Page 62 of Offside Angel

“How about the beginning? I’ve gotten your story secondhand, but I’d like to hear it from the source to keep things clean.”

“Okay.”

I don’t know why I’m shaking. You’d think by this point I’d be used to telling my horror story to people. I went from not telling anyone for the first twenty-six years of my life to telling a new person every couple of days. It should be easier by now.

Spoiler: it isn’t.

I offer Hollis the same shortened version of events I gave our friends the night they came to Zane’s condo, but it’s still a very fresh Band-Aid I’m ripping off here.

When tears pool in my eyes, Hollis slides a box of tissues my way, and then waves for me to continue.

At the end, he doesn’t offer apologies or condolences. He just leans forward and steeples his hands in front of him. “You have two options, as I see them. You can either pretend Katerina Costa ceased to exist the day your dad died and hope you never get caught. Or you can turn yourself in.”

His options are a one-two punch to the chest. It takes me a few seconds to remember how to breathe. “Those aren’t—I thought you were supposed to give me options. New options.”

Zane made it sound like there might be a way out of this mess for me. The dark, cynical parts of me didn’t believe him. But the soft, mushy parts of me that melt against him in the night and pinch his ass while he makes our morning coffee grabbed onto that little bit of hope.

Now, it’s being yanked away.

“Sorry; let me explain.” Hollis plucks a pen out of the cup on his desk and sweeps a clean piece of paper in front of him. He draws two circles on the page. “You have two options. No matter what happens from this point forward, you either tell people you killed your father or you don’t. Those are the big picture options, but—” He draws lines coming out from each circle in every direction like rays of sunlight. “—each option comes with an array of smaller options.”

I frown down at his drawing. Maybe Taylor had a point. This guy might be a quack. “Okay, so I confess that I killed my dad and they, what, let me pick my jumpsuit color?”

“It’s about the tone.” He points a finger at me. “For instance, you could have folded your hands demurely in your lap and requested that I explain what those options would look like. Instead, you scowled and hit me with sarcasm.”

I wince. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” He waves me off, completely unbothered. “The only thing that matters to me is making sure I get the best possible outcome for you. So, in the case of confessing that you killed your father, you have the option of showing deep remorse for your actions, but explaining that you had to do it to save your life. Or you tremble and shake and look as scared now as the day it all happened, which would garner you some sympathy, especially with the battered women crowd.”

I can’t hide my grimace. “So we’re manipulating people?”

“No, you’re selling them your version of the truth,” he corrects. “If you hit people with nothing but the facts, they’ll assume the worst. If you want the truth to go down easy, you have to flavor it with some emotion. You have to give them a hero and a villain—someone to root for.”

I look at the pen-drawn rays coming off of the sun and wonder how many of those options end with me in a jumpsuit I may or may not get to choose the color of. “You think I could be someone to root for?”

Hollis smirks. “By the time I’m done with you, they won’t have a choice.”

Zane calls me thirty seconds after I walk out of my meeting with Hollis. “How did it go?”

I’m not sure who has been sending Zane second-by-second updates, Evan or Hollis, but I don’t even care. My head is spinning and Taylor abandoned me to caffeinate. I need someone to talk to.

“Well, he laid out my options.”

“Was he an asshole about it?” Zane asks. “I should’ve been there with you. Hollis can be like that, but he knows what he’s doing. I told him not to overwhelm you at the first meeting.”

“He didn’t. Well, he did. But it isn’t his fault; I think I’m just easily overwhelmed right now.” I blow out a breath. “He thinks I need more evidence of my abuse.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Zane snaps. “You have evidence. The P.I. found all of those hospital records. What does he want, video footage and a play-by-play commentary?”

I shudder at the thought. “He said the hospital records are a good start, but it might not be enough to prove that my life was in danger, which is what we need to do to prove that I was acting in self-defense.”

“Okay, okay…” Zane’s voice trails off. “What about character witnesses? That kind of thing matters in a trial. There are so many people who would get on the stand for you. We’ll prove that you aren’t violent or a threat. I’ll get up there and tell everyone that I’ve seen how scared you are of your brother and?—”

“No!” I say it loudly enough that Evan catches my eye in the rearview mirror. I give him an apologetic smile and lower my voice. “I appreciate that, Zane. Obviously. The fact that you’d do that for me?—”

“I’d do anything for you,” he growls.

My chest tightens. That’s the problem.

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