The sound of her apologies played through my memory. The way she spoke about herself, as if she were dirty. The things she’d told me about her family. The things I’d dug up about DiSalvo and Clarence Sherman.
At first, after I realized she’d taken my most closely guarded secrets and thrown them back in my face, I let the rage run free. I started frequenting rougher parts of town. It didn’t take long to find an underground fighting club. I was welcomed with open arms, fresh meat for the regulars to pummel. I took my licks and broke noses in return. Over the course of two weekends, I’d become known as the “Rebel Rager,” a cheesy nickname based on my accent and my fighting style. I didn’t care. I’d been called worse. All I cared about was taking out my anger on anyone who dared challenge me.
I spilled blood every chance I got, letting the rage inside have its fill before returning to my apartment and passing out for the night. The violence deadened my senses, but took my pain and made it tangible, real. I could bandage a cut, be ginger with a bruised rib, spit out the blood that ran in my mouth. The only impossible feat was treating the pain that ricocheted in my chest every time I thought of how Evan had betrayed me.
After one particularly vicious night left me with too many cuts and bruises, Jonesy came to my desk.
“Not looking so good, my friend.”
“We aren’t friends.”
He shrugged. He had a file in his hands. The name Clarence Sherman was imprinted on the outside in stark letters.
“What’s that?”
“Something you might find of interest in your current case. I told you she was more than she seems. I told her you were dangerous. Neither of you listened to me.” His tone was chiding.
I wanted to knock his teeth out. My poker face was gone, washed away in the tide of my anger. He dropped the file on my desk and backed away.
“I’m only trying to help.”
“I remember the last time you helped.” I wished I didn’t. I recalled how Evan had shown up at my apartment, ready to rip me to pieces, how instead she had slept in my arms. But her angelic appearance hid her demon. I knew that now. “Didn’t turn out so well.”
“Well, just give that file a look, and if you feel the same way after you’ve gone through it, then I understand.” He sauntered off.
I picked up the file, wondering what someone named Clarence Sherman had to do with anything.
I flipped open the front flap, humoring Jonesy, or so I told myself. Clarence Sherman’s mug shot was enough to make me want to end him. The creep’s face leered up at me from the glossy sheet, death to bitches tattooed on his neck.
Page after page detailed his depravity. He was one of DiSalvo’s most vicious enforcers. I continued flipping, his rap sheet like the diary of a madman. I stopped when I came to his last arrest record for murder, no surprise there. Then I saw the notation at the bottom of his arraignment sheet. Evangeline Pallida was appointed as his public defender. This had been years ago, when she’d first started out. I smirked—when she’d wanted to “help people.” What a load of horseshit.
I kept flipping, faster now, looking at the plea deals offered by the prosecutor, each one refused by Evan. Then came the trial transcript. I skimmed past the prosecution’s case and slowed to pore over Evan’s arguments. She did well for her client, far better than that piece of shit deserved. Her words were persuasive, solid. I shook my head. She put her credibility and her bar license on the line for a man who was no better than an animal, worse even. She truly had no remorse, no decency in her anywhere. After seeing her closing arguments about how Sherman’s charges were a “miscarriage of justice,” I’d had enough and slammed the file closed.
A sheet of paper flew out, disturbed by the rush of air. I picked it up, preparing to cram it back into the file before throwing the whole thing in Jonesy’s face.
The paper caught my eye. It was newsprint, a story on the trial’s outcome. There was an inset photo of the courthouse steps, bathed in late-afternoon light. Evan was in motion when the picture was snapped, her foot hovering over the next step in her descent away from the courthouse. But her movement wasn’t what caught my attention.
It was her face, almost unrecognizable. She was haggard, haunted. Hollows resided where her cheeks should have been, and the dark circles under her eyes rivaled some nasty shiners. Her eyes—Jesus Christ, the fear that lived in them in that photo tore at my guts. She was terrified.
I glanced farther up the picture. There, in the shade of the stone overhang, stood DiSalvo. He haunted the top of the steps, Sherman at his elbow, both men watching Evan’s retreat.