Page 45 of Sapphires and Snakes
“What’s your middle name?” Zarina leans against the table, not looking at the map spread out on it.
I stand beside the conference table, three chairs between us, and wonder what my middle name has to do with the map before her. “Why?”
“Just wondering.” She won’t look at me.
I don’t allow myself to close the distance between us. “Maria.”
“So your initials are A-M-T.”
I remain quiet. Inside my pockets, my palms are dewy with sweat, my fists clenched. The map shines gold with late afternoon light, as if reflecting the hope inside me that I can play this off.It’s just a plan, not yet enacted,I could say. A betrayal, but only in theory. A relic leftover from before our deal, before her.
“Owner of Andys Holdings Corp.” Zarina shreds through my hopeful thoughts with those five uttered words. “The shell company that owns AGH Corp, Taylor Capital, and Pollard Properties.”
Sweat pebbles over my spine. I don’t know how she dug so deep, how she cut through the Russian doll of shell companies until she got to mine, but it hardly matters. It’s out, hanging between us heavy and sharp. And I can’t deny it.
So I don’t. “Yes.”
Her shoulders tighten so slightly, I almost miss it. A brace against the truth. She doesn’t lift her gaze from the spot on the floor, her voice so dead I could mistake it for a stranger’s if I didn’t see her lips moving, her throat bobbing. “Show me.”
I blanch, my knees threatening to liquify beneath me. Show her. There’s no way to do that without revealingeverything. My chest tightens, and I plead, “Princess?—”
Her whole body flinches, and I immediately regret the use of her nickname in this moment. Maybe for every moment hereafter. It’s rote memory, any other name for her rotten on my tongue. But I swallow it down.
“Zarina,” I amend, “I can’t show you that.”
“Can’t.” She chews on the word, a challenge.
“Won’t,” I correct.
“I’ve seen the summary.” She flicks her hand at the map, still not looking at me. “What does it matter if I see the details?”
I flatten a hand against the tabletop, sweat slick between the wood and my skin. The urge to reach for her, to comfort her, is so strong, I lean forward with the force of it, barely holding myself back. “You know why.”
She pushes off the table, striding to the shelves before her. The binders she searched earlier still lie haphazardly on the counter. She slides them off to topple to the floor, pages bending and creasing where they land, and then grabs another.
“Where could they be?” Her face is as blank as her voice. She yanks binder after binder off the shelves, barely glancing at a page or two before tossing them over her shoulder. I stand completely still as she sacks my office in front of me without another word. The only sounds are the scrape, flutter, and then flop of each ledger as Zarina pulls it, searches it, and discards it.
Again, all I can do is watch. Except this time, it’s not through the phone. This time, I feel the disturbed air, the crushing weight of each binder heavy on my shoulders, the string between Zarina and I pulled so taut it threatens to snap with the smallest twitch. I can feel it fraying, too fragile and new to withstand the pressure.
“Zarina.” My voice is so soft, like I’m doing my best not to startle an injured wildcat.
She finishes ransacking one bookcase and moves onto the next. Scrolls bend and fold as she tosses them down to the floor.
“Zarina.” I try again, louder.
“Andys Holdings was established ten years ago.” Her voice stays dead. I remember last night when she laughed, full-throated and open-mouthed, at dinner. When she whispered husky temptations in my ear as I drove us across Bend River. When she moaned long and loud as she came on my tongue. The lack of life in her voice now is more sinister than the blank mask I’ve watched her don time and time again.
I wish I could rewind, change something, anything, to not end up here in this moment, but I don’t know how far back to go. To weeks ago when I knew our connection was becoming deeper, less casual, but I didn’t want to admit it? To the night she knelt before me and offered this deal? Or further back, to the pivotal moment that led me to the Gallo Family as a street urchin, kicked out by my own family and alone in the world?
In the here and now, Zarina yanks open a lower cabinet door and finds a safe. One of two in this room.
She straightens, staring down at the heavy metal box. “It’s common for dons to have a few dozen shell companies.” She speaks as if from a textbook, almost droning. “But it’s not too hard to follow the money. When you know how, where to look.”
“Darius seriously underestimated you,” I mutter.
Her head snaps up, and for the first time since I opened the door, she looks at me. The gold flecks in her eyes are dark as antique bronze, her gaze damning. “He’s not the only one.”
“So, what’s the theory?” I ask the question like she’s crazy, like she’s not standing next to all the evidence she needs to condemn me.
