Page 68 of Broken Boss

Chris’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say anything. The words came out with an edge of bitterness; I’m still mad. I should be more upset, but the last few weeks have been so confusing, learning more and more about him, working beside him.

“Stephen was charged with manslaughter. He was at a bar where a woman died. Her throat was slit and she was stabbed; they found her out behind the building with a knife in her ribs. Stephen was there that night with friends.”

My gaze swings away, fingers tightening in Frank’s ruff. The big mutt tries to move in closer, sensing my dread and sorrow.

“The knife was his,” I whisper, hating to admit it.

What I tell Chris, and what he might already remember, is that the knife had Stephen’s name on it—S. Cooper. A graduation present from our dad, and a murder weapon. It was what got Stephen arrested. Along with the fact that?—

“He was involved in a brawl that night, wasn’t he?”

Chris’s question is hesitant. He does remember. But he doesn’t want to upset me. Something in me softens at the realization and I feel my throat start to close, eyes stinging. I nod.

“There was a fight. Stephen didn’t start it, but he participated in it. He’s not a fighter,” I explain, defending him like I did all those years ago to our dad, to people we knew. “He never has been. He was more beat up than most of the other people in the fight. His nose was broken.”

When they came to arrest him, he was still bruised, the bridge of his nose swollen and crooked.

“And he knew the girl.”

Chris says it quietly. No matter how quiet, though, it sounds like a nail in the coffin.

“Yes. She was from our neighborhood.”

It sounded bad. It looked bad. Even all these years later.

I don’t bother filling in the rest of the details, because it’s obvious from the look on his face that Chris is reliving it in his head.

Stephen knew the girl; Stephen had actually argued with the girl’s boyfriend a week before. He and the girl had been chatting and laughing out on the street. The boyfriend saw and was angry, jealous, and went after Stephen, who deescalated the situation.

But other people noticed the exchange. There were witnesses who said Stephen shared one last long look with the girl. I remember being confused—were Stephen and the girl messing around? Had the boyfriend found out?

But why would Stephen kill her?

He wouldn’t.

A mantra I’d been carrying for years; a truth I knew deep in my heart.

He would never hurt anyone, would never have done that.

“It looked bad,” I say before Chris can get the words out. He snaps his mouth shut, intense eyes locked on mine. “But he didn’t do it. He went to Fishkill anyway.”

“And you became a lawyer.”

Only a second of hesitation before I nod. “I became a lawyer.”

“To get him out?”

My throat closes again, not out of grief this time, but self-preservation. I almost say, to take you down.

I almost tell the truth.

It’s hard not to, sitting in front of Chris Sharpe. I can imagine how witnesses in court feel, their bellies in knots, compelled to start admitting things they promised to keep secret.

I swallow my own secret down, and instead let him have a half-truth.

“Yes. But I haven’t found a way to do that yet.”

Chapter 22

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