Page 44 of More Than Nothing
Roman gripped the pen he was holding, staring intently at his hand, the desk, anywhere but her face. A pain in his jaw told him he was gritting his teeth.
“Help me do this, please?”
Silence stretched between them.
“Stay there.” To give himself time to think, Roman grabbed a bunch of keys from his top drawer and stalked out of his office. Reaching the reception area, he pulled the front door shut and turned one of the keys in its lock. “My office, please,” he growled at Dougie on the way back.
His deputy followed him, shooting a quizzical glance at Elenie before taking a seat in the empty chair next to her. Roman leaned against the filing cabinet, too restless to sit.
“What’s up?” Dougie asked. Elenie flashed him a nervy smile.
“We need to talk something over. It’s far from decided and I want your input.” Roman’s gaze bounced between them. He gave Elenie a brief nod. “Go on.”
“Um...” She cleared her throat and twisted one of the buttons at the neck of her shirt. “I’m offering to be a police informer. Against my family. I think I can find out details you might be able to use to put Frank away.”
Dougie looked between Elenie and Roman, his normally sunny face serious. “OK. Shit. That was not what I was expecting.”
“I’ve thought about this a lot. Not just in the last week. It’s the right thing to do. To have a hope of getting anything on Frank, you need information. And you need it from someone who can’t be bought or intimidated. Someone close to Frank.”
“But will he trust you with that information?” Dougie frowned. “Why would he tell you anything now? Especially since he reacted so well to you getting to know the boss.”
“It would take some work,” Elenie admitted. “But I’ve considered that, too.” She looked at Roman with determination. “Frank would need to think I’ve hit rock bottom. That something has happened—on top of what he’s already done—to knock the fight out of me. Nothing would make him happier than knowing I’d been broken enough to crumble.”
His chest hurt with the urge to punch something.
“If he genuinely believed I’d given up all hope, he’d love to get me back under his thumb and into the family business,” Elenie said. “I know how his mind works. He’d figure the dirtier he made my hands, the more hold he’d have over me.”
“And how would you go about convincing him you’ve hit rock bottom?” Roman’s voice was rough.
Elenie twisted the toe of her sneakers against the floor. “I think you’ll have to date me and dump me.” Her eyes didn’t waver from his face. “You need to walk all over my heart.”
Chapter 21
Elenie
If she hadn’t been so tense, Elenie might have laughed at the way Roman blinked.
Dougie coughed. “Sorry,” he said. “Swallowed the wrong way.”
“No.”
They both turned as Roman pushed away from the filing cabinet, his eyes stormy and explosive. He ran a hassled hand through his hair, which left a tuft sticking out on one side, just above his ear. Elenie’s fingers twitched with the desire to flatten it.
“That won’t work.”
She felt an arrow-sharp stab in the heart. “I know it might not sound that believable but—”
“That’s not what I meant.” Roman cut across her. “You got hurt the last time Frank heard we spent time together. I’m not putting you in that position again.” He began to pace behind his desk.
“But if the timing was right,” Dougie tugged at one ear, “Elenie’s idea is a good one.”
“It is,” she insisted. “Hear me out. If we could stage a public breakup and humiliation, everyone who mattered would hear about it. And Frank would take advantage.” Elenie sat firm under Roman’s glare. “I could make him believe it. I know I could.”
“I don’t like it.”
“It’s about controlling the narrative,” Dougie chipped in. A flicker of approval crossed Roman’s face, before it was chased away by more thunderclouds as he continued his pacing. “How about a relationship reveal and breakup on the same night? In public. Somewhere you know you’ll be seen and heard. That way, by the time it reaches Frank, it’ll already be over—if you get what I mean. He’ll be more focused on the split than the date. There’ll be no point in him kicking off.”
“Yes! He’ll be so busy gloating, we’ll skip right over the beating-me-to-a-pulp stage.”Hopefully.Elenie’s mind raced, turning over the idea, examining it for holes.
