Page 8 of Corrupted Queen

I can’t help but laugh. “And you’ve been ignoring me.”

“Yes, well I think I can take a little time to myself after the kind of shite I’ve had to shovel through.”

“I’m glad to hear from you. I was worried.”

“With good reason,” she replies. “I do apologize for my role in everything that’s happened, hen. That bloody Irishman threatened to kill my daughter if I didn’t do as he asked, and assigning you to interview Gabriel Belluci was one of the easier things I had to do.”

As far as I’m concerned, she is instantly forgiven. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to keep Harry safe.

“I think it’s more upsetting to me that it took a death threat for you to give me a proper assignment,” I joke. “Is Lily safe now?”

“Aye. I took some leave from the paper and I’ve been with her in Scotland for the past few weeks. I could hardly believe it when I heard your man had killed Andrew Walsh.”

“Are you coming back stateside anytime soon?” I ask. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a drug epidemic sweeping through New York. Purple heroin.”

“I’ve a flight back tomorrow,” she says. “That’s why I thought it might be time for me to get in touch with ye. From your voice mails, it sounds like you’re clear of the man in question?”

“Trying to be.”

“And I presume you’re looking to get back to work?”

I go to the bed and sit, pulling Harry in for a cuddle. “I want to investigate the purple heroin problem. It seems to have come out of nowhere, and it’s spreading quickly. I want to know why.”

“That sounds good,” she says.

“Just like that?” I ask incredulously. “You don’t want me to go back to interviewing slightly racist old men or covering doggy fashion shows?”

“I should think that I owe you a chance after what I put you through,” she explains. “I’ll be back in the office on Friday. Will you come by so we can talk about the scope of your investigation?”

I wince. “Is there any way we could meet at your place or something? And maybe I could keep working remotely? I’m sort of ... in hiding.”

“Of course,” she says in a kinder voice than I’ve ever heard from her. It is a voice laden with guilt.

We make plans to meet, and I end the call feeling better than I have in weeks. Going back to the city will be dangerous, but considering Gabriel’s men have found me three times already, I wonder if I am any safer floating on the fringes of society.

Remembering my run-in with the junkie outside, I shiver. My money is running out, and so is my luck. I can’t keep hanging out at dodgy motels while I wait for Gabriel’s thugs to catch up with me.

I need a solution, and going back to work is the best I’ve got.

* * *

The wine is sour, and the pizza I order for dinner is the wrong kind of greasy. Nevertheless, I consume them both greedily, and by the time I’m done I thoroughly hate myself.

I toss the box to the floor and groan. Harry starts to cry, as though he’s also upset about my life choices, even though he ate a princely meal of assorted deli meat, cheese, fruit, and raw carrots—all of which cost me an arm and a leg at the gas station and took me ages to cut up into little pieces.

We really cannot keep this up.

I pick Harry up, bouncing him around the room, humming the tune he likes. This seems to make him cry more.

“Shh,” I murmur. “It’s okay.”

He dials up the volume and the people in the room next to me bang on the wall angrily, like that’s going to help.

I rock him back and forth, eventually soothing him to a stage of choked sobs and sniffs. Just as I am about to lay him on the bed, he croaks something that makes my heart skid to a halt.

“Dada.”

I freeze, bent halfway over the bed, a lump forming in my throat. I wonder if he’s saying “dada” in the way that a parrot says “I love you,” just making sounds, with no understanding of the word.

---