“Same coin, Sophia,” I say then pull up Trent’s file. “Ignore the name and tell me if your dad would have kept this guy on the force.”
“It’s Trent, he’s not some… bad cop,” Sophia says with an exasperated roll of her eyes.
“Then look at his file,” I insist and push the laptop into her hands. “Look at all of it. Then look at anyone else you can think of. Tell me what you see.”
Getting up from the couch, I approach Fluffers and smirk. Reaching down, I give her a little rub over her ears before moving off to the bathroom to relieve myself of all the coffee I’ve been drinking.
Glancing back at Sophia as I walk, I do notice she’s drinking water out of a bottle.
Hmm, I wonder if that’s because she thinks I might be right?
Sophia raises her voice to get my attention when I walk back through the living room, heading to the kitchen after relieving myself to start on lunch. “James.”
“What’s up?” I ask, walking back over to where she’s sitting. “Grilled cheeses for lunch?”
“Um, sure. Let me ask you something,” she says, staring down at the screen. “Why do you have all this information about the precinct?”
“Honestly?” I ask and look into those eyes that have haunted me like a specter for so long.
“Always be honest with me, James. Even if it will hurt me, always tell me the truth. I want you to promise it,” she says.
And I can feel that lying to her or failing to tell her the truth, could be the one thing that might tear us apart.
I know everything about Sophia there is to know, and I knew this would be something that came up eventually. She wants the truth. She doesn’t like the little lies and half-truths of the world.
“We’re looking into them because when we were tailing the Russians that night your father died, he was working with us. Your father was working with us and his orders were ignored. Ignored to the point that he was murdered on our doorstep,” I say and sigh quietly.
She starts to talk, but I shake my head at her.
“Listen, Sophia, your father was on the take. He wasn’t a bad cop, but he was on the take with us. I don’t know many city officials who aren’t, it’s the way of Garden City. We pay to keep ours safe and in return we take care of the issues that are darker and crueler than us. Like the Russians who tried to take you girls,” I explain.
“But he was a good cop,” she whispers.
“Actually…” I say. “He was one of the more honest ones, and dangerous because of it.”
“What do you mean?” she asks as I move to sit closer to her, putting my arm around her shoulders.
Tucking her into my arms, I rest my head on top of hers and try to formulate my thoughts on her dad.
“Your dad,” I say, “didn’t want to be one of those guys who looked the other way, and we didn’t need him to be. We kill people. We kill a lot of people. But we never hurt children and rarely women. We have hard rules on women and children. The Russians… they don’t have the same rules as us. Each and every woman in the family has been affected one way or the other by the Russians or groups like them that want to take control of the city.
“Your dad wasn’t stupid. He knew we have our ears further to the ground, and he knew we would do what we wanted regardless of whether he could arrest us or not. He also knew we could do things he couldn’t. We don’t sling hard drugs here. We no longer run prostitution rings. And we are very active in going after anyone who does that shit on our turf,” I explain, knowing she needs to hear this shit because it will come out eventually with her being my better half.
“But you’re not angels, James. None of you are. Johnathan…” she trails off.
“Sophia, I’ve killed a lot of men in my life.” I can feel her stiffen in my arms and the sudden memory of last night comes back to me. What I said to her and her reaction. “In the military and out of it. I don’t and won’t pretend they were all bad, or that they were all criminals. But I do what I have to in order to protect three things. You, my family, and me.”
Pulling away from Sophia, I turn her to face me.
Shaking her head, she has this look of fear of me, of my job, of everything, on her face.
“James, you… you can’t say that and—”
“I killed a man because he was trying to give you GHB at the night club. He had a shit ton of it in his pockets. He’d raped before, and he’d still be raping if I hadn’t ended his little streak of terror,” I tell her and force her to look up into my eyes.
“I’m a bastard, Sophia, literally and figuratively. I kill men because they’re trying to push things into this city that would make my family seem like the Brady Bunch. The Russians want this city badly. It’s a crossroads to so many vices across the nation. If we didn’t control it and they did, it would give them a free reign of terror.”
“I’ve lost a lot of brothers in the fight to protect this city. We’re not superheroes though. We’re the bad men who do what we have to keep this shit somewhat sane,” I explain, then sigh at all the words that are coming out of my mouth.
None of it is penetrating through her sense of what’s right or the common notion that bad is bad.
“Charlie would have been sold to the highest bidder, just like you, Beth, and Amanda. They killed one of your friends and they sold countless women and children across the nation. We stopped that. We stopped Charlie from becoming someone’s sex puppet. We run illegal gambling, racketeering, money laundering, protection, and strip clubs. Simon hates those. And more. Weapons trafficking, private security, assassinations, car chop shops, dive bars, and upscale bars. We own banks, low-income properties, and luxury apartments. Sophia, I own properties here and in Louisiana. My net worth isn’t even—”
“Stop.” Sophia shakes her head at me. “Just stop. You said you were in the military… What did they teach you about all of this… stuff.”
“They didn’t. They taught me to point a rifle at someone and shoot until they stopped moving. I learned from my time overseas that the world isn’t nice. All the people who believe in the black and white of things are wrong. The world is full of shit, Sophia, and you’re either the sheep or the butcher,” I say and cringe at the phrase I used.
Fuck.
She just doesn’t get it and I don’t know how to help her understand what we do.
“James, do you think you’re a good person?” she asks.
My answer is immediate. “No.”
“No? Like you don’t think you’re good and you’re not even going to try to bullshit me on that?” she asks again and she’s staring at me dead in the eyes.
“I’m not a good man, Sophia. I’m a bad man with a very broken moral compass. I don’t go to church. I don’t repent for my sins. And I know where I’ll go when I die,” I say and every one of those words is the full truth.
Incredulously, she asks, “And you want me to be okay with all of that?”
“I’ll never hurt you. I’ll never hurt our children. And I’ll give you revenge,” I say.
With each thing I profess, I see her falling deeper into her own mind.