“You ready, Angel?” The prison officer raised his eyebrows at me. I knew he was surprised that I was still coming back. Fuck, him and me both. I had fully expected to drop out of my little vanity project as soon as I got the chance, but here I was, six months after the trial, still visiting, still trying, no matter how difficult things got and how much I found myself wanting to run away and hide when I was on the bus over here. Every time, I found myself second–guessing my decision. Shouldn’t I have just given up by now? I was visiting a criminal, for goodness sake. I was a cop! Wasn’t I meant to keep all the people who mattered to me firmly on the outside, just for the sake of keeping things on the straight and narrow? I’d kept these visits from all my colleagues, as I knew they thought I was weird enough as it was without coming out swinging with “oh, by the way, not only did all that other stuff happen that I lied to you about, but I’m visiting one of the perpetrators in prison. Sorry I didn’t mention it earlier, could I get a coffee if you’re going out on a run?”
Not that I was allowed back to work for a long time after it all went down. As I predicted, there was so much red tape to go through that I thought I might drown under the weight of it all. I had to explain everything, and there was so much that it made my head spin to try and recall it all. I had to tell them why I trusted Breaker, too, and that was pretty hard to put into words “Because he was really good at fucking and I knew he was the person I wanted to be with after he saved me from that sex–slave auction”? Yeah, I put it down to the drugs in my system, because that made a hell of a lot more sense than the truth of the matter.
They were happy to overlook some stuff, though, because at the end of the day, my story had ended with one of the most notorious criminals in the city dead in his own club, with police free of any real involvement beyond me. Raven had let him burn in there, and the firemen hadn’t been quick enough to get him out of the building alive. I shuddered when I thought about the horror of his last moments, but it was hard to feel overly sympathetic about his end when I considered what he’d put hundreds of women through over the years. No–one would have come out and said it out loud, but there was a general air of “good riddance” over his death. No–one was going to miss him, that was for damn certain.
Raven confessed to all of it, without a second thought, as soon as she’d recovered enough to be let out of the hospital. Well, not that she went by Raven anymore. She took up her old name, Rose, and insisted that it be used on all her official documents for when she put in her confession and every scrap of information she could remember from working at that place for so long. She’d been there almost a full decade, first as a captive and then as an assassin. She admitted herself that the only reason she got involved in the business of killing was to find some way to take control of her situation, and that she wished there had been some other way out. And I wanted to blame her, God knows I did, but I just couldn’t find it in my heart to hate her, even after all these months. Even after the confession that she had been the one to kill my father.
As I made my way into the meeting room, I had to close my eyes for a moment to steady myself, the memory of her confession rocking me on my feet for a moment. Up until six months ago, I had never truly considered the fact that my father might have been killed by someone, by anyone. Who would lay a hand on him? I knew, intellectually, that as a hard–working cop he would have plenty of people who wanted him dead, but in my heart I just couldn’t bear to consider it. I was still reeling from what Thaddeus had told me in that room as I hovered my fist over his face when she came out with it and told us the truth. That had been the hardest part. I had asked to be there, through the two–way glass, when she was being interrogated, and I swear to God she shot me an apologetic look before the words came out of her mouth. I had to cover my face and stare at the ground just to get through it, but I made it. I heard her admit, in great detail, what she’d done, and I found something of a release in the words as they came out of her mouth. It was another part of my life that I could put to rest, especially since I had other things to be focusing on in the months since Thaddeus had died and Rose had been arrested.
I was a big part of the task force who were delivered the duty of taking down the rest of Thaddeus’ group. I did my best to recall them all, glad I had thought to commit their faces to memory when I had the chance. Most of them hadn’t made it that far, probably hopeful that they would hear from Thaddeus at some point and would be invited back into the fold to start their sick, twisted little games all over again. I was the one who got the break the bad news to them, and it was deeply, deeply satisfying. All of them – his bodyguards, the bartender, the auctioneer, no matter how much he begged and pleaded and tried to convince me that we’d had a deal – all of them ended up in prison with life sentences. I was tempted to push for more, especially after we got to interviewing the women they had held captive, but knowing they were off the streets was enough for me.
Of course, that was the other thing. Our best course of prosecution was from the witness testimonies of the women they’d kidnapped and sold into slavery, and, since most of them had fled the scene of the fire and any records had been destroyed along with the club, we were left with nothing. Until, of course, I thought to go back and dig out my father’s old case file.
He had done so much work on this stuff that it actually made my head hurt a little bit. The file had been locked since his death, as Thaddeus closed the doors to any more potential intruders and the opportunity to find out more was cut off from the cops. But when I opened it again, a smile bloomed across my face – because I knew I could, at last, finish what my father started. Or at least, go a little way to bringing the kind of justice he wanted to the city.
The file was packed full of testimonies, identifications, information, and details, all of which matched up with what Rose and I had been through. That was enough to put them all away and, even though I was too nervous to appear in court with the people who’d done me so wrong, I was proud when they news came through that they had all been given at least a couple of decades apiece. Good. Let them rot in there.
