Chapter 14 — Silence Is Also Evidence #2
“Answer me!” I squeezed her knees. “What is Gabriel Moretti to you?”
Elena looked at me. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but she didn't let them fall. She saw through my performance, through the cruelty, and found the terrified man hiding inside.
“He's my lawyer,” she said, her voice cold, controlled, perfect. “And our relationship is strictly professional and protected by attorney-client privilege. Any insinuation to the contrary is a sexist attempt to discredit my professional competence.”
I let go of her knees and stepped back, hit by a wave of relief and pride so strong it nearly made me smile.
“Perfect,” I whispered. “That's exactly it. 'Sexist attempt.' Use that. They're afraid of looking like predators. Use victimization as a shield.”
“I learned from the best,” she retorted, wiping away a lone tear that had escaped.
I walked to the laptop.
“Let's take a break. I need to edit the audio.”
“Gabriel...” Her voice stopped me.
I turned.
“Do you believe that?” she asked. “That our relationship is strictly professional?”
I looked at her sitting alone under the spotlight, wearing my shirt, marked by my touch, worn out by my intensity.
“No,” I answered, the truth raw. “Nothing about this is professional, Elena. It's personal. It's visceral. And that's why it'll work. Because the best lie is the one that hides the most obvious truth.”
I sat down at the computer and slipped the headphones back on.
The task was surgical.
I opened the audio editing software. The waveform appeared on the screen, a jagged green line representing our fate.
I found the exact point. The moment Richard groaned on the floor and I stopped hitting him.
“Never. Again. Touch. What. Is. Mine.”
That phrase... did I need to keep it?
“What is mine.” Possessive. Incriminating. But in the context of a fight, it could be read as “my witness,” “my case.” Risky, but authentic. I decided to keep it.
But what came after...
The sound of the lock. The sound of the kiss. The sound of clothes.
I selected the entire block of audio. Seventeen minutes of passion and crime.
My finger hovered over the Delete key.
I hesitated.
Those seventeen minutes were proof that I'd lost. That I'd broken my fundamental rule. But they were also proof that I'd lived. Hearing her moans, hearing my own voice stripped of every legal pretense... it was the most real thing I'd ever possessed.
I wanted to keep a copy. A sick, selfish part of me wanted to save that file to an encrypted drive and listen to it on nights when the loneliness of Blackwood Ridge became unbearable.
But I couldn't.
Silence is evidence too. If I let that file exist anywhere, it would be a weapon pointed at her head.
I looked at Elena across the room. Her head was bowed, her fingers massaging her temples.
I'd promised to protect her. And the only way to protect her was to destroy the evidence that I loved her. Or desired her. The line between the two had vanished in the shower.
I pressed Delete.
The green line disappeared. The space went blank.
Now the audio ended with the sound of the door slamming, as if I'd walked out and left Richard on the floor. A perfect digital lie.
I saved the file. EVIDENCE_MASTER_EDIT_FINAL.WAV.
Then I did something that physically hurt. I formatted the original listening device. Overwrote the data with random zeros, seven passes—the military standard for data destruction.
There was no going back. What happened in that room now existed only in our memory and in the marks on her skin.
I took off the headphones and stood up.
“It's done,” I announced.
Elena looked up.
“You deleted it?”
“Everything. All that's left is Richard's confession and me stepping in.”
“What if they ask for the original?”
“The device was 'damaged' during the fight. The recovered file is fragmented. That's our story. And they'll have to swallow it.”
I walked over to her and held out my hand.
“Stand up. The interrogation is over for today.”
She took my hand and stood. Her body brushed against mine. The spark was instant—a reminder that deleting an audio file didn't erase biological reality.
“Tomorrow,” I said, holding her hand, looking into her eyes, “we're going to walk into that federal building. You're going to wear the most conservative suit you have. You're going to pull your hair back. You're going to be the invisible translator.”
“And you?”
“I'm going to be the arrogant lawyer who's furious that the government is harassing his staff. I'm going to draw all the fire to myself. I'm going to make Miller hate me so much he'll forget to look at you.”
“Gabriel…” She squeezed my hand. “What if it doesn't work? What if they have more than we think? Richard said he leaked the money trail.”
“Then we improvise.” I brought her hand to my lips, kissing her knuckles—an old, courtly gesture that seemed both out of place and perfect at the same time. “But we're not going down, Elena. Not without taking half of Washington with us.”
The penthouse intercom rang.
A sharp, intrusive sound.
I looked at the panel on the wall. The lobby camera showed a man in a blue uniform. A courier.
“Are you expecting something?” I asked, tense.
“No.”
I went to the panel and activated the audio.
“Yes?”
“Delivery for Mr. Moretti. Urgent priority. Requires signature.”
I unlocked the service elevator.
“Go to the bedroom,” I ordered Elena. “Take the laptop. If I shout, you format the hard drive.”
“Gabriel…”
“Go!”
She ran to the bedroom, taking the edited evidence.
I waited in the entrance hall. The gun I kept in the office safe—a legally registered Glock 19, rarely used—seemed very far away now.