Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 100716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100716 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
“Then what is our meeting regarding?” It is an effort for her to keep disdain from her voice when she says, “I have criminals to catch.”
Her innuendo has a double meaning, and I’m done pretending it doesn’t.
“I am a private man, Ms. Pascall. If someone wants to know something about me, I prefer a direct approach.”
Unwillingly, my eyes stray to the two-way mirror.
Mara thinks our downfall is because she pushed for answers. I know that isn’t close to the truth. Her ability to disarm me is one of her greatest assets.
“I do not appreciate when my privacy and the privacy of those closest to me are blatantly disrespected.” I was standing in front of a large contingency of media, preparing to announce my forfeit of the presidential race, when Darius announced there was a detective snooping around the premises, asking questions about Mara.
“It is Detective Pascall,” Sanya snaps out, impressing me with her gall. “And I’ve been trying to approach you for almost two weeks now. My calls have been left unanswered, hence me needing to dig a little deeper.”
She has me there, but I act coy. “I will be sure to have a word with my secretary.”
“Thank you.” She smiles evilly before flipping her interrogation on its head. “What is your involvement with Miskaela Palkova?”
“Who?” I reply, acting daft.
It is all an act. Dr. Babkin’s name was revealed by Mara an hour after I was handed a list of his victims’ names by a reporter who had been sold information on Mara’s previous name. He couldn’t run the story because Mara was underage when she was abused and, as such, is protected by strict victim laws.
The reporter’s intel suggested there could be recordings of Dr. Babkin’s “sessions” with his victims, but confirmation was only achieved when I left Mara’s apartment with the full intention of returning as soon as possible.
Mara wasn’t much older than Tillie when her speech therapist added a hands-on approach to their twice-weekly sessions. At the start, it was an innocent finger slip while showing Mara how to hold her tongue while speaking. It took a couple of years for him to progress to more risqué moves.
As Mara hinted last week, the abuse didn’t truly start until Dr. Babkin approached her family outside of office hours.
In the footage I watched, he was quick to assure Mara what they were doing was approved by her father whenever she questioned him.
“Remember, your father gave me permission to do anything necessary to stop your silly stutter.”
I stopped watching from then. The damage to my psyche had already been done, but some good came from the travesty. I no longer need proof that Mara can trust me with Tillie. The evidence was right in front of me.
I didn’t see Mara in that footage. I saw Tillie, and every sly look Dr. Babkin hit her with had me desperate to dig him up and revive him just so I could kill him again.
I’ve never wanted to hurt a man as much as I did in the seconds leading to Rafael switching off the footage and sending Darius’s laptop sailing across the cab of my town car, and I was given the chance to do precisely that only hours later.
I’m drawn from dangerous thoughts when Detective Pascall repeats, “Miskaela Palkova?”
My anger that she is endeavoring to drag Mara into a fight she doesn’t belong in makes my reply dry and full of deceit. “I don’t know who that is.”
“Oh…” She can’t pull off a daft expression. She looks constipated. “Then why were you seen getting in a cab with her last month?”
My jaw flexes when she pulls out the image that forced me to keep my desires on the back burner for two weeks. Not once has this image worked in my favor. It has slapped me in the face time and time again, and I see it doing the same now as well.
“This is you, isn’t it?” She taps on the image of me sliding in the back of a cab on Mara and Tillie’s heels. “It sure looks like you.”
“It is me,” I agree, lost as to where she is going with this, but confident I won’t like the direction she takes. “But I still don’t know who Miskaela Palkova is.”
“She”—she points to Mara—“is Miskaela Palkova.”
“Oh.” My daft expression is far more convincing than hers. “Then why didn’t you just say that?” I pick up the image of Mara, Tillie, and me like my heart isn’t racing before inspecting it with more diligence. “Ah. Yes. That is the woman who promised to dry clean the suit jacket her daughter had vomited on—”
“Daughter?” she interrupts. “Miskaela’s child is a girl?”
I shrug, hopeful it will hide my wish to cringe. This is why I got into politics. I’m a shit actor. “Or perhaps she was her nanny. I didn’t ask for details. I followed her to make sure she upheld her pledge.” I scoff like it isn’t absurd to ask something of someone with nothing. “My jacket was from a limited collection. I didn’t want to be lumped with an excessive dry-cleaning bill when I wasn’t responsible for the mess.”