I remember getting home that evening, and flopping down on the couch. Breaker glanced up at me from the book he was reading. He had offered to come with me to court, but I had turned him down, knowing that I had to face this all on my own.
“How did it go?”
“They all went away,” I sighed with a satisfied shrug. “Not surprising, really.”
“That’s amazing,” he leaned over to me and pulled me against his chest playfully, rubbing his chin against my hair affectionately. He hadn’t really had a place to stay after the apartment he’d been living in had burned down, so I’d offered him up my apartment. I could tell even then that he was taken aback by my forwardness, but all this experience had taught me was that I couldn’t hold back on what I wanted. And what I wanted was him.
“Yeah, it is,” I nestled into his chest, inhaling his familiar scent and letting my head fall flat against him. I fell silent for a moment, and, at once, Breaker figured out that there was something amiss.
“What is it?” He asked, pulling back so he could look at me. “What’s bothering you?”
“I just…” I propped myself up on my elbows so I could look him in the eye. “What’s next, you know?”
“Angel, you just took down one of the nastiest gangs in the city,” he pointed out. “I’m pretty sure you’re allowed to take some time off before you run off to find another project.”
“I know, I know,” I conceded. “But they can’t be the only ones in the city, can they? It’s a big place. And the thought of that kind of shit happening to other women…”
I trailed off. It didn’t bear thinking about. Both of us sat there in silence for a moment as we let it sink in, and the acceptance of what I had to do next crept upon me, solidifying itself from the vague half–idea I’d had the day before we went into court for the first time.
“I have to keep going,” I shrugged, as though it was obvious. Breaker frowned at me.
“Huh?”
“We’ve got the taskforce there,” I went on, my voice picking up steam as I got more excited. “It doesn’t have to stop here, my father wouldn’t—“
“Angel,” Breaker cut me off, his voice kind but firm. “Give yourself a minute. You have the whole rest of your life to do this, but you need to deal with what happened to you first.”
I sat up on the couch, and stared off at the wall opposite us. He was right, of course. Funneling all my energy into the task force and getting rid of the last remnants of Thaddeus’ gang had been cathartic for me, but I knew I was carrying scars from what had gone down in that place, scars that I knew weren’t going to fade without time and energy and effort on my part. This had been a way to distract myself from the inevitable, from the knowledge that I would likely never walk the streets alone again without glancing over my shoulder to check on who was following me. Breaker put an arm around me, and pulled me down close to him, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
“Besides, I need someone to keep an eye on things for me,” he joked, and I managed a smile. “Make sure they’re not going to sell me out down at the station.”
I giggled, and lay my head against his again, relaxed. He was right. I knew a lot of people down at the station still didn’t trust Breaker as far as they could throw him, and they were probably right to feel that way. I know I would have, in their position.
As a way to avoid a prison sentence, he’d come on board as an informant, and was currently working his way into one of the gangs all the way across town, one that we were trying to investigate for sex trafficking based on the tips we’d received from some of the women my father had spoken to. After everything he’d seen– and all he’d seen me go through – he was as committed to taking down these sorts of criminal rings as I was.
His reputation preceded him, and he told me that he still had people asking him how he’d managed to “tame” me into the docile little creature that so many people had seen at the club. He found it hysterical, and would often recount the lies he told people to convince them of my obedience. I looked forward to taking them down, and showing them precisely what a good girl I was when I was slapping them in cuffs. It was the perfect life, for him, as he got to mesh the part of him that still craved a more deviant lifestyle with the one that didn’t want to end up in prison. The one that wanted to be with me.
“You’re right,” I sighed. “Again. Fuck, I hate when you pull off shit like that.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to take down every bad guy in the city once you’re better,” he assured me. “Your father would want that. He’d want you to take care of yourself first.”
“Yeah, and I doubt he’d want me dating an ex–con like you, so I don’t think we should linger on that thought too long,” I shot in his direction. He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged.
“Well, pinch of salt,” he replied, and leaned in to kiss me. Our lips met, and I smiled into the embrace; even after all these months, he still made me burn like no one else on this Earth. He pulled back and smiled at me softly, his eyes gentle and deeply un–Breaker like for a second.
“I love you,” he murmured.
“I love you too,” I replied, and, not being able to resist, added his real name. “Jacob.”
“Ugh, don’t call me that!” He protested. “You know I hate it.”
“Then you should never have told me what it was,” I pointed out. He grabbed me by the wrists and kissed me again, and this time with a lot more heat. He pushed me back into the couch, pinning me to the soft cushions, and ran his teeth over my neck.
“I’ll teach you what to call me,” he warned playfully, and I wrapped my arms around him and happily lost myself to his touch once again.
That was the thought I allowed myself to get lost in as I sat and waited for Rose to appear on the other side of the glass. Breaker and me, me and Breaker. What we had found together. I had never thought I would fall for someone like him, let alone let myself move in with them and consider everything else that came afterwards – marriage, children, all the things my mother had been making noises to me about ever since she first met him a couple of months ago. I knew she approved, and that she thought I was getting a little old not to be pumping out a few kids, and now that I had found a nice man, well, what was stopping me? Her support was much appreciated, even if I couldn’t exactly tell her how we’d met or what he’d done before we got together.
