Ivan
Blake called me last night and said he needed to talk to me about something. I was tired, drained from Kevin's funeral, and tired from the fight I had with Nyra. I told him we could meet at the coffee shop a few blocks from my house and was now sitting in the far corner waiting for him. He walked in wearing his police uniform, and I waved him over. I handed him his cup of coffee, and he sat down.
"You know how Kevin was stabbed in a mugging?" I nodded. "I don't think it was your usual mugging." He started and leaned in closer. "There was so much overkill, and Finley's Bar is a cop bar. Only an idiot would kill and rob a cop next to a bar filled with cops. Right?"
"What are you getting at? You suspect foul play?"
"They haven't released this to the media outlets yet, but they found something in his throat."
My brows furrowed in confusion. "In his throat?"
He pulled out an evidence bag that contained a crisp and clean note. "See how clean it is?
Whoever shoved it down his throat covered it with some clear protective bag, so it didn't break down by digestive enzymes or be splotched with blood and be difficult to read. No, he wanted us to find it and read it." He spanned his hand on the bag and scooted it toward me.
'This is how dirty rats die.'
"Average cop slur is pig, yet he used rat?" I asked as I examined the note. "This is tidy, premeditated maybe, and the killer took his time shoving it down his throat. Yet he went and stabbed Kevin ten times in the chest. Overkill isn't common in muggings. Also, the weapon of choice is usually a gun and not a knife. Were there any other weapons found on the scene?"
"Yes, a knife, but this is where it gets weird. The knife isn't the same knife used on Kevin. It's a knife that went missing in evidence two years ago. It's a case Kevin worked with his partner. Do you remember? The one with the underaged prostitute with the rape and overkill. It was because it went missing that the judge closed the case and dismissed the killer."
I took off my hat and ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. I leaned forward. "So what? Kevin is a dirty cop?"
He sighed in exasperation. "I don't know. He could have just left the knife, and we would have put two and two together, but it's like the note was placed as a warning. A rat is someone who snitches. I think Kevin was deep in blackmail, and he was going to snitch on whoever it was."
"Is there any evidence on his work computer?"
"The entire hard drive of the computer at the precinct and at his house has been wiped clean off. I went with forensic agents to sweep through his house and found nothing. Not a single print, not even a partial print.
Even his safe was cleaned through. We found a key taped behind a broken cement piece of his wall in his kitchen that led us to a safety deposit box, but it was empty. Someone got there before us, and I'm betting it's the same person he was going to snitch on."
He tapped his fingers hard on the table and put the bag away in his pocket. "Captain gave me and Miller this case. It's lowkey. No one knows we're even investigating it."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"I need your help. I don't trust anyone else in the office. If someone like Kevin was dirty, who knows who else is? Please, come back. Captain wants you back, too. Just think about it. Okay?" He stood up, and I did too. He clasped my shoulder, and I gave him a stiff smile.
"I'll think about it."
Last night, I had a strange gut feeling that Nyra was going to raid my apartment when I was at the club. I knew her men didn't trust me, and with how I snuck into her house, they were probably curious to find out who I was, who I really was.
So, I did some spring cleaning. My work office corner became dedicated to fake photos and fake certificates, and my library was everything that an electrician would have in his library.
My work laptop was hidden in a box along with the casefiles I had, which were in my storage center. I couldn't leave my safe empty, so I had my fake passport there, along with an empty gun and bullets.
They'd report it to her, but it was a gun. Everyone had a gun nowadays, but that wasn't what they'd report to her. They wouldn't have anything to report. Everything in my apartment was under my fake name; I had changed it all before putting myself in her life. It was so fake that it would seem real to her team and her.
I knew Nyra was smart, and Omar was smarter since he was ex-military. He'd try to find something in my patterns, my body language, and even in the emptiness of evidence in my apartment. I have to admit, it was smart for her to get me out of the house so they could check me out, but I was smarter than both of them combined.
My vendetta against her would only grow until it became my only personality. I even had a strange inkling that she had something to do with Kevin's death.
I couldn't be so sure yet, but I knew she had people in her pocket. She hadn't called me since our fight, and it's not like I expected her to. Nyra didn't seem like the type to apologize or be the first person to make a move.
Thing is, I was just as stubborn as her. I wasn't going to give in either. I was furious with how she reacted. Granted, I shouldn't have kissed her without her permission, but she kissed me back. She kissed me back, and it was like being welcomed into every Paradise from every religion.
