40. Arkadiy
40
ARKADIY
T he instant Rafael walks through the door concealing Mara from me, I yank my hand out of Detective Pascall’s grasp and stuff it into my pocket. I didn’t accept her offer of a handshake to facilitate the suspicious groove between her brows. I did it so I could announce to Rafael that the interview I organized was being witnessed by the last person I want to know about my crimes.
Rafael must be able to read minds. I barely nudged my head to the two-way mirror I was seconds from squashing Mara up against and kissing her silly when his arrival broke the spell Mara’s presence forever places on me. But he understood the urgency on my face within a second and implemented immediate actions to ratify the injustice.
He’s done the same multiple times over the past three days.
I would have folded by now if he hadn’t.
I can’t be in the same room with Mara and not itch to touch her. It is an impossible task. Even drunk and belligerent, I could barely hold back the urge Friday night. I remained holed up in the bathroom for not even thirty seconds before I sprinted for the exit.
If the elevator had made it to the underground garage fast enough, I would have stopped Mara from leaving that night. Then I would have fallen to my knees and begged for forgiveness, and all the work my team has been undertaking for the past several days would have been pointless.
This has nothing to do with my political campaign, and everything to do with the woman I fell in love with on sight.
Needing to get my head into game mode, I gesture, with the hand not stuffed in my pocket, for Detective Pascall to sit at one of the chairs around the conference room table.
“Please, call me Sanya.”
She flashes me credentials to assure me that I’m speaking with a professional before she takes a seat and removes a notepad from the breast pocket of her jacket.
“Water?” I ask, attempting to display I’m not the slightest bit nervous about our meeting.
When she shakes her head, I fill one glass before taking a seat opposite her.
“If this is in regard to an increase in media presence over the past three weeks, I can assure you my department is implementing measures to reduce the disruption to residents in the building as we speak.”
“It isn’t regarding that.” I speak with a professional edge that gives no indication I am affiliated with gangsters. “But I’ll be sure to pass your message on to Mr. Ivanov the next time I speak with him.”
Maksim Ivanov is a gangster in every meaning of the word. He also owns a majority of the apartments in my building. We met once, but it was too brief to determine how indebted he is to Mara, and if that debt would transfer to me if it were in Mara’s best interests. But I’m not opposed to tossing his name into the ring if it’ll make the flames less scorching.
“Then what is our meeting regarding?” It is an effort for her to keep disdain from her voice when she says, “I have criminals to catch.”
Her innuendo has a double meaning, and I’m done pretending it doesn’t.
“I am a private man, Ms. Pascall. If someone wants to know something about me, I prefer a direct approach.”
Unwillingly, my eyes stray to the two-way mirror.
Mara thinks our downfall is because she pushed for answers. I know that isn’t close to the truth. Her ability to disarm me is one of her greatest assets.
“I do not appreciate when my privacy and the privacy of those closest to me are blatantly disrespected.” I was standing in front of a large contingency of media, preparing to announce my forfeit of the presidential race, when Darius announced there was a detective snooping around the premises, asking questions about Mara.
“It is Detective Pascall,” Sanya snaps out, impressing me with her gall. “And I’ve been trying to approach you for almost two weeks now. My calls have been left unanswered, hence me needing to dig a little deeper.”
She has me there, but I act coy. “I will be sure to have a word with my secretary.”
“Thank you.” She smiles evilly before flipping her interrogation on its head. “What is your involvement with Miskaela Palkova?”
“Who?” I reply, acting daft.
It is all an act. Dr. Babkin’s name was revealed by Mara an hour after I was handed a list of his victims’ names by a reporter who had been sold information on Mara’s previous name. He couldn’t run the story because Mara was underage when she was abused and, as such, is protected by strict victim laws.
The reporter’s intel suggested there could be recordings of Dr. Babkin’s “sessions” with his victims, but confirmation was only achieved when I left Mara’s apartment with the full intention of returning as soon as possible.
Mara wasn’t much older than Tillie when her speech therapist added a hands-on approach to their twice-weekly sessions. At the start, it was an innocent finger slip while showing Mara how to hold her tongue while speaking. It took a couple of years for him to progress to more risqué moves.
As Mara hinted last week, the abuse didn’t truly start until Dr. Babkin approached her family outside of office hours.
In the footage I watched, he was quick to assure Mara what they were doing was approved by her father whenever she questioned him.
“Remember, your father gave me permission to do anything necessary to stop your silly stutter.”
I stopped watching from then. The damage to my psyche had already been done, but some good came from the travesty. I no longer need proof that Mara can trust me with Tillie. The evidence was right in front of me.
I didn’t see Mara in that footage. I saw Tillie, and every sly look Dr. Babkin hit her with had me desperate to dig him up and revive him just so I could kill him again.
I’ve never wanted to hurt a man as much as I did in the seconds leading to Rafael switching off the footage and sending Darius’s laptop sailing across the cab of my town car, and I was given the chance to do precisely that only hours later.