I drummed my fingers on the desk in front of me, glancing around at the other visitors who were quietly waiting for their prisoners of choice to appear. If someone had turned to me and asked me why I was here, I wasn’t sure I could give them an answer. It wasn’t as though I was her sister, her lover, her mother, even her friend. I was the daughter of one of the many, many people she’d killed, and, honestly, I still couldn’t be sure why I gave her the time of day. But yet here I was, compelled once again to just keep going, to come back time and time again to try and find something with her. I knew no–one else was going to bother. Rose had refused to tell us anything about her friends and family from before she was taken, and none of them knew she was in prison. Just us, the people who’d put her there, had any knowledge of where she was these days.
The door at the other side of the glass clicked open with a loud, ungainly squawk, and a handful of women in matching orange jumpsuits made their way through. Rose looked over at me for a moment and paused, as though she wasn’t sure whether or not to approach me. But, after a couple of seconds, she did, taking her place opposite me and picking up the phone on her side of the glass. The guard at the door kept a watchful eye on her; if he had any idea what she was capable of, he would have known he was right to. I had assumed that she would end up in all kinds of trouble after she got locked up, but she had mostly kept her head down, much to my surprise. I picked up the phone, and spoke.
“Hey,” I greeted her, managing to put a smile on my face. “How…uh, how are you?”
“I’m okay,” she nodded cautiously. I could still see the burn scar on her hand where she had grabbed that white–hot door handle, and it made me flinch every time I remembered it was there. “How are you?”
“Yeah, pretty good,” I replied, the smile turning more genuine when I remembered the news I had to deliver to her. “Uh, actually, really good.”
“Oh yeah?” She cocked her head, her voice lilting slightly. I wondered how long it had been before she came here since she had a conversation that didn’t revolve around her murdering someone for cash. She still didn’t seem that used to this, and it was kind of endearing to watch a woman as powerful as her tiptoe her way around the conversation as though it was a bomb that was about to go off at any second.
“It was the court case this week,” I went on. “They all got put away. Every one of them.”
“Really?” Her eyes bugged out of her head. “All of them?”
“That’s right,” I nodded proudly. I had last seen her when I’d come to take her statement about the case, and I could see then that she was doubtful that it was going to turn out the way we both wanted. I supposed, that’s what happened when you spent the last ten years getting beaten down at every turn. She raised her eyebrows and looked down at her hand for a moment, as though trying to center herself.
“How long?”
“Probably more than a century between them,” I replied, and the two of us exchanged a look; I wasn’t sure quite what it meant, but I knew it was something. An understanding. Both of us had been through the same thing, to some extent or another, and now both of us were out the other side of it. Yes, we were at different sides of the glass right now, but she was getting better with every day that passed. She already looked younger, with the pitch–black dye growing out of her hair in chunks and her eyes devoid of the heavy make–up she used to slather on.
“That’s amazing,” she blurted, and immediately clamped her lips shut. She wasn’t used to expressing that much emotion. I paused for a moment, letting her gather herself again, before I went on.
“And it was…your testimony, that was a big part of it,” I went on gently. “Between that and my father’s old file, we’ve got enough to keep them away for a long time, and hopefully take down some more people once we get our hands on them, too.”
She flinched at the mention of my father, but I didn’t. I spoke his name with pride, acknowledged everything he’d done without a second thought. Because he deserved it. I knew she was flinching more for me than for herself, worried that coming out with the word would be enough to send me down a spiral of sadness. But I had seen too much in the last few months to believe that sadness got you anywhere. I needed to act. It’s what my father would have done, and it’s what he would have wanted me to do. Rose smiled at me, nervously.
“That…that’s incredible,” she murmured, the crackle of the phone hiding the slight waver in her voice. “I wish I could have done this all sooner, Angel. Before everything with your—“
I held my hand up. I didn’t need to hear another apology from her. She had offered me enough over the course of her arrest and sentencing, and the mere fact that she had handed herself in and helped finish up my father’s work was enough for me to find some way to forgiving her. She stopped dead in her tracks, already knowing what was going through my mind. I couldn’t find it in my heart to hate her for all of this, no matter how justified I was in doing so. I’d felt the fear she had in the moment I woke up in that place. God knows what I would have done if I thought it would have given me some agency back. I didn’t even want to consider it.
“What’s been going on with you?” I asked, changing the subject. I placed my chin in my hand, and cocked my head at her, and for a second it felt as though we were far away from here – a coffee shop, maybe, or a bar, catching up like a pair of old friends. And yeah, as Rose began to outline the work she’d been doing in the prison kitchen, I knew that we would never have a conventional friendship. But what in my life was conventional now? Instead of the beat cop I’d been trained to be, I was heading up taskforces to end sex trafficking. I was dating an ex–con and police informant who seemed as set on ending the horrors in the darker corners of the criminal world as I was. And here I was, talking to the woman who’d killed my father, because I had found somewhere in my heart to put my forgiveness for her. Life went on, that was all I had learned. Just not always in the way you thought it would.
THE END
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