“It doesn’t sound funny,” he whispered back. “Not the least bit funny.”
I held his eyes and said nothing.
“You ran away,” he stated.
“Yes,” I whispered.
I ran away. Fuck yes, I ran away.
“Had he hurt you before?”
I nodded. “He was changing. Something was happening.” I hesitated then repeated, “He was changing.”
“What was happening?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I tried to talk… we had… we fought. He would get…” I paused. “Suddenly, it never happened before but suddenly when we fought it would get physical so I stopped trying to talk.”
“He fought the divorce.”
“Damian doesn’t like losing hold on what he thinks is his.”
He studied me with eyes now as gentle as his voice.
Then he said quietly, “But he left you alone for four and a half years.”
“Yes, he left me alone,” I whispered.
“Then he wanted you back.”
“Yes.”
“Did he explain why he approached you after all this time?”
I shook my head but said, “He said he was… he said…” I pulled in a deep breath then told him, “He said he loved me, missed me, messed up and wanted to make it up to me.”
“And since that lunch, he’s been contacting you regularly in an effort to do that.”
“Yes.”
His head tipped slightly to the side. “And after what he’d done to you, you took his calls?
You had lunch with him?”
Suddenly, needing to know, needing to know since I’d told him something I’d never told anyone before, I asked, “What’s your name?”
“Sorry, Agent Calhoun.”
“Well, Agent Calhoun, the answer to your question is, yes. I took his calls and I had lunch with him. Damian is who he is and I know who he is. I didn’t want him showing up at my house. I didn’t want him sending presents and flowers. I didn’t want him anywhere near me.
He thought, throughout the whole time we were getting divorced, that I’d come back. He told me so and he worked at it. Only when I saw it through did he leave me alone. Whatever this is, whatever he wants from me, I had to see it through until it sunk in with him that I wasn’t coming back and he left me alone. So, I was seeing it through.”
He studied me again then he remarked, “That took a lot of courage.”
“He raped me, Agent Calhoun, he hit me but he didn’t kill me. As long as I’m breathing, I’ve got fight in me and luckily I’m breathing.”
It was at that he whispered, “You aren’t like a lot of women.”
“Yes I am,” I whispered back. “I’m like all women. You see this but inside there’s something else that I won’t let you see or him see but it’s the mess he left me. But that’s mine. No one gets to it. Everything you get and he gets is a show. One thing you learn really quickly and really well when that kind of thing happens to you is to be a fucking great actress. You don’t have a choice in that because a man like that does something like that to you, you lose having choices. The only choice you have is what role you intend to play. I picked my role and that… that Agent Calhoun is what you see.”
I watched him draw in breath but he didn’t respond.
Then I asked, “Now, will you tell me what’s going on?”
He held my eyes as he finally answered.
“Tonight, we swept up your ex-husband’s entire operation. He’s the top narcotics distributor in Denver with ties direct to Colombia.”
I blinked.
Then I breathed, “What? ”
“As far as we can trace it, after a number of years being a low level dealer to high end clientele, mostly colleagues, he entered the game in a serious way ten years ago and crawled his way to the top.”
I felt my lips part as I stared at him.
He kept talking. “Your name is joint with his on all his offshore accounts. There are four of them totaling seventy-five million US dollars.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
“You hit our radar with your lunch and we monitor his phones. We were aware you were in regular contact with him over the phone for the last six months though we did not know what these conversations were about. And we were aware your name was on his accounts.
However, we didn’t know what your involvement was in his operation. As the disintegration of your marriage and your divorce coincided relatively closely with his moves to elevate his position in the business, we thought you’d discovered what he was doing. But we couldn’t know why you and he resumed contact.”