But I hold on. Ihaveto.
Ihaveto do this.
For myself. For Rafael. For Katie. Hell, maybe even for my father and Stacey, twisted as that sounds.
“I joined the bureau because I wanted to keep the memory of my detective father alive and continue on a path that would make him proud. That is why I’ve called you here today.”
The questions hit me immediately, overlapping and aggressive.
“Why did you marry a known criminal if you wanted to make your father proud?”
“Your husband and his friends just got arrested by the FBI—were you in on it too? Is that why you married him?”
“Are you going to tell us why your husband was released from custody?”
My gaze drifts to Rafael at the back of the room as the reporters toss their questions at me. Even from here, I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw is locked tight. He looks like he’s ready to burn this entire building down if anyone so much as breathes wrong in my direction.
Part of me is still raw from his lack of faith in me, but can I really blame him? When have I ever given him reason to trust me completely? The truth is, I haven’t—and I’m going to change that. I’m going to earn his trust, no matter how long it takes.
But he’s here anyway. And that means everything.
His presence calms me, pushes the worst of my anxiety into the background where it can’t paralyze me. I raise a hand to stop the flood of questions. “I’m not here to discuss my husband. I’m here to talk about myself and the corrupt officials within the Federal Bureau of Investigation who need to be exposed.”
The reporters go crazy again. A fresh volley of flashes blinds me, and for a heartbeat, I have to look away before my nerves snap completely. When my eyes refocus, they catch Katie’s blue gaze at the side of the room.
She gives me an encouraging smile, and I manage one back. I wouldn’t be standing here without her. In the end, she truly is a friend, despite the circumstances that put us on opposite sides of a line I didn’t know existed.
She went looking for Vladimir Volkov, and well, I can’t pretend not to know how she got the information I’m about to share with the world.
I move my gaze back to Rafael and keep it firmly on him as I continue. “It all started ten,no,fifteen years ago?—”
The beginning flows easily enough. I tell them about my father’s investigation into Alfonso Moretti—how he kept running into dead ends because everyone in our town had been bought over by Alfonso. How he eventually caught the attention of an FBI agent with the same mission, and how they formed an alliance to bring Alfonso’s empire down together.
It went well—until the bust that led to my father’s death.
According to what Katie found out, someone on the force tipped Alfonso off, and they laid a trap for my father and his partner Stacey, which unfortunately only my father walked into. He lost his life—or so we thought.
Here’s where the story gets twisted. “Alfonso was supposed to meet with the Russians that day, but he canceled to set the trap. The Russians, however, didn’t get the message because of some miscommunication and were already on their way. They arrived at the meeting point after Alfonso had left and found my father, half dead on the scene.”
I pause, gripping the edges of the podium. The room has gone dead quiet except for the whisper of camera shutters.
“They knew who he was, but they decided to save him anyway, thinking he’d be an asset if he was indebted to them. So they stripped his identification, put it on another dead body that was damaged beyond recognition, and took my father to their compound where they nursed him back to health.”
My voice wavers slightly, but I push through. “My father was in a coma for two weeks, and by then, the news of his heroic death had already spread everywhere.”
This is where it gets harder. I skip the part about my foolish quest for revenge—that’s not their business.
“When he regained consciousness, he had no memory of who he was, and the Russians—specifically Vladimir andSergey Volkov—shrugged it off and decided to recruit him as one of them. And that’s how Tomassi Rossi went from heroic cop to mere criminal.”
Because of the dishonesty of those darned Russians.
In a way, I’m glad that my preconception of my father wasn’t totally wrong. I have no doubts now that if he had remembered who he was when he woke up, he never would have slipped into that criminal lifestyle.
“However, as the months went by, fragments of his memory started to return. By then, he was in too deep, and the world had moved on from his death. But he reached out to his old partner, Stacey, anyway.”
I can see Rafael’s jaw tighten from across the room. Does he know where this is heading?
“She was shocked to discover he was alive—and what he had become—but Stacey was never one to let an opportunity pass her by. She saw a way to turn his connection to the organization to her advantage, even though they hadn’t been quite as organized as they are now. Because somewhere in that year, she realized government money wasn’t nearly enough to sustain her, and she decided she wanted her share of blood money instead.”
