Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“Iassure you, that’s Nicole Monroe,” Ava said.
“I assure you, it’s not,” Lovell said. “I haven’t seen Chanel in ages, but I’d recognize her anywhere. She hated me, liked making my life miserable. Believe me, I remember.”
Two muffled voices conferred as Daphne caught his eye. He didn’t see doubt there, just concern.
“Is it possible Chanel stole Nicole’s identity?” Daphne asked, her gaze fixed on his.
“It would be unusual, but possible,” Ava said.
“People steal identities all the time. Is it really that unusual?” Daphne asked.
“My neighborhood wasn’t a safe one, and when your life depends on knowing who’s around you at all times, people would have noticed,” Lovell responded. But she had. Somehow.
Daphne frowned. “You said Chanel was killed in a home invasion?”
“She was,” Callie said. “Or that’s what the police report said.”
“Can you pull it up?” Daphne asked.
“What are you thinking?” Lovell asked.
“If Chanel stole her identity and, as you pointed out, folks weren’t likely to mistake people, then that means the victim was intentionally misidentified as Chanel,” Daphne said. “I’m curious who ID’d her and if she was ID’d on the scene or later.”
“On the scene,” Ava said. “By Nicole Monroe, Malcom Carter, and Keshaun Low.”
“Anyone want to take a bet as to the real identity of the ‘Nicole Monroe’ who identified the body?” Lovell muttered.
“Who’s Keshaun Low?” Daphne asked.
“When I left, he was a mid-level member of one of the local gangs,” Lovell said, pulling up the smattering of memories he had about the man. And he’d been a man—already in his early thirties when Lovell left seventeen years ago. “He’d be in his early fifties by now, I think.”
“Fifty-four,” Ava said. “Nicole is the face and manager of Sweet Dreams, Malcom the head of security, and Keshaun, who goes by Kenneth Low now, drives the clients to and from the house and manages the…”
“Trafficked humans?” Daphne supplied.
“Yeah, them,” Ava said, her voice heavy with the weight of what she’d uncovered.
“So the actual murder victim all those years ago was likely the real Nicole Monroe, maybe at the hands of Chanel, Malcom, and Keshaun/Ken, and then they identified the body as that of Chanel, while Chanel adopted Nicole’s identity, conveniently avoiding all the charges brought against her? ” Callie summarized.
Lovell didn’t want to agree. He might have cut ties with his siblings ages ago, but he’d done it because they weren’t healthy for him to be around.
That was a far cry from thinking of them as potential murderers, willing to steal a dead woman’s life to escape responsibility for their own misdeeds, only to set up and run a human trafficking ring.
But he had to. “Yeah, I guess that’s what we’re thinking,” he said.
Daphne’s hand slid over his. He spread his fingers, and she slipped hers between them.
“Wouldn’t Nicole’s family report her missing? And James said people would have noticed if Chanel was suddenly masquerading as Nicole,” Daphne pointed out.
“Nicole didn’t have any family. Her parents died in a train accident—their car got stuck on the tracks a year earlier—and she had no siblings or cousins,” Ava said.
“And while people would have noticed Chanel taking Nicole’s identity,” Lovell said, “even if they wanted to say something, who would they have told? No one cared about the people who lived in that neighborhood—not the cops, not social services, not any government agency. The only people who did care were those who wanted it cleaned up and swept away. Maybe it’s changed, but back then, it may as well have been its own country, with its own set of laws. ”
The familiar feeling of detachment stole through his body.
He’d nearly forgotten how hopeless, how isolated, he’d felt as a kid.
There was New Jersey, then the tristate area, then the rest of the United States.
And then there were the twelve blocks that made up his neighborhood.
Walled in by invisible barriers made by the communities on both sides.
For those who lived on the outside, it was a blight that the rest of the city needed protection from.
For those who lived within, it was all they knew.
Within those few blocks, they could live or die as they pleased; they commanded their destinies—or so they told themselves.
