Page 77 of What's Left of Us

It’s impossible to get comfortable on the couch when my back and arm are killing me today. I slept like shit for the past three nights and spent way too much time at the gym trying to distract myself from Welsh’s information and the millions of phone calls I’ve made to try getting into Rikers Island, where Volley is being held.

So far, I’ve had no luck.

“My week hasn’t exactly been ideal,” I tell her, shrugging and ignoring the wince of pain that radiates from my injury.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“No,” I say instantly, though my foot starts bouncing and giving me away. She watches me for a moment, jots down something in her notebook, and sets the pen down when I ask, “If you could go back and change something that happened in the past, would you?”

She’s thoughtful, the leg that’s draped over her other swinging lightly. “I suppose it would depend on what it was. Could I choose the event?”

“Sure.”

“Then…yes.”

I expect her to give me some crapshoot answer about how all of our experiences shape who we are, not this. “What would you go back and change?”

She’s quiet, her lips twitching. Then she says, “How about we go tit for tat? You tell me yours, and I’ll tell you mine.”

The fact she’s offering to tell me anything is impressive, considering she’s been locked down tighter than Fort Knox. I’m breaking down her barriers.

“If my mom got to choose, she’d probably make sure I never met Georgia,” I admit, staring at the stain on my jeans. It reminds me that I need a new pair. All of mine seem to have grease or grass stains on them.

“But you wouldn’t choose that?”

I find myself shaking my head. “No, I wouldn’t. Georgia and I were good for a long time. We learned to love each other.”

Our love story isn’t like any of my friends, and nobody knew that we only got married so she didn’t have to be stuck with the likes of Luca Carbone. If they did, maybe they would have talked me out of it.

My chest fills with a pressure that presses against my heart. “I would go back and tell Conklin not to look into the Del Rossi family,” I say quietly, my whole leg bouncing. “I would tell him to forget about everything. I can handle the pain that comes with divorce because it’s only for me to cope with. But I dragged a lot of innocent people into the mess that left him dead. That’s not fair to them. That pain is…”

All I can do is shake my head.

“When you asked him to look into her family, what do you mean?” she questions, her pen remaining on the notepad.

“Georgia’s father knew some dangerous people, and I wanted to make sure I could stop him from pulling his daughter into the middle of the mess he’d made.”

“Did she ask you to?”

“No.”

“But you chose to because…?”

“I loved her,” I say by default.

It’s not the entire answer.

I did learn to love Georgia.

But I also wanted to make sure Nikolas Del Rossi didn’t get the two things that he wanted most: his daughter back and my career to end.

I needed to make sure I took him down first.

“Conklin died helping me find answers,” I tell her, feeling my throat thicken. It’s harder to swallow past the lump that wedged itself in the middle of it. “He died to give me answers I still don’t fully have yet. His death just made more.”

I swore to him I would get him justice. Whether he heard my promise or not before the blood loss left him unconscious, I was going to fulfill it.

No matter what.

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