“It’s complicated.”
“With fucks like that, figure it always is.”
“What do you want with him?”
“Think he’s fucking over my boss. I was just looking for proof.”
“He screws over everyone,” she said, shrugging. “He’s greedy and selfish and thinks he is smarter than everyone else.”
“Sounds like you’ve been needing someone to say that to for a long time, yeah?” I asked because it had been pure venom in her voice.
But calling her out on it made her immediately stiffen, her gaze moving away. Not even to the mirror, just away from me entirely.
“This is a bad idea. If he finds out I am talking to someone—“
“Who is gonna tell him? You? Me?” I asked, raising a brow as her gaze moved back to me.
“He has a lot of people,” she said, confirming our suspicions about him expanding without saying anything.
“They watch you?”
“They watch everything.”
There was a certain rawness in those words, an open wound that refused to heal.
And it didn’t take much thinking to figure out that she meant that they watched when her husband beat the shit out of her, but said and did nothing to stop it.
I wasn’t someone known for having a hell of a lot of self-control. But I mustered up what I had of it to keep my ass on the exercise bike and not charging upstairs to show that fucker what it is like when your power is taken away from you.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, voice low.
“I want—“ I started when we both saw the door open, making us both shut up immediately and start peddling.
What did I want?
That was the question, wasn’t it?
I wasn’t even supposed to be making contact with anyone in the Polat family.
I was just supposed to be gathering evidence, then turning it all over to Lorenzo so he could decide what he wanted to do.
He would have some shit to say about me approaching the wife, no matter my reasons.
“Hey, girl,” the woman said, giving Ezmeray a warm smile. “I haven’t seen you down here much lately.”
“Well, when your husband starts dropping comments about your weight…” Ezmeray said, waving toward the bike.
“You dump him and get a better one,” the woman who was somewhere in middle age with a rocking body and red hair pulled back into a long braid.
“But then who would cook all his meals?” Ezmeray said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m telling you, honey, my divorce was the best thing I ever did in my life. I swear my wrinkles disappeared overnight. I shrugged two-hundred-and-twenty pounds of useless man off my shoulders. Never felt so good,” she added, making her way toward the door that led into the pool.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Ezmeray called back just before the woman disappeared. “She lives on my floor,” she explained, and something in her tone said that not only did Eren’s men know what went down in their marriage, but the neighbors did too. “I need to go,” she declared, jumping to her feet, and rushing off before I could say anything else to her.
I wasn’t surprised.
Women who were actively being abused were skittish and unsure, always afraid that something they said or did could land them another beating.
Which, in all fairness, it probably would.
On a sigh, I climbed off of the bike, knowing I had no business hanging around the apartment building.
Someone—if not Eren directly, then one of his men—was sure to recognize me. It wasn’t like I had a low profile.
I was making my way toward the door when the woman from before reappeared wearing a simple black one piece that proved she spent a lot of time swimming laps in that pool. But she wasn’t wet yet.
“I’m sorry if I interrupted,” she said, giving me a wince-smile. “I just wasn’t thinking,” she added. “I try to talk to her when I see her. You know he hardly ever lets her out of that fucking apartment. The bastard. I had a bastard of my own, so I am talking from experience.
“Anyway. I didn’t mean to break up your little conversation. God knows if anyone deserves to have a little joy on the side, it is that poor girl. Do you know she doesn’t even have a cell phone? I asked her once for hers so we could exchange numbers in case of any emergencies or anything. She told me she could give me the landline and that was it. Fucking ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, nodding.
“I don’t even know how she agreed to meet up with you with how overbearing he is. But in case she didn’t tell you, and you want to see her again, she shops every week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at the market on the corner. It’s the only time you can catch her without one of those… men hanging around.”
“Hey, that’s really helpful…”