Starlet: A Dark Retelling - Cora Kenborn Page 0,110

heard the news? Angel Smith never existed. My name is Alexandra.”

Closing the door to the interrogation room, Detective Rubio scans a curious eye down my ripped jeans and dirty T-shirt before taking a seat across the table. “You’ve taken a step down in the world, McCallum.”

“I don’t wear my tux to move shit, Jav. Sorry to disappoint you.”

Tossing a folder on the table, he lets out a chuckle, as if my answer amuses him. As if he didn’t call Angel minutes after her world flipped upside down to tell her we both needed to come to the station immediately.

Maybe she hasn’t been completely on her game lately, but my girl is no idiot. No one gets called to a police station for good news. And as much as she hates me right now, she still needs me, and this asshole has kept me sitting in a metal chair for over an hour.

I fist my hands against the desk. “Where is she?”

“She’s fine,” he mutters, flipping open the folder, but I see the twitch in his eye. He’s lying.

“I want to see her. Now.”

“You’ll see her when we’re finished.” Folding his arms over the papers, he bends forward. “When that time comes is up to you.”

Another pain stabs me in the chest. She needs me there to ground her. Angel is straddling a razor thin line between her life as Alexandra and her life as Angel. It’s unbalanced, and it only takes one wrong step for it to snap and send her spiraling inside her own mind.

Everything I’ve done has been to keep this from happening. I didn’t want her to know she was Alexandra Romanov out of fear, but not for myself. For her. Because once those memories come back, she’ll never force them out. She’ll never unsee them.

She’ll never forgive herself.

I slump back in the chair. “What do you want to know this time?”

“Violet DeLuca’s body was found at the bottom of the Hollywood Reservoir.”

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. She’s been missing for three weeks now. I stayed positive for Angel’s sake, but I knew it was only a matter of time.

“You don’t look surprised, McCallum. Why is that?” He fans the crime scene pictures out in front of me to incite a reaction. I admit, they’re hard to look at. Violet’s face is purple and bloated.

But instead of giving him what he wants, I glance back up at him. “I’m sorry, is there a certain protocol for this kind of thing? It’s my first time; maybe you have a pamphlet I can read.”

Rubio shakes his head, gathering the photos and setting them aside. “Humor, that’s good. You’ll need it.” Digging through his little folder again, he pulls out another photo and slides it toward me. This one makes me grip the edge of the table with both hands. “Because security footage has you and Violet arguing outside of Silverline’s main executive offices. And wouldn’t you know it?” He taps his finger against the picture. “It’s time stamped the same day she disappeared. You failed to mention that before. Why is that?”

I shrug. “Didn’t think it mattered. I can’t control what she does.”

“I guess not. Still, it looked like it got pretty heated. Like right here.” He points to the picture again, and I want to grab his finger and snap it in two. “You had her pinned against the wall. Were you angry at her, Dominic? Angry enough to hurt her?”

“No.” He’s provoking me on purpose. He wants me to snap. He’s banking on it.

“Where were you that night around 11:45?”

“I was with Alexandra.” Smirking, I gesture toward my dick. “Would you like a blow-by-blow description of what we were doing, Jav?”

“That won’t be necessary,” he says, brushing off the innuendo. “Luckily for you, Alexandra backs up your story. Although she doesn’t seem too stable right now, so maybe she’ll say anything if she’s afraid of the consequences.”

A marked silence fills the room, and we both know he hit a chink in my armor. Taunting me with thoughts of her slipping away from me shifts the balance of power into his hands. “I’d never hurt her.”

“I don’t know,” he says, cocking an eyebrow. “People die around you, Dominic. Freddy Wiseman, Violet DeLuca. Now, Greg Rosten is missing.”

I still. “He’s what?”

Rubio doesn’t miss my reaction. “Oh, I’m sorry, did I not mention that part? No one has seen Greg Rosten since Friday night. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?” I