Page 80 of Dirty Gambit

Lena tried and failed to suppress her own grin. “I would prefer if Jessie didn’t know anything about Lissa after we were taken into foster care. I don’t know how possible that is now, but she doesn’t need to know how she was brought into this world, only that Lissa loved her enough to get away from Travis. I think she would have pulled her life together if … if there hadn’t been complications. Lissa had always been so stubborn.”

Nicole hummed quietly. “That explains where Jessie gets that trait from.”

Despite herself, Lena snorted a laugh. “Oh, I could tell you stories.”

There was a stretch of silence between them, a leveling calm that Lena didn’t know what to do with.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to right what I’ve done,” Lena began slowly, taking away everything, except the rigid line of honesty holding her together. “Not just to you and your family, but Lissa and Jessie. I should stay out of her life. I don’t want people harassing her for being the niece of someone who is accused of murdering three cops. She doesn’t deserve that stain.”

“Neither do you,” Nicole interjected. “Which is why Richard made certain you were cleared of those charges first chance he got.”

Lena froze. Even her thoughts went still and quiet. She stared at the woman, certain she’d heard wrong.

“What?” she breathed at long last. “How? Why?”

Nicole settled back in her seat. She picked idly at an invisible bit of lint off her trousers. “It wasn’t hard when that monster confessed in front of a Chief Justice to planting the evidence framing you. Turns out the cops on Travis’s payroll had already been under investigation for over a year now. In exchange for a lesser time sentence, they confessed to tampering with evidence and named the actual people responsible for the murders. That led to Travis’s entire organization getting raided. His shop was torn apart. Aside from drugs, money, and illegal firearms, they saved over a dozen under aged and … abused girls. They were taken to hospitals and will be cared for. Richard and I are going to make sure of it.”

A tear slipped down Lena’s cheek. She hadn’t realized she was crying until it dripped off her chin. A third tear slipped while she was trying to swipe at the second one with her good hand.

“It’s over?” she whispered, unable to believe it.

Nicole shrugged. “You might be asked to testify. The case against him is pretty solid so you might not have to. Otherwise, yeah, it’s over. You’re free.”

“What about what I did…?”

“You mean taking Jessie?” At Lena’s nod, Nicole shrugged. “We avoided the unnecessary details of the situation, wanting to keep the focus on what truly mattered, which was Travis breaking into our home and taking us hostage. Thankfully, Jessie and Jaxon were visiting Frankie at the time when he contacted Jaxon for ransom. Jaxon left Frankie a note and flew back. Frankie, getting worried, went after him.”

It was all so delicately woven, so methodical and careful. Yet…

“You lied for me?”

Nicole’s eyes bulged. She physically recoiled as if Lena had tried to slap her. “Absolutely not! My husband is a respected member of the court. He’s built his career and name on honesty and integrity. Everything we said was God’s truth.”

“What about me? How did you explain me?”

The woman never wavered in her cool response. “You’d found out a while ago that Jessie was your niece and had hoped to visit her. That was how Travis learned about us and thought he could make a quick payday. You learned of his plans and rushed to stop him. You got shot trying to wrestle the gun from his hand when he tried to shoot Jaxon.”

So cunning.

Had she not lived it, Lena never would have guessed how much of that statement was twisted and tweaked to fit a story that had and hadn’t happened.

“That’s not how—”

“Did you not find out about Jessie being your niece days before what happened?”

Lena nodded. “Yes, but—”

“Did Travis not learn about Jessie roughly the same time?”

Again, she nodded, slower. “Yes…”

“Was Jaxon and Jessie not at Frankie’s house when Travis broke in here?” Not waiting for Lena this time, she pushed on. “Did Travis not want money in exchange for our lives? Did you not come to stop Travis? Did you not get shot trying to save Jaxon? Were those not things that happened?”

It had, but it was all wrong.

“I guess?” she hedged.

There had to be more to it than that. It was too simple. Even Lena could see the holes in the story, the questions they should have prompted. Maybe the capture and dismantling of Travis and his empire was all the cops were interested in. Maybe they had no reason to doubt a member of the court and his influential and powerful wife. Maybe she was just too paranoid to accept that it was truly over and there were no more shoes left to drop. Yet, she fidgeted with the loose threads.

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