Page 98 of Liars and Liaisons

She chews on her bottom lip, then glances at me.

I hold my hands up in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t look at me. I had nothing to do with him being arrested.”

“That’s what I’m saying though. I don’t think hewasarrested.” She turns to her brother, flattening her palms on the tabletop. “When have you ever known criminals to involve the police?”

He lifts a broad shoulder. “It’s not uncommon for law enforcement to be on a don’s payroll.”

“Or other government agencies,” the British man adds.

“Right, but the Persicos are notorious for being as straitlaced as possible. They wouldn’t even let me make payments with any money I didn’t earn through taxable work.”

“What the fuck?” the tattooed woman mutters, scooping her dog into her lap.

“Your work through him is taxable?”

I nod. “EverythingIdo is legitimate. She’ll get a form at the end of the year when she goes to file, and I keep receipts of everything I’ve ever paid out.”

“I sent my father the checks. They’d only take payments from him even though all of the debt was in my name. They run it through some database to verify my employment, and they don’t mind, apparently, that I’m not the one racking up the fucking debt.” Violet pauses, inhaling. “Iknowhe paid them, so there’d be no reason for the Persicos to ask the police to step in. They want to seem like a legitimate organization, so they’d want to keep the police away from their illegal doings since they’re definitely not in cahoots.”

“Violet,” her brother says, rubbing his forehead, “you can’t seriously think they wouldn’t do whatever’s necessary to recoup their funds. Organized crime tends to run like a well-oiled machine. Just because you aren’t aware of their involvement with the police doesn’t mean—”

“Nate James threatened to hand my whole family over a couple of weeks ago,” she rushes out, not sparing me a single glance when she does. “He said he’d send the Mafia to them directly if I didn’t cooperate with him, or if I told anyone.”

The table falls silent again, and the little dog in the other woman’s lap whines, as if uncomfortable with the pregnant pause.

My heart stops dead in its tracks, short-circuiting like the tail end of a power surge in a hurricane.

“Well, actually, he threatened to murder me andthensaid he’d out my family if I told anyone what he was planning,” she continues, and I’m pretty sure this is what dying feels like. Pressure mounts on my rib cage, my chest, crushing me with its full weight as my vision drifts farther and farther away.

Toward a place with no light.

“What thefuck, Vi?” the woman snaps, adjusting the rose-gold piercing in her nose. “Why have you just been sitting on that information?”

“Did you not hear thethreatened to have the Mafia sicced on my family if I snitchedpart?” Violet shrugs. “I didn’t knowwhatto do. This whole… world is new to me.”

Fury burns in her brother’s eyes as he stares at her.

I can’t even bring myself to fully look in her direction, instead sneaking peeks through the corner of my eye. Anything else might send me into a spiral, and I’m desperately trying to keep the worst parts of me at bay right now.

Until I can find Nathaniel and kill him with my bare fucking hands.

“So, you think it’s a setup,” the mayor supplies, leaning back in his chair to pluck at a suspender strap. “Something Nate will use to ambush you.”

“Yes. The Persicos already proved once they’d send their own people after me. There was an… incident a couple of weeks ago.” I feel her eyes on me. “But maybe since no one ever found a body, I didn’t actually kill the guy.”

A deep sigh comes from across the table. I’m still grappling with the onslaught of new information, but I consider her words carefully. It would make sense that she didn’t kill him—she used a dull rock, and even after scouring the grounds, no one found a body. Perhaps she knocked him out, and he ran as soon as he regained consciousness.

I should’ve searched harder. The security cameras didn’t find anything, which meant the person either looped the footage or knew exactly how to walk outside their path.

And since Riley’s cyber team didn’t find evidence of camera tampering…

“What if it wasn’t the Persicos at all who planned to attack you?”

Violet turns, her brows raised. The rest of the table shifts their attention to me, and I swallow, an unrepentant fire burning in my lungs.

I did this. I brought her here, into my world, knowing how fucked up things were. Knowing how fucked up they could become, and I didn’t care.

All I wanted was my little slice of revenge for the way they had used and abused Sydney. I didn’t give a shit who was destroyed in the process, and here I am, living the same fucking scenario out once again.

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