A few understood that the control it offered was nothing but an illusion, a false power given to them by a system that had utterly failed them.
Some accepted and lived with this, while others, like him, got out.
Ava sighed. “I wish I could say it’s changed, but it’s not much better.”
“Okay,” Daphne said on an exhale, her fingers giving his a squeeze. “Where does all this lead us now? We believe Chanel—aka Nicole—and Malcom learned that James inherited something, that they took an educated gamble that it was worth killing over, then hired Weeks and Beeks to do the job.”
“I need to figure out how Weeks and Beeks are connected to either Chanel or Malcom. Maybe Ken, too, since he was there the night Chanel assumed her new identity,” Ava said.
“And then?” Daphne asked.
“Then we gather the evidence and Stella does her thing. The FBI gets to close down a human trafficking ring and catch a bunch of criminals, at least one of whom will also be wanted for Lovell’s attempted murder, your kidnapping, and a bunch of other related charges,” Callie said.
Lovell had a different take on how things would go down, but for now, he’d let Callie and Ava think they called the shots.
“Anything we can do?” Daphne asked, the weight of her stare settling on his soul. As if she understood he wouldn’t stand by and let the FBI go at this alone. Not when it was his past, his siblings, at the center of it all.
“No, hang tight tonight and come home as planned tomorrow. We’ll have updates by then,” Ava replied. They each muttered goodbyes, then Daphne closed out of the video call.
“Want to tell me what you’re thinking?” she asked.
He picked up his wine and took a sip, then releasing her hand, he rose and walked to the window again. Humanity streamed through the streets below, each person carrying the burden of their own worries, happiness, thoughts, concerns.
Habit told him to shake her question off.
To toss out a glib reply about not being sure what he thought.
Or something along those lines. He could; it would be easy.
But his response would set the course for whatever remained of their relationship, of that he was certain.
No matter how he dressed it up, if he shut her out now, she was a smart woman—she’d see the choice he made.
She was also a proud woman and would adjust her course, her thoughts about him, and what they might be, accordingly.
She wouldn’t be angry at him for choosing not to invite her into this part of his life.
Although in some ways, it would be easier if she was.
No, she’d respect his decision not to take the next step with her and wouldn’t push.
They’d enjoy each other physically, but she’d shut down emotionally.
And she’d walk away when the arrests were made and the dust settled.
He turned and looked at her. “Do you ever wish you had a crystal ball?”
Her head tipped. “To see the future?”
“Or to know the right answer? The right decision?”
She studied him, then raised her glass and took a sip of her wine as she leaned back in the chair.
“Once,” she replied. Now it was his turn to cock his head.
“When I left home to take up my modeling career. I was eighteen. Callie was sixteen. She was tougher than me, always had been. And she had an escape plan, too. I hated leaving her, though. It felt like I was abandoning the one good, real thing in my life. That I was taking the coward’s way out.
Making my life easier when I knew how hard it would be for her after I left.
” She paused and took another sip, this one slightly bigger than the last. “I also knew that if I didn’t get out then, I might not ever have the same chance.
Eighteen is on the older side to start modeling.
Starting at twenty? Nearly impossible. By the grace of everything in the universe, it turned out okay, but back then, yeah, having a crystal ball would have been handy. ”
He took a sip of his wine, thinking of her at that age, making that decision. The Parks home had not been a happy one, and seeing how close she and Callie were, he could only imagine how hard that must have been.
“You wouldn’t have used it to change a bad decision?” he asked. She’d picked a moment, a decision, that had, in the end, turned out okay. Unlike most people, she hadn’t chosen a situation that, if she’d had that crystal ball, she would have done something differently.
“There are inherently bad decisions. Usually ones that intentionally cause harm—murder, betrayal, those sorts of things. But outside of those, I’m not sure there really are many bad or good decisions.
We make hundreds, if not thousands, of them every day.
The outcomes may be bad or good or neutral, but there are so many factors that influence those outcomes—the weather, other people’s decisions, nature.