It was the best kiss I'd ever had in my life. I never knew something so mellifluous existed until I tasted her mouth. Her mouth was treacherously addicting. It was saccharine, and now that I had one taste, I craved more and more.
I wanted to kiss her to be the only thing I did for the rest of my life. It was a dangerous thought to have, and every single time I thought about Nyra like this, I hated myself. I felt like a traitor to the badge, to my friends, and to Henry's memory.
I needed to take my mind off of Nyra and focus on more important things. When Henry died, I was the one that had to tell his wife. She sobbed so hard before screaming and cursing that it was my fault he died.
I still hear her screams at night and still feel her fists pounding at my chest before she crumbled to the ground. Sometimes it haunts me. Sometimes it's all I hear and feel. She left right after his funeral finished.
She packed up her suitcase, took her two kids, and left the whole city. It hurt knowing that she felt so lost in her grief and anger that she blamed me, and there were times I wished I wasn't the one that had to tell her.
Other times, I told myself she had the right to blame me. If I was a better partner, I would have known about his secret relationship with Nyra. I missed the signs, and even though I still didn't know their relationship, I was angry.
I don't know if he worked with her as a dirty cop or because he knew her in a different way. I didn't know a thing. After discovering the text message, the disappearing text message, it felt like I didn't know a thing about Henry.
I was his partner, his best friend, and yet he never confided in me. It hurt. Here I was, without a badge and gun, all my energy and time going into avenging his death when I don't even know why and how he died.
It was tiring having to pretend to be somebody around Nyra. It was exhausting having to pretend I even knew what I was doing. This woman would never trust me. Would never let me touch her again. I wouldn't be able to get close to her and force her to answer my questions.
She didn't owe me an explanation or an excuse. In my exhaustion, I asked myself if I even cared about any of it. Did I really care about Nyra and all the pathetic and horrible men she's killed?
Did I really care about lying and seducing and manipulating my way into her heart? I don't know. In this moment, I didn't know anything.
**
They say women can hold grudges better than men. That their memory is strong to only remember the bad ones and forget all the good and joyful ones. I didn't believe this until an entire week passed when I hadn't heard from Nyra, nor had I seen her around the clubs that I frequented in an attempt to see her.
I don't know if she was out of town or if she had forgotten about me and moved on. I couldn't reestablish a new connection, especially when the one I had already created was going well. I needed to clear my mind. To look at things from a different perspective. I needed to breathe and force my mind to stray away from the devil woman that occupied my mind and soul.
If I didn't see her today at her club, then I knew what I would do. The nice and polite Ivan would vanish and replace the brutal and determined Detective. I'd reinstate back on the force, and I'd join forces with Blake and hope that a lead would bring me back to her.
I needed revenge, and I needed justice. Two sides of the same coin. One more violent and bloody than the other, but I don't think I'd choose the latter when I got my hands on her. Nyra didn't care for anyone but herself, and the greedy woman needed to be brought back down to Earth.
I was being petty, and it was disgusting, honest it was, but the rational part of me that compartmentalized between work and personal life was decimated. After taking a tense shower with a raging hard-on for a hand-cuffing woman with a beguiling laugh, I got dressed and headed out to her hotel bar, where we first met.
I don't know if it was coincidental or if she knew where I was going to be, but she was at the bar sitting alone with a drink in her hand. I took a moment just so I could appreciate her effortless beauty. Only a moron wouldn't stop and stare at the celestial beauty of this woman. Nyra had this effect on me. It was staggering, triggering, and infuriating.
Her dark hair was styled and slicked back in a tight bun without a single strand out of place. Since her hair wasn't let down, it showcased the dress she was wearing. A backless black dress that flaunted the sexy tattoo she had that I'd yet to lick and trace.
The dress itself was short, barely covering her thighs, and as revealing as it was, it was long-sleeved and didn't reveal much of her chest and breasts. It was the sexiest dress I'd ever seen on a woman, and I knew it was mainly because it was the woman and not the dress.
Tall and dark heels took place on her feet with laces that bound around her ankles. Her coat was placed next to her, along with her purse and phone. The moment she cocked her head to the side and smiled at me, I was a fucking goner. I'd bark if she told me to, and that was the fucking truth.
Honest to God.
A/N: Thoughts?