Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
My voice trembles as I finish. I pace careful circles in Evie’s living room, one of my father’s old commands keeping my steps from scuffing her pale rug. With the blinds half-closed, the city’s late light stripes the walls.
Evie hands me a glass of water and listens with her arms crossed.
“And then nothing,” I say.
She holds my gaze without blinking. “Define ‘nothing.’”
“I mean, I didn’t get the invite.”
“Why aren’t you covered in coffee?”
Fuck. I should have dumped it on my clothes when I left. Instead his citrus cologne and Beluga Brew’s burned espresso are stuck in my nose. The water glass is sweating, droplets sliding down the glass onto my fingers.
“It wasn’t going to work,” I say. “Alistair was there. I had the portfolio open. But when we locked eyes—”
“If it wasn’t working, you weren’t supposed to make eye contact.”
“I had to improvise.”
Her tone goes flat. “You were reckless. What if he remembers you?”
At least she’s still talking about next time.
“You weren’t there,” I say. “The room changed when he walked in. His guards. The way he moves. You said he buys power with money—”
“He doesn’t buy it,” she cuts in. “He is it. And you sat there starstruck.”
Evie exhales, then drops to her knees by the coffee table. I stop pacing to watch her write AB in the center of a blank piece of paper and circle it hard enough to crinkle the page.
“We’re doing this wrong. Find the right craving, and everyone caves eventually.” She taps the paper. “For Alistair Blackwood, that’s money, power, and reputation.”
She writes the words around his initials.
“How do you manipulate a manipulator?” she asks herself, already scribbling pieces of the plan we’d agreed was too absurd to work: the view on his walking route, a prepainted canvas, an easel, a hired crowd.
“It’s over the top,” I say, careful not to sound accusing.
She’s too busy reworking the plan she’d called less practical than prayer to respond. One fuckup, and our Hail Mary is her first choice.
What does it matter to her? If I fail, she can find another broke liar with overdue rent.
“How long have you been working on this?” I ask.
“Two years,” she says without looking up. “Two years to nail this bastard in my own city.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
“Because he thinks he’s untouchable,” I say. “Because he hurts people and pays enough to make them disappear?”
None of it feels right enough.
“And because it’s a damn good story,” she says. “Wouldn’t that be enough for a struggling paper? A David-versus-Goliath scoop?”
That’s at least honest. Evie doesn’t lie the way I do. She said I would fail, and I did.
“How many have there been before me?” I ask.
She looks up from her scribbling. “You’re the first one I’ve dated, if that’s what you mean.”
“No. Jesus. I meant how many have tried to get in with Alistair?”
“Two.” Her chin lowers. “You’re thinking about quitting, aren’t you?”
She wants this so badly she’s lost sight of the fact that I’m the one with more to lose.
I need this apartment, this paycheck, and this shot to build something real. Every lie I tell someone else comes with another one I tell myself. I’ll get back on track the moment I’m safe enough to afford it.
“Yes,” I lie, to find out what happens when her only piece starts moving off the board.
She studies me, then lets some tight part of her expression fall away.
“This is more than a job, Marcus. Sure, if your name is on the headline that takes down Alistair, you’re set.
And my paper lives to fight another day.
But his inner circle is full of victims. Blow the lid off it, and you save people. You’d be making a real difference.”
That would make all this worth it, wouldn’t it?
I don’t answer fast enough.
She reaches for my hand and closes her grip. “I’m your boss.” Her voice goes cold. “And sometimes you just have to shut up and do what you’re told.”
Something in me stills. Her command is absolute, and all my pent-up tension bleeds away. My skin goes numb with the relief of being pulled out of myself and into something simpler.
Do what you’re told.
The words pitch down, low and sharp, and the living room falls away, replaced by van headlights, my mom’s award balanced on her knees in the passenger seat, and my father pulling into the driveway.
The garage door cranks up, and Dad’s eyes land on the mess inside.
My bike is half toppled beside boxes I’d promised to break down and a shelf sagging where I’d climbed it.
He kills the engine. “Marcus.”
“There wasn’t time,” I say, shrinking into my seat. “We had to get ready. I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“No. Responsibility isn’t something you put off.” He nods toward the garage like it’s evidence at a crime scene. “Ten minutes. Go.”
“Daaad—”
“The back door’s unlocked,” he says, counting on his fingers. “Your bike’s out. The shelves are a mess. The trash lids are half off.”
Mom’s gaze finds me with sympathy before her surrender. She rubs her temple as if she can press our earlier happiness back into place.
Dad opens my door.
“Do what you’re told,” he booms, voice filling the driveway.
“Mom?” I plead, stepping out on shaking legs. “Mom, I always do what I’m told. What about what I want?”
Her gaze flicks to Dad, then back to me, pleading without words: Please don’t make this worse. Her hand settles on my shoulder. “I know you want things,” she whispers. “I know. But right now, honey, I need you to just do what you’re told.”
Back in Evie’s apartment, I swallow.
Mom couldn’t know what was coming. She couldn’t know how those words would follow me into every fight and every lie I told just to win a morsel of control, or how sweet it could feel, sometimes, to have all of it stripped away.
She couldn’t know I’d shove the memory of her into the same locked room I built for him, cramming her in with the garage, the cereal bowl, the funeral, and everything else too painful to carry. I buried the room deep and learned to live like the door wasn’t there.
Sometimes the memories still knock. Sometimes, like now, they push so hard the whole frame shakes.
But I can always shove them back in. I can always close the door.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and my own numbness frightens me.
Evie’s grip softens, probably mistaking my obedience for agreement. She turns back to the coffee table and her notes.
We build the lie piece by piece and agree not to look too closely at the flaw I’ve already put through its center: Alistair Blackwood has one week to forget my face.
I worry he won’t, but praying Alistair doesn’t recognize one lie inside the next is all I’ve got.
Marcus Philips has never known who he is, which makes becoming Marcus Wilder dangerously easy. Almost undercover. Already someone else.