Page 54 of Corrupted Queen

Alexis

I hang up the phone, massaging my forehead as I look at the typed notes on my laptop. I’ve spoken to quite a few heroin addicts now, some from treatment centers, some from phone booths on the street, and together their testimonies paint a bitter picture. The safer, purer heroin was pushed off the streets several weeks ago, and their dealers have been unable to source anything other than the deadly purple variety. A couple of those I spoke to tried different dealers, knowing that this new heroin, albeit cheaper, could kill them, but faced the same issue everywhere they turned.

The woman I just got off the phone with, Naomi, is in her first shaky few days of treatment after having watched her best friend die of an overdose last week. I hope she manages to stay clean.

I have it all now. I have everything I need to expose this epidemic for what it really is—an intentional, hostile takeover of the narcotics industry in the city perpetrated by a highly unusual alliance of two rival Mafias.

I check the time and realize that I’m due to meet my stylist in the living room in five minutes. I blow out a sigh and wonder if I could get out of this fundraiser by pretending to be sick. I don’t feel like schmoozing with the city’s top socialites, and I especially don’t feel like going along with Gabriel’s pretense of wanting to fight the purple heroin crisis when, in reality, he is fueling it.

If I play sick, I can write the first draft of the article, send it off to Debbie, and haul ass out of this house before Gabriel gets home. It would be so easy.

No. It wouldn’t be easy, not even a little. Because every word I wrote would be a direct betrayal of the man I care about, my son’s father. Even though he has done horrible things, I don’t know if I can bring myself to toss him to the dogs like that.

No. Of course I can. He deserves it.

I wrestle with these thoughts for what must be five minutes as my phone rings, and the peppy-sounding stylist is on the other end wondering if everything is okay and if she’s in the right spot.

I tell her I’ll be right down, and before I can second-guess myself I grab Harry from his playpen and make my way downstairs.

I’ll go tonight, I decide. I won’t leave Gabriel high and dry. Whether he will appreciate my efforts or not is another thing entirely. I’ve barely seen him over the past few days. He hasn’t even come to visit me at night, which makes me wonder if he knows what I found in the storage shed and is just waiting for the right moment to pull the rug out from beneath me. The right moment being after tonight’s big show, of course.

I find Sandra in the living room with her kit spread out across the coffee table. She has set up a chair next to it, and various styling tools are lined up on heatproof mats on the sideboard normally dedicated to Gabriel’s expensive whiskeys.

“You must be Alexis,” she says brightly, shaking my hand with enough enthusiasm to send her lustrous brown curls bobbing up and down. Her eyes are a rich coffee brown, her teeth an unnatural shade of white. Every inch of her tanned skin is flawless. I suppose when she is done with me, mine will be flawless too.

I set Harry up on the floor with his flamingo toy, and Sandra guides me to the chair. “Sit. And let the makeover commence.”

I chuckle and take her direction, and a second later, she begins to tug a brush through my hair.

“You have such beautiful hair,” she tells me. “Are these curls natural?”

“Yep.”

She whistles through her teeth, impressed. “Making you look good is going to be a piece of cake. You’re already gorgeous. No wonder you’ve managed to melt such a notoriously chilly heart.”

I chuckle. “I wouldn’t say it’s melted. More partially defrosted.”

“My man’s a bit like that too,” she says, lifting my chin to inspect my face. “I can hardly get him to hold my hand in public, but when it comes to our dog Vincent, he’s a giant ball of mush. I swear if there was only room in the bed for one of us, I’d be sleeping on the floor.”

Something about Sandra’s candid charm puts me at ease. When I think of my relationship with Gabriel, I normally can’t see past the crisscrossing steel bands of complication, but I try to see it through Sandra’s eyes. He’s just my boyfriend, and I’m just his girlfriend.

“I don’t know why we put up with it,” I joke.

Sandra grabs some concealer and starts to dab it on my face. “Because we’re suckers for punishment,” she says with a wink. “Seriously, though, my last boyfriend worshipped the ground I walked on. Have you ever had one of those?”

My last serious relationship was Grant Logan, who I found in bed with another woman the night before I met Gabriel. I wouldn’t say he was any less affectionate than Gabriel, but I never felt as warm with Grant as I do when Gabriel pulls me close in the middle of the night or kisses my forehead when he thinks I am asleep.

“I can’t say I have,” I reply.

She dabs contouring over my nose and cheekbones. “Honey, believe me when I say it was the most tedious thing ever. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without him counting down the seconds until I returned, like I’d gone off to war or something.” She snickers. “It was nice at first, but the compliments mean so much more when they’re coming from a grumpy bastard like my old man.”

I imagine how Gabriel would react if I called him a grumpy bastard. I laugh.

We spend the rest of the time chatting about girly things like the best shade of lipstick for my dress, whether to wear my hair up or down, and if Gabriel will even notice.

“I could leave the house in a paper bag and my Gary wouldn’t notice,” Sandra jokes. “Vincent gets a new collar and suddenly he’s the cutest pooch on the block.”

It feels good to talk to Sandra. It feels normal. We’re just two girls having a gab, nothing more, nothing less.

---