How can we possibly know if it was truly our decision, and ours alone, that led to any specific result?
What if we’d made a different decision and the outcome was even worse?
“I’ve never intentionally harmed something or someone, although I can’t say the same for unintentional harm.
No one could, not at my age. Are there things I regret doing or saying?
Sure. But I’d rather spend my time making amends, if possible, and learning from it than ruminating over everything I could have done differently. ”
“Because you can’t go back for a redo,” he said.
She nodded. “But I can go forward. I can honor the mistake I made, the harm I caused, by learning from it and not doing it again.”
“Is it that easy?”
She chuckled. “Some are easier than others.” Her eyes dropped to her wineglass, and she ran her fingers up and down the stem.
“There was a model I met, early in my career. Luke was two years older than me, and we became friends. Good friends. He’d often talk about the pressures of the job, about how he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay in it.
He could have left, but his father was undergoing cancer treatment, and their insurance didn’t cover everything he needed.
The money Luke made covered those costs.
There wasn’t any other way for him to legally make as much as they needed in the timeline they needed it.
“We’d been friends for about two years when I started noticing a change in him.
He started having manic episodes and panic attacks.
We spent a lot of time talking, but in retrospect, I never saw what I should have.
I didn’t have the experience or knowledge to understand he was crawling to the edge of never coming back.
I thought just being his friend was the best thing I could do for him.
” She paused again, this time lifting her glass to her lips to finish her drink.
“I’m sure you can guess that my friendship, as magical as it is, wasn’t enough.
” Her lips twisted in a dark smile filled with regret.
“He died of an intentional overdose a month after his father’s cancer went into remission.
I spent months flagellating myself for not doing more, for not being a better friend, for not seeing the seriousness of his mental state. ”
Needing to be closer to her, he crossed the room and took a seat on the bench at the end of their bed. He could reach out and touch her, but she was in her own space right now, a delicate balance of memories, pain, and determination.
“And then what?” he asked.
She sent a wry smile his way. “I was woken up, shaken out of it, by his mother, of all people. I was visiting her one day and, selfishly, stewing in my own loss. She looked at me and asked, point-blank, what I could have done differently. I answered with the usual things, like suggesting he go to therapy or talk to his agent about the kinds of gigs he was getting, but in the end, it was clear that I had no real clue. No clue how to deal with someone experiencing the kind of crisis Luke was in. She suggested I figure that out and help make sure that it didn’t happen again to someone else’s child. ”
“Tough.”
A genuine smile. “Midwestern to their core. Good, solid people who loved their youngest son just as he was.”
“What did you do?”
“I approached the head of the agency I worked through and asked to take classes on supporting people in crisis so that I could then teach others about it—how to spot it and how to respond. A kind of train-the-trainer thing. Not that we’d be the person to help them, but we could be the people who knew how to find help.
” She reached out and took his glass, finishing the last of his wine, too.
“The agency still runs that program. It’s a sort of peer-to-peer support group.
And it’s one of the reasons some models give for choosing to work with them.
The work is always grueling, but when an agency values the mental health of its talent, it’s better for everyone involved. ”
“And that set you on a path.”
She nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not always great about learning from my mistakes or bad decisions. But usually, once I calm myself down, which may take fifteen minutes or fifteen days, I gain enough perspective to at least ask myself: What do I need to learn from this?”
With the rain pattering on the tall window and the glow of headlights and taillights warped by the drops, something quieted inside Lovell.
Something he’d never even realized hummed through him.
This gentle night, this night when it felt as if the energy in the room allowed him to rest, truly rest, for the first time in possibly ever, was something he wanted.
He wanted the comfort of it, he wanted the closeness of it.
He even wanted the fear that edged against his soul telling him if this thing between him and Daphne didn’t work out it would hurt far more than anything in his life ever had.
But that fear didn’t make him want to run; it made him want to fight.
Fight for her, for them, and for more nights like this when they could be raw and honest and fully themselves with each other.
And fight he would.