Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Nice place,” I said, because it was.
“Thanks,” Elizabeth said numbly, walking to her kitchen to turn on her pricey-looking latte machine. “It’s expensive,” she admitted as she pumped what looked like cookie batter syrup into a mug, the ritual seemingly grounding her, bringing her back to herself. “But it has a lot of amenities,” she told me. “When I did the math on what it would cost to get a cheaper place and pay for all those things separately, this just made more sense. Can I get you a coffee?” she asked as I walked over to the cat who was lounging in the sun near the sliding doors to the balcony, soaking up some rays.
“Sure. However you take it is fine,” I told her, even if I generally didn’t drink flavored coffee. If it helped her relax to make it her way, I would choke it down.
“His name is Kevin,” she told me as the cat purred. “He was my grandfather’s. He’s ancient and mostly deaf, but sweet. Do you have any pets?” she asked, bringing me over the first coffee, then going back to make another.
“Thank you. No. I work too much,” I told her.
“I do too,” she admitted. “But it was me or a shelter,” she went on. “I figured this is better.”
I heard the rattle of a pill bottle and looked over to find her in one of her kitchen cabinets that seemed to serve as a small pharmacy. Catching me looking, she went to shrug, forgetting her stitches, and winced. “Life is a constant battle of trying to decide if it is a migraine that I can manage with some over-the-counter pills, or if I need rescue meds. And then there are the vitamins that are supposed to help,” she said, waving at a line of bottles with matching labels but different words. Calcium, Magnesium, Zinc, Riboflavin.
“My mom used to get debilitating migraines,” I admitted. “If we came home from school to find her in bed with all the lights off, we knew we needed to keep it down. Luckily, they seemed to go away after menopause.”
“Only about twenty more years to see if that works for me too,” she said, giving me a shrug as she took a long sniff of her coffee before taking a sip.
She walked over to the living room, waving toward the couch as she took a seat in one of her chairs. “I’m assuming you’re here because you want to talk.”
“About your boss, it seems,” I agreed, taking a sip of my coffee to put her at ease. “Wow,” I said, brows going up. “This is surprisingly good.”
“I know, right?” she asked, shooting me a small smile. “I used to pay, what, eight dollars for one of these a few times a day. Until I realized that just buying that latte machine actually saves me a lot of money.”
“So, you work for Senator Michael Westmoore,” I said, watching as she took a deep breath.
“Yes,” she said, her tone tight, making me think that it was definitely the senator who seemed to be chewing her out on the phone with before the shooting who seemed to be chewing her out.
“And he’s involved with the Bratva?”
“The Bratva?” she repeated, brows pinching.
“The Russian mafia,” I told her.
“Oh. Oh,” she said, eyes widening. “That… that makes sense, I guess.”
“How so?”
“Last night, I was working late at the office, and I overheard a conversation my boss was having with a man named Dimitri,” she told me.
“What were they saying?”
“It seemed like a veiled threat,” she told me.
“Over what?”
“Someone who has been arrested for human trafficking.”
That tracked, since it seemed likely that the women at the ‘massage parlors’ were probably not there willingly. Especially in these days where it was easier—and more profitable than ever—for someone interested in doing so to run their own sex work service. Without even needing to sleep with men if they didn’t want to.
“And your boss is supposed to try to get them out?” I asked.
“Yes. And if he doesn’t, well, the Dimitri guy made it sound like there would be, you know, consequences. I guess… we learned what kind today.”
“Are you that valuable to your boss?”
“I’m probably the only person who can get him reelected,” she admitted. “But… I doubt he even realizes that.”
“He seems like a real dick,” I said, getting a surprised laugh out of her.
“He is,” she admitted, nodding. “But I never thought he would be involved with human trafficking.” She sat with that a second, then shook her head. “Why would he get involved with the… Bratva?”
“Money,” I said. It always traced back to money.
“But how?”
“The senator votes in ways that loosen laws on trafficking, or imports, or things like that. Or they work their connections to get police or district attorneys to look the other way. In turn, they get a cut of the money that comes from the Bratva’s business endeavors.”