Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty Eight
Elena
I don’t even make it to my desk.
The elevator doors slide open, and before I can step off, the receptionist leans out from behind her monitor like she’s been waiting for me. “Elena? Mr. Hart would like to see you right away.”
My jaw tightens.
“Sure,” I say, and my voice is flat enough to iron a shirt. “I’ll drop my bag—”
“He said now.”
Right. Of course he did.
I adjust the strap on my shoulder, swallow a sip of the tea I made in a travel mug, and walk the familiar corridor. Doors, plaques, frosted glass with names etched on them.
I pass my own door and don’t look at the stack of files through the glass.
Hart’s office is at the end, corner of course, bigger than anyone else’s, a window that takes in the river, and the slice of ocean if the day is clear.
I’ve sat across from that view plenty of times: charging decisions, plea posture, trial prep.
Never like this.
His assistant, Mara, taps her keyboard and looks up at me with a professional expression that doesn’t hide the flicker of something else. Curiosity? Pity? “He’s expecting you,” she says. “Go on in.”
I knock once anyway because, you know, manners.
“Come,” Hart calls evenly, giving away nothing.
I step inside and shut the door behind me. The blinds are half open, the light slicing his diplomas into clean rectangles. A photo on the credenza of him with a senator I recognize, both of them squinting in the sunshine.
“Pennino,” he says, not standing. He gestures to the chair opposite. “Have a seat.”
I don’t, not yet. I take in the second chair and the small, neat stack of folders beside his legal pad. A man who doesn’t leave much to chance. Hart is in his late forties, iron-gray at the temples, tie with a knot so tight it could stop a leak.
He’s the kind of boss who believes in the law and that justice is the most important thing. Usually, I appreciate that.
“Is this a friendly chat, Miles?” I ask, keeping my tone neutral, hands wrapped around my travel mug, because it gives me something to hold. “Or should I call my union rep?”
One of his eyebrows twitches. “Sit, Elena.”
All right then. I sit. I set the mug down on the carpet by my heel, because putting anything on his desk that he hasn't invited feels wrong today.
He flips a page in his pad without looking at it. “How was New York?” he asks, conversational in a way that makes my guard spike. “Did you enjoy the Leone show?”
“Productive,” I say carefully. “Jury selected yesterday. Openings this morning. I’m back here for the rest of the week.”
“Hm.” His mouth flattens into something that isn’t a smile. “Calendar says you were out of office for a medical appointment yesterday morning.”
So much for small talk. “Yes.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lie, and it’s such an effortless lie I want to kick something. My stomach does that odd swivel that may or may not be about nausea. I press two fingers to my wrist under the table and count to four, then release.
He studies me like I’m a witness who doesn’t know I’ve already impeached myself. “Elena, we’ve worked together long enough that I’ll skip the preamble. I’m going to ask you questions. You’re going to answer them fully and honestly. If you need counsel, say so.”
“If you’re opening a Garrity interview, Miles, you need to say those words.” I’m referring to an interview conducted with public employees. Garrity rights are like Miranda rights for public employees. “Last I checked, rumors aren’t predicate.”
“Not Garrity,” he says, deadpan. “Not yet. Administrative. Internal.” He taps the legal pad with his pen, a steady click. “Do you have any sort of personal relationship with any member of the Conti family?”
My mouth goes cotton-dry. I feel the moment like a camera flash: I’m a deer; the brush is suddenly quiet. The air tastes metallic.
“No,” I say, because if I say anything else, everything resembling my life burns to the ground.
His eyes don’t blink. “Have you had any non-professional contact with any member of the Conti family since assignment to the Conti matter in this district?”
“No.”
“Phone calls, texts, emails, letters, DMs?”
“No.”
His pen doesn’t move. He isn’t writing my answers down. That’s worse somehow. “Have you seen Mr. Conti outside of court or Pretrial Services interviews?”
“No,” I say, and the word scrapes my throat.
“Have you had any contact with any member of Mr. Conti’s immediate circle—Giovanni Conti, Roberto Conti, Antonio Conti, Vito Conti, Nico Conti—outside of official business?”
“No,” I say. The room is suddenly too bright. The blinds slice light across my hands.
“Did you meet with a Dr. Bianchi yesterday morning?”
My heart misses a step. I feel it, an actual skip like it tripped and caught itself. “That’s my medical care,” I say evenly. “Protected information.”
