18. Avery
AVERY
Friday morning, Sasha sits beneath Bell & Rourke’s framed list of practice areas with a black handbag on her lap and a false name written across the visitor badge clipped to her coat.
She looks more ordinary in daylight. At the safehouse, I saw her naked in my bed with Declan’s hand on her.
My shock made every detail about her feel larger than it was.
This morning she’s a woman who arrived early to make me find her waiting at the first job I’ve earned in fourteen years.
The front doors lock behind me. Trigger is visible through the glass across the street, where I put him.
A second club car waits at the rear exit.
The receptionist has one hand beneath the counter near the alarm, and Nadia stands outside her office with her phone already connected to Cruz.
Every one of them holds position and lets me walk in on my own.
Sasha looks at the navy jacket she named on the phone. “Congratulations.”
I stop far enough away that reaching my stomach would cost her the chair. The black bag may hold a weapon, a recorder, the burner she wishes she had, or nothing except the pleasure of watching me wonder. “Open the bag and set it on the floor.”
Her eyebrows lift. “You brought club men to a law office and think I’m the dangerous one?”
“You threatened my child and came to my workplace under a false name. Open it, or leave.”
Nadia moves beside me and leaves the route to the front door clear. “Building security’s on the way. The lobby camera is recording. If you want to speak to Avery, you’ll follow her conditions and mine.”
Sasha holds my gaze while she opens the bag. Wallet, keys, lipstick, phone, charger, folded papers, and a small cosmetic pouch. No gun appears. Nadia asks the receptionist to photograph the open bag before Sasha closes it again.
“I came to talk,” Sasha says. “Avery knows me.”
“I know what you look like in my bed.” I refuse to let her use my name as if we’re women connected by something intimate. “That’s not a reference.”
Sasha glances at Nadia, perhaps expecting embarrassment to make me lower my voice. The receptionist heard why I left my husband before I arrived this morning. Nadia knows about the threat, the affair, and the security plan. Sasha can’t humiliate me with something I already told them.
Nadia points toward the main conference room.
The glass wall faces the lobby, the door opens wide enough that the receptionist can see every chair, and a red light above the screen shows the local recording system is active.
“The meeting stays visible and recorded. The door stays open. If either of you asks for the meeting to end, it ends. Security will escort Sasha out when they arrive.”
“They can’t detain me,” Sasha says as she rises.
“No,” Nadia answers. “They can remove you from private property. The police can determine whether the recorded threat and false identification require more.”
Sasha lifts the bag from the floor. I want it left in the lobby, but moving her away from it would require somebody to touch her.
I choose the chair nearest the open door and make her sit across the table with the bag beneath her own chair.
Nadia stays at the end, phone face down but recording through the room system. The receptionist stays in sight.
I don’t ask why she came. She’ll tell me when waiting stops entertaining her.
“Declan used to complain that you made every conversation feel like a deposition,” she says. “He liked that I answered him the easy way.”
“He told me he liked the way you admired him and never asked what he did with the pages. I know what he wanted from you.” I set my work notebook on the table with the cover closed. “What do you want from me?”
“The burner and the archived route sheet.”
“You know both were copied.”
“Copies can be challenged. Originals disappear.”
She finally names why she came. She wants evidence and thinks mentioning the affair will hurt me enough to make me stupid. She hasn’t asked for Declan or offered an apology.
“The burner is in secured evidence storage,” I say. “The route sheet exists in more than one archive. I can’t reach either one from this building, and neither can you.”
Sasha crosses one leg over the other. “He gave me the safehouse key after three weeks. How long did he make you wait before he gave you one?”
The key in my hand on October seventh returns with enough detail that I feel the ridges pressed against my finger. Declan gave it to me years ago and told me no door of his would ever be locked against me. Sasha had another copy in the drawer beside her clothes while I used mine to find them.
“He gave you a key,” I say. “He also told you he wasn’t leaving me.”
“He left you every time he came to me.”
She’s right. Declan left me every time he drove to her, and denying it would give Sasha the pleasure of watching me protect him. “Yes. Then he came home and lied to me. I filed for divorce.”
She studies my face, watching to see if I flinch. “You keep saying that as if paperwork means you stopped wanting him.”
