it's much more serious than that, he knows I'd tell him to go to hell if he's trying to control my sisters through their trust fund.
I'd take care of them, no matter what. So, he's not only planning something that would trap Rose and Iris, he thinks he can force me, too.
I can't imagine how bad it could be, I'm terrified that they're in danger. "
"Most people wouldn't think that's reason enough to kill a man," he says, his expression going cold.
I'm losing him.
"He killed my father!" I blurt out. "I know he did."
Roman leans close enough that I can see the silvery flecks in his eyes. "What proof do you have?"
"I walked in on Jack and my mother three years ago at our vacation house." I swallow, taking a moment to make sure I'm not going to throw up on his $2,000 dress pants. "I told Poppy that if she didn't tell Dad, I would.
"Jack worked under my father in Mergers and Acquisitions.
A couple of days after I caught him and Poppy in bed, my dad was murdered.
They were having a business dinner with a client and Jack claimed they got mugged.
Funny, though. The gunman shot my father and Jack walked out unscathed.
Lucky guy, right? He even got a promotion.
The Chads gave him Dad's job right after the funeral. "
Don't you dare cry!
"He and Poppy got married less than four months later.
What a love story." Roman's face is expressionless.
I'm sure he's heard much worse. "If he's willing to murder my father, there's nothing he won't do, especially after hearing about the domestic violence charges, the teenage mistress and the gambling, and…
I'm not letting Jack destroy the rest of my family. "
Roman takes another look around my office. "How do you expect to pay for this, Violet? Your credit's good but you have less than four hundred dollars in your checking account."
"I have money." I raise my chin. "Investments. Over a hundred thousand dollars' worth. It's yours."
"Use it for a private detective," he says, rising and heading for the door. "Prove that Jack was behind your father's death."
Digging my fingers into the expensive wool of his jacket, I pull him back.
"I don't have time! He's up to something.
There's some skeevy corporate retreat next month and he's insisting that we have to go.
Something bad is going to happen, I can feel it.
" He's not looking at me, I try to see any mercy in his impassive profile. "Please. Please do this for me."
Gently disengaging my grip from his arm, he shakes his head, giving me a kind smile which makes this somehow worse.
"No. Hire a PI."
"Roman, will you listen to me?" He opens my office door and Larry, my assistant director is standing there, his hand raised to knock.
"Holy shit!" he gulps, looking up, up and up some more at my towering guest. "I can come back."
"No need." Roman flashes him a smile. "We're done here."