Page 36 of Knocked Up by my Best Friend's Brothers

“I wish I could repay you somehow.”

“Just keep fighting,” I say. “Keep fighting, keep asking questions. Do not let any of them rest until you get to the truth of whathappened to Brett. His killer is still out there; I know it.”

I do.

Because he’s not one of the bastards who went down with the Perry-Sage ship. He slipped through the cracks, and that was my fault. I couldn’t expose him without putting myself in the crosshairs. I’ve already got a target on my back. Keeping a low profile has kept me safe up to this point.

I wish I could tell Sharon the truth.

“You keep digging, Sharon,” I reiterate. “You’ll get to the bottom of it. I know you will.”

“I hope so,” she nods slowly. “How are you? How’s Portland?”

“It’s good. I’m keeping my head down and my mind busy with work. I still look over my shoulder, though. Sometimes I feel like they know, like they’re watching me,” I confess with a trembling voice.

Sharon frowns slightly. “I didn’t tell anybody where you are. A few months ago, some people came around asking. They were with the LAPD. But they didn’t have your name or details, just your description from some surveillance photos of Brett.”

“Good,” I say. “It means my little exit strategy worked.”

“You wiped yourself from their system, for sure. Detective Morris didn’t ask about you either, and I didn’t tell him a thing. As far as they’re all concerned, you’re just the mysterious blonde aide who may or may not have worked at Perry-Sage.”

“They think Brett was single, right?”

“Yeah.”

I extracted myself from everything before I dropped a virtual bomb on the entire corporation and let the legal system pick up the pieces. I removed all traces of my existence from Brett’s online history—his social media, his contacts, everything.

“Has anyone else reached out to you lately?” I ask Sharon. I feel tension building in my stomach. I can’t tell if it’s from the coffee or the call.

“Nobody. Nothing from Perry-Sage or their lawyers.”

“No one Mancini-related either?” I inquire.

She shakes her head again. “Nope. I read in the newspaper that two of the Mancinis associated with Perry-Sage who were charged at the time, got a hefty sentence. One of them was a big boss, I think.”

I heave a sigh. “Yeah, he was. At least that went down right.”

What I really mean to say is that Brett didn’t die in vain, and I didn’t blow up my life for no reason.

Sharon gives me a worried look. “You have friends there, right? Close friends? Family?”

“Some, yes. I’m not alone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Do they know?”

It’s my turn to shake my head. “No. And they can’t know either. For their own safety.”

“You’re right. But I assume it’s a heavy burden to carry on your shoulders. The secrets…”

“It is. All I can do is hope that someday everything will work out, and we’ll be able to move on without fear of retaliation.”

“I worry about you, Christa.”

“You’re on your own over there. To be honest, I worry more about you than I worry about me,” I reply with a nervous chuckle.

She waves my concern away. “Nah, I’m good. I’m an Inglewood girl, born and bred. Those Italian pricks don’t scare me. I think they know it, too, otherwise they would’ve tried to intimidate me by now. Or worse.”

“You raised quite a noise in the media, which was the smart thing to do,” I remind her. “It made you a public figure. Killing you would’ve led the cops right to them. They couldn’t risk it. And you can’t prove they’re responsible for Brett either, so—”

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