Chapter 40
VIOLET
I'm at my desk, answering an email about next week's board meeting agenda, when the wave of nausea rolls through me, low, hot, unstoppable. I press my hand over my mouth, shove my chair back, and make it to the bathroom with approximately three seconds to spare.
I'm on my knees in the stall, gripping the sides of the toilet, thinking there must be a more dignified way to grow a human being, when the world explodes.
The stairwell door near the bathrooms slams open with a force that shakes the walls.
Then another door above me, then below. Then the thunder of dozens of pairs of boots, followed by shouting voices.
"FBI! Nobody move! Federal agents!"
I freeze. My hands are still on the toilet and my eyes are wide.
More boots thud on the ground, more shouting fills the air along with the cacophony of desks being moved and chairs scraping and someone screaming.
The building is being raided.
I have to get out of here. There’s not a doubt in my mind that whatever’s happening right now, Lance is behind it and it’s not legitimate.
I stand and make my way out of the stall and rinse my mouth at the sink. My hands are shaking so badly that water splashes across the counter.
Think. Think.
The idea of staying in the bathroom occurs to me, but I realize there’s not a chance they won’t check in here.
I’ve got a small window, and I need to use it. I need to get out of this building.
I crack the bathroom door. The floor is pandemonium, employees standing at their desks with their hands raised, agents moving through the rows, someone crying near the copy machine. But no one is looking in my direction.
For the moment, I’m invisible.
I hurry to my desk and grab my bag from underneath in one fluid motion, head down, and move toward the fire escape at the end of the hall, the same one I mapped my first week.
I push through the door and nearly collide with Theresa. She’s on the landing, one hand on the railing as she breathes hard. For a second, I’m not even sure it’s her. I’m so used to seeing Theresa poised and confident, catching glimpses of her striding here and there.
When I see the bruises from Marino’s beating, I understand I’m not imagining things. My gaze lingers on the fading yellow-green shadow on her jaw, then the dark smudge underneath her left eye that concealer couldn’t quite cover. She’s wearing a dark coat over a blouse and her hair is pulled back.
"Theresa?" I stare at her. "What are you doing here?"
"I had a meeting with Gianni." She glances up the stairwell. The sounds of the raid echo down from the upper floors—boots, shouting, doors slamming. "We need to go. Now."
Something prickles at the back of my mind.
A meeting with Gianni. She resigned. She works for Marino.
Why would she have a meeting with Gianni on a Wednesday morning, and why would she be taking the stairs instead of the elevator?
But the building is being raided by the FBI, my body is still shaking from the morning sickness, and the adrenaline is so thick in my blood that rational thought is losing the race against survival instinct.
"Come on," Theresa says. She starts down the stairs, moving with a practiced confidence, not the panicked scramble of someone caught in a raid, but the measured descent of someone who knew exactly where the fire escape was before she needed it.
I follow because the alternative is going back onto a floor full of federal agents, and because Lance might be up there, and because every exit strategy I've built for fourteen months starts the same way: get out of the building first, think later.
We descend, our footsteps echoing in the concrete stairwell, and Theresa stays ahead of me, never looking back, never slowing. My bag bounces against my hip. My hand finds my stomach, an instinct now, automatic, the body's way of checking that the most vulnerable thing it carries is still there.
We reach the ground floor. Theresa pushes through the emergency exit, and we're in the side alley—a narrow strip of concrete between the building and the parking structure next door.
Dumpsters, fire escapes, the smell of exhaust from the garage vents.
But no agents—no people at all. The raid is happening inside, and the alley is empty.
I stop to catch my breath. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my teeth. "Where's your car?" I ask. "We need to get out of here before—"
Theresa turns to face me. The bruises are the same. The coat is the same. The pulled-back hair, the dark circles, the hospital vulnerability—all the same.
But the expression is different.
The mask is off. And what's underneath isn't pain or fear or regret. It's satisfaction. A cold, steady, vindicated satisfaction that rearranges her entire face into a person I've never seen before, or someone I've seen all along and refused to recognize.
She smirks.
"Theresa," I say. "What—"
"He thought you'd use the maintenance elevator," she says. "But I told him you’d take the stairs. "
The words hit me like ice water. My body understands before my brain does, the prickling at the back of my neck, the animal instinct I've trained myself to trust, the feeling I ignored because I was too busy running to listen.
Footsteps behind me. I turn. Lance is standing at the mouth of the alley, his hands in his pockets. No badge, no agents, no pretense of federal authority. Just a man in a dark jacket blocking the only exit with a smile I've seen a thousand times before.
"Hi, Jessica," he says. "Miss me?"
I run. It’s pure instinct. I turn and sprint toward the other end of the alley. A man is there too, big and unfamiliar, stepping out from behind the dumpster like he was waiting. I freeze in my tracks and turn back around.
Lance is still coming toward me, still walking with that unhurried stride as if he doesn’t have a goddamn care in the world. Behind him is Theresa, watching with a smirk of amusement on her battered face.
"Don't make this hard," Lance says. "You know how I feel about you making things difficult."
I know. God, I know. I know what happens when I make things hard. I know what his voice sounds like right before the worst moments, and it sounds exactly like this—calm, reasonable, almost tender.
His hand closes around my arm. My other hand is still on my stomach.
"Let's go," he says. "We have a lot to talk about."
The alley door swings shut behind us. The raid rages on inside the building, and somewhere, forty-two floors above me, the man who promised to protect me is being led away in handcuffs.
Nobody is coming.