I’m drawn from dangerous thoughts when Detective Pascall repeats, “Miskaela Palkova?”
My anger that she is endeavoring to drag Mara into a fight she doesn’t belong in makes my reply dry and full of deceit. “I don’t know who that is.”
“Oh…” She can’t pull off a daft expression. She looks constipated. “Then why were you seen getting in a cab with her last month?”
My jaw flexes when she pulls out the image that forced me to keep my desires on the back burner for two weeks. Not once has this image worked in my favor. It has slapped me in the face time and time again, and I see it doing the same now as well.
“This is you, isn’t it?” She taps on the image of me sliding in the back of a cab on Mara and Tillie’s heels. “It sure looks like you.”
“It is me,” I agree, lost as to where she is going with this, but confident I won’t like the direction she takes. “But I still don’t know who Miskaela Palkova is.”
“She”—she points to Mara—“is Miskaela Palkova.”
“Oh.” My daft expression is far more convincing than hers. “Then why didn’t you just say that?” I pick up the image of Mara, Tillie, and me like my heart isn’t racing before inspecting it with more diligence. “Ah. Yes. That is the woman who promised to dry clean the suit jacket her daughter had vomited on?—”
“Daughter?” she interrupts. “Miskaela’s child is a girl?”
I shrug, hopeful it will hide my wish to cringe. This is why I got into politics. I’m a shit actor. “Or perhaps she was her nanny. I didn’t ask for details. I followed her to make sure she upheld her pledge.” I scoff like it isn’t absurd to ask something of someone with nothing. “My jacket was from a limited collection. I didn’t want to be lumped with an excessive dry-cleaning bill when I wasn’t responsible for the mess.”
Detective Pascall glares at me as if I am a pig. Since I’ve felt nothing close to clean in the past three days, I don’t display my disdain. “You followed her into a cab to make sure she paid the dry-cleaning bill of a sick child?”
“Yes.”
I take a mental note to increase the pays of my security team when she flicks to a fresh page of her notepad before asking, “Do you recall the address she recited to the driver?”
I take a moment, pretending to think, before shaking my head. “No.”
Sanya huffs, aware I am lying.
I hit her with a snarl like I don’t appreciate being unfairly interrogated when I was of the belief that was the reason for her visit. “I followed her into the cab to ensure her offer was sincere. I exited two blocks later when she handed me enough funds to cover my dry-cleaning fee.”
“She paid you with cash?” She jots down a note when I dip my chin. “Did you see her wallet? Did she have enough funds to pay for a long or short fare?”
“I don’t recall.” A spark of brilliance hits me. “Though I do remember her saying something about motion sickness tablets being a waste of money.” I stare her dead set in the eyes. “Perhaps she was heading to the airport?”
“Perhaps,” she mimics through clenched teeth before announcing I have every right to have my defenses up. “Murderers are known to skip town after committing a crime. They rarely stay to clean up their mess.”
I swallow harshly. “Murderer?” When she nods, I laugh as if death is humorous. “I can assure you, Detective Pascall, there wasn’t a single droplet of blood on Ms. Palkova.” When suspicion hardens her features, I add, “I am a man, and she is a gorgeous woman. Of course I looked.”
“Was this… look long enough to spot stains over six years old?”
Her question deposits me into the middle of the Amazon without a life vest in sight. I can’t speak, swallow, or move. I can’t do anything but stare in bewilderment.
While smirking smugly, loving my frozen status, Detective Pascall stores away her notepad before filling her empty hand with a business card. “If you hear anything about Ms. Palkova’s whereabouts or think of anything that may come in handy with my investigation, you can reach me here.” She drags her finger under her cell phone number scribbled on the back of her card.
After a final smirk, she leaves without so much as a backward glance.
Just as fast, I race to the elevator and select the floor below the penthouse. I’m swimming in waters outside of my depth, and Mara taught me it is better to stretch for a life jacket than unnecessarily drown.
“That isn’t wise,” a voice sounds from a speaker above my head. “Doc worked the nightshift, and Maksim is paranoid as fuck about her sleep schedule. If you wake her, you’ll be a dead man.”
I raise my eyes to the blinking contraption above my head before saying, “This isn’t about me. It is for Mara.”
A chair creaking into place booms around the elevator before, “I’m gonna need more information. Mara is in favor to the Ivanovs”—the possessiveness in his tone pisses me off—“but you’ll need more than being on Maksim’s good side if you fuck with his wife’s sleeping schedule.” Humor highlights his tone more than anger during his next sentence. “Forcing him to pull out mid-nap will fuck with her sleeping schedule.”
I’m lost, and it is heard in my tone. “It’s urgent.”
When he hums like he handles fabricated murder charges on the daily, I push out, “Detective Pascall was meant to take my confession for a murder charge, not pin one on Mara.”
He cusses before the button I selected almost a minute ago finally illuminates.