“Is it?” He tilts his head as if he’s genuinely curious. “Elena, I’m not asking what you were seen for. I’m asking whether you met with a physician yesterday morning and whether any third parties were present in the exam room.”
I don’t look away. I don’t reach for the mug. “I met with a physician,” I say. “No third party present.”
He watches me over steepled fingers. His eyes are pale blue in this light; I’ve never noticed that.
“We received a tip,” he says. “Anonymous. That you’ve been seen with Mr. Conti outside the office.
That your car was tracked to his residence last week.
That you had contact in New York with his family. ”
The words sit between us like a yawning valley, the gap widening more and more. I picture Antonio and Nico bracketing me on the sidewalk, the white card with ten digits pressed into my palm. My stomach churns.
“You receive a lot of anonymous tips,” I say, too calm. “Defense counsel who want to try their case in the court of gossip. Reporters who sniff around. Defendants with nothing to do but stir mud.”
“True,” he says. “But some tips pan out.” He flips the top file open. “And some tips come with photographs.”
He slides a printed page across the desk. It’s color, grainy, long-lens. The front of my building. My car at the curb. Time stamp in the corner. Another shot, different angle: me walking to the lobby, head down. Nothing illegal. Everything suggestive.
My pulse slams against the delicate skin at my throat. “So I live in a building with cameras,” I say. “Breaking news.”
Another page slides. Hotel awning in New York. Me stepping out of the revolving door into the morning. A man in the midground with his shoulder to the frame, face out of sight. Antonio? It could be. It could also be a stranger. The image is fodder; that’s its point.
“There’s nothing in those that point to anyone,” I say quietly.
“No,” Hart says. “But contact is an issue if it compromises the integrity of this office.” He taps the corner of the second print. “Were you followed in New York?”
“Probably,” I say, and the honesty tastes like acid. “There’s a reason I was under protection by the marshals a few weeks back.”
He sits back. “Elena, I want you to take a breath and think carefully before you answer the next question.” His tone shifts—less prosecutorial, more paternal in a way that makes me want to bare my teeth.
“Is there anything you need to disclose to me, right now, about your ability to continue on United States v. Conti?”
The ultrasound picture pulses behind my eyes. The tiny flicker. I force my face into stillness until my cheeks ache. “No.”
He studies me like he’s waiting for me to blink first. I don’t.
He exhales, a small release that doesn’t relax him. “All right,” he says, but it feels like a door closing. “The court held you in high regard when we moved for GPS. They listen when you speak. Defense counsel has already insinuated bias on cable news. They called you a ‘zealot with a vendetta.’”
Roberto. His smooth voice in my ear even now. He plays one game in the room and another outside it. “He’s wrong,” I say.
“I know,” Hart says, and for a second, he almost sounds like he means it.
Then it’s gone. “But optics matter as much as outcomes when we try a case in the public square and the courtroom simultaneously. You know this.” He gestures, a neat line in the air from me to the door and back.
“I can’t keep you on a case where an anonymous tip paired with public photographs can destroy a verdict.
If there’s even a whiff of impropriety—Brady, Giglio, the Ethics Committee—”
“I know the rules,” I snap. The lack of sleep catches up with me. I lower my voice. “I live by the rules. I lecture on the rules.”
“Then live by them now,” he says softly. “Tell me what I need to know.”
I think of what I cannot say. Of Luca in an exam room he isn’t supposed to be in, slipping through a side door because he can’t risk the front; the way his hand felt wrapped around mine when our child’s heart beat into the room for the first time.
I think of lunch in the sun, of ginger and lemon, of the way the jasmine sent a dizzy sweetness into my blood and made me reckless on a stone bench by a fake creek.
I think of the time after that in his bed, where I told him I trusted him and meant it, and then handed him my body to prove it.
No.
“There is nothing to disclose,” I say, each word brisk and clipped.
Hart doesn’t blink. “You left your apartment through your garage at 6:30 two mornings last week,” he says. “Our building cameras catch you returning past 9:00 both nights. The marshals report your protective posture eased; you didn’t have tails by then. Where did you go?”
“Out,” I say.
“Where?”
“Anywhere I want,” I say, and now I do show my teeth because I can’t not.
“I’m not under investigation, Miles. Do you want to ask for my phone location?
My OnStar? My Amex? You want to plant a GPS under my bumper?
You want to subpoena my medical records while you’re at it?
Sit down and draft the papers. I’ll move to quash. ”