“Wanting him is my problem. You’re here after losing access to his club.”
“I had access to him. The club came with it.”
“Did he tell you he loved you?”
Sasha reaches for the phone in her bag, then remembers the room is recording and leaves it there. “He didn’t need to say it.”
“That’s not what I asked. Did Declan ever tell you he loved you?”
Her mouth presses into a line. “No.”
“Did he promise to leave me?”
“He didn’t have to promise. He came back.”
“Answer the question.”
“No.” She spits the word with more anger than either question should cause if his love never mattered.
“He chose me every week. He brought the pages. He put his mother’s mug in my hand and washed my lipstick from it before he went home to you.
He slept better after I read for him. I didn’t make him feel broken. ”
My fingers tighten around the edge of the notebook.
Declan did that. He took the mug from his mother’s kitchen, let Sasha drink from it, and returned to the bed where I believed his tiredness came from keeping the club alive.
Sasha wants each image to make me compete for which woman received the real man.
“You knew the mug belonged to his mother before you wore lipstick while you drank from it again,” I say. “You wanted me to see your mouth on something he refused to let anyone else touch.”
Sasha leans toward me. “He let me.”
“Yes, he did. That is why he lost his wife, his place in our home, his rank, his guns, and the right to decide where I go. What has it cost you?”
For the first time since I entered the lobby, she looks toward the open door. Building security has reached the reception desk. Two uniformed men wait there under Nadia’s order while Nadia controls when the meeting ends.
“You think punishing him makes you powerful?” Sasha asks.
“I think you called me for a phone, threatened my baby, and came here under another woman’s name. The affair didn’t give you what you wanted.”
“It gave me everything you couldn’t.”
“A rented apartment he paid for from our account. A key Cruz canceled. Papers you had to photograph while Declan showered. Sex with a married man who told you he wouldn’t leave his wife.
” I list the facts without softening any of them.
“You hurt me. You helped destroy my marriage. You didn’t replace me, and you never got a future from him. ”
Sasha’s hand closes around the strap of her bag. “He told you the papers were my idea, did he? He knew I’d read them. He wanted me useful. He wanted me waiting. The nights he stayed until morning weren’t for the club.”
“How many?”
The question escapes before I can stop it. I have Declan’s timeline. I know the dates he didn’t come home, including the nights he claimed he slept at the clubhouse. Sasha recognizes the need anyway.
“Nine,” she says. “Once on your anniversary. He didn’t leave until after sunrise.”
The anniversary message on the burner scheduled the meeting. Declan admitted he stayed. Sasha hasn’t revealed a new betrayal. She has made me hear her talking about the morning he spent in her bed, and I hate that a fact I already knew can hurt this much again.
I put my hand over my stomach beneath the table.
The baby can’t understand, but that night came weeks before I knew she existed.
Declan came home the next afternoon, showered, and apologized for missing dinner with his mouth against my forehead.
I accepted the apology and asked whether the club was safe.
“You knew we were trying for a baby,” I say.
“He told me you tracked everything.”
“And when you saw the pregnancy test on the safehouse floor?”
Sasha’s gaze drops to the place my hand rests. “I knew you were pregnant.”
“You sent that information to the faction after I left.”
“I sent an update.”
“Then you called me and used the mug, the reading, and the nights he stayed with you. You wanted the pregnant wife you helped humiliate to trade evidence for more details.”
Sasha’s chair scrapes the floor as she leans closer. “Of course I wanted you humiliated! You walked into that house believing the key meant he kept nothing from you. I wanted you to know how often he chose me while you waited at home.”
“I watched him choose you in my bed. I didn’t need your help.”
The raised voices bring one security officer closer to the conference-room door. Nadia stays seated. I remember Sasha’s call and the phrase she couldn’t resist using. I agreed to this meeting instead of letting security remove her from the lobby so I could make her say what she knows.
“East Parish paid your rent,” I say. “The same notary appears on its deed and the rural storage papers filed after Black Alder received money.”
Sasha’s eyes move toward Nadia’s phone before she controls them. “You lost the property.”
She just admitted she knew the storage property was lost. I never said the site was empty, watched, or lost. “How do you know what happened there?”