Page 34 of Roark
Colin Hopkins was the name of the man Detective Pennington had brought up. He was the one whose apartment she’d been living in until recently. Roark had searched the guy online the moment he’d come to his room after the detectives had left this afternoon. So he knew a little something about the man she’d lived with, but now he’d wait to hear what she had to say.
“We met at a mutual friend’s wedding. He seemed like a great guy and just my type, entrepreneur with just a touch of thug.” She shrugged. “Some women don’t shake the attraction to bad boys during their teen years.”
Roark didn’t speak. Her tone was different from when she was asking questions or simply talking about any of the things she liked to talk about. There was a hint of something in her tone, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, not just yet.
“We went on a few dates, and you know how it is in the beginning, so romantic. Like, I’d be looking forward to each date all day long and when we were together, I didn’t want the night to end. Then we took trips to Las Vegas and Miami. The first-year anniversary trip to Hawaii was the best.”
Roark tried to ignore the immediate spike of jealousy at the smile on her face. She’d obviously enjoyed that trip.
“But the newness eventually wears off.” These words were said in a snappish tone, and she stepped back to lean against the wall near one of the dressers. “No woman believes she’s the type to stand for any kind of abuse.”
His fingers fisted, and Roark resisted the urge to demand she immediately tell him what this idiot Colin had done to her.
She was shaking her head. “And believe me, I’m not. I was an only child, but I was a straight tomboy, fighting any and everyone who came at me wrong in my neighborhood. My mother used to get so mad when I came home with ripped shirts or scrapes on my legs and face because I’d been either wrestling or downright brawling with some kid who’d gotten in my face. And they got in my face a lot, because kids are cruel and they love to pick on the fat girl on the block. They just weren’t prepared for this fat girl to fight back.”
Now, his heart ached for her, for the bullying she must’ve endured in the name of childhood.
“And Colin was from the streets too, so he knew he had a straight ride-or-die chick on his side. I could get dressed in my suits and go to work at the insurance company and be as professional as I was trained to be, but if there was ever something to pop off while he and I were out, Colin knew I’d stand right there with him. In fact, that was one of the things he said he loved about me.”
There was so much more to her though, so much more than Roark had seen in such a short amount of time.
“He didn’t hit me, if that’s what you’re thinking. We would’ve been going ‘round for ‘round in that apartment if he had. But there are so many other ways to break a person down. It started with the quick jabs of ‘you still hungry?’ or ‘you can’t fit that.’ I brushed those off, because I’d heard them before when I was younger and it wasn’t that big of a deal. But then when he started complaining about our sex life because of my size, or the way I looked in pictures.” She stopped and chuckled. “The funny thing was, I was actually a little heavier when I first met him, so I really couldn’t understand where all this was coming from. My parents hated him, but I stayed with him. For whatever reason, he started coming at me about my job and about how I was trying too hard to impress my father, or to be like him—that’s when he began to work my nerves. Nothing I did or said was right after the argument we had when I insinuated he was jealous of my father’s college education and success. Colin didn’t go to college, unless you count the college of the streets that earned him a ton of money, a bullet in his right leg and probation before judgment on a distribution charge.”
Roark knew about the guy’s criminal record and the barber shop he’d opened in Alexandria. The place that acted as a front for the drug enterprise he continued to run. “Why did you stay?”
It seemed like such a simple question, but Roark knew there was so much more to it than just walking away. He’d heard so many stories of women who’d been abused; when a woman on his staff had become a victim, he’d taken the time to actually read articles about the cycle of abuse. Eventually, his employee had decided to seek help, and Roark had made sure the company had provided her with all the resources she’d needed to get her life back.
“Maybe I thought it was easier.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I’ll make a very long and distressing story short. I found out he was not only selling drugs again but was also investing in a strip club, where part of the job requirement for dancer was to sleep with him. He was trash—I’d known it for a while. That was the final straw, and I moved out. That was two weeks before my father was killed.”
Just because his hands weren’t fisted anymore didn’t mean Roark wasn’t still pissed the hell off. But he managed to ask the next question in as calm a voice as he could muster. “He just let you walk away?”
“Ha! Of course not. He took all the things I’d left in the apartment and brought them to my job, where he proceeded to burn them right there on the sidewalk.”
Roark stepped toward her. “Your ex burned your belongings two weeks before your father died in a fire?”
She’d had a semi-smile on her face, but it quickly faltered. “He was the first person I checked out after I knew the fire at my dad’s office was arson. He had a solid alibi for the time of the fire, and the person who started that fire had to be standing right there in the office with my father when he did it.”
“What if he paid somebody to do it for him?” Roark asked and considered for a brief second that this was the strangest after-sex talk he’d ever had with a woman.
“Why? Killing me would’ve been easier. He could’ve walked into my office that day instead of dropping my things on the sidewalk then texting me to come downstairs so I’d see him burning it.”
“But just as he stood and watched you grow upset at him burning your things on the sidewalk, he could watch you suffer at finding out your father was dead.”
“Why wait a year to go after my mother?”
Roark shrugged. “She left. Maybe he didn’t know where she went until now.”
“But what about your mother? If Colin’s hiring people to kill my parents to get back at me for leaving him, how does that explain her death?”
Roark didn’t have an answer to that, a fact that was steadily wearing on him. “It’s late. Let’s eat and get some sleep. We can go over all this with fresh eyes in the morning.” It was a suggestion made because he didn’t know what was going on. When he’d read about her ex’s criminal tendencies, he’d been annoyed but not suspicious. Now, he didn’t know what to think.
She pulled her hand out of the pockets of the robe and pressed them to her face. After a deep breath, she let her arms fall down to her sides. “I’m not really hungry. Just tired.” The words sounded so desolate as she turned to leave.
“Stay.” He said it so quickly, his mind didn’t have time to decipher whether or not it was a good idea. “I mean, I’m not an after-sex snuggler, but I want you to stay.”
She turned around slowly until she was facing him again. With a tilt of her head, she smiled. “Did you really think you had to tell me you’re not a snuggler, Roark?”
“Full disclosure,” he replied with a tentative smile.
