This time…
This time, for good.
I stared at the door for a long time after he left, the bank card a thorn in my eye as it pushed against the corner of my vision.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Adrian
The email confirming her notice of termination hit my desk before I’d even sat down. It had been printed, almost as if to taunt me, sitting on top of all the other files I had to look through.
I picked it up, scoffed, and threw it back down. Why did I care? She didn’t. She was a multi-millionaire, now. She always had been. She’d said as much herself. The money had been her mom’s, she’d just been blocked from it.
My job tonight was to arrest a prostitute, but not a part of me cared. How many of these women were like her, ultimately living a lie?
Not a piece of me had liked walking out on her this morning. I loved her—fuck, I loved her. Wildly and with every piece of me I had fucking left.
But her entire existence had been a lie. It had been a twisted, fucked-up version of reality that I didn’t know I would ever understand.
Except—I could.
I had all the files. I had the reality at the tips of my fingers.
All the answers I wanted…I could get.
I picked up the phone and dialed Sam’s extension.
“Sam,” I said before he could answer. “You’re in charge tonight. Two arrests, scout three locations. You know the drill. I’m out.”
“You’re—”
I hung up before he could continue. I’d worked overtime for months, and now, I was gonna sit my fucking ass in this office and unravel the mystery of Perrie Fox.
***
Perrie Carter is born to a wanted murderer and Hannah Fox.
Age two: Hannah Fox files charges of abuse against Roy Carter.
Age three: Roy Carter is charged for murder, child abuse, actual bodily harm, and attempted murder. He receives a life sentence from Nevada and is deported to another state for sentencing there.
Age three: Perrie Carter is adopted by Benedict Fox.
Age seventeen: Perrie Fox’s sister, Penelope Fox, is found dead in a motel room. Suspected overdose. Six months later: The Fox’s open an investigation into their daughter’s death. They insist it was an accident. LVPD open an investigation at the persuasion of Benedict Fox.
Age eighteen: The Fox family is informed that Penelope Fox’s death was definitely drug-related, and no third party was involved. The case is closed.
Age eighteen: Hannah Fox is found dead, hanging in the family home.
Age nineteen: Perrie Fox’s boyfriend and admitted father of her unborn child is charged with drink-driving and proclaimed dead on arrival to the hospital.
Age twenty-six: Perrie Fox was arrested for prostitution.
Age twenty-six: Detective Adrian Potter fell completely in love with her and broke his own fucking heart in the process.
I should have known better.
There were so many reasons, all written in the riddles of the case files that made up her life, that eluded to why she’d taken the path she had.
I’d broken my own heart—and maybe hers—because I believed we were different. That we were two different flips of a coin, and maybe we were. She was heads and I was tails, but fuck it. We were the same goddamn coin, and I was a fool.
She had always been Perrie Fox.
She’d always had the key to the world.
And I’d loved her before she was even able to unlock that key.
And maybe—just maybe, she’d fucking loved me, too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Perrie
Lola shoved a piece of paper at me.
I took the roughly-folded, green sheet, and opened it. But not before I’d raised my eyebrow at her. “What is this?”
She jutted out her chin and placed her hands on her hips. “Read it.”
“To Perrie,” I read, noting the questionable, child-like handwriting that scrawled my name. “Yoo ar envyted to a partee at Zac’s howse. Twoday at 4 oh clock. Pleez dress pretti.”
I scrunched up my face and looked at Lola. “Did you and Zac write this?”
Wide-eyed, she shook her head. “No, Mommy.”
Yeah. All right. I believed her.
“Four o’clock is in twenty minutes,” I told her. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get to Zac’s house in twenty minutes.”
She pulled her little eyebrows together into a frown. “You don’t want to go to his house?”
“Well… Baby girl, it’s not always as simple as that, okay?”
She sat on the arm of the sofa with a ‘hmph.’ “That’s what Adrian said.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What did Adrian say?”
“He said grown-ups suck.”
“Well, he was right.”
“Mommy, will you please go to our party?” She shuffled in front of me, fiddling with the hem of her skirt. She peered up at me through her thick, blond eyelashes. “Please?”
I tilted my head to the side and looked at her. She was so earnest and honest—for whatever reason she had planned, she wanted me to go to the one place I swore to myself at three a.m. I’d never visit again.