Starlet: A Dark Retelling - Cora Kenborn Page 0,121

wait. With my gun by my side, I turn my back on him and walk away.

“Dominic?” I pause in the doorway, but don’t turn around. “Whatever happened in the past is the past. You love that girl. Whether you’ll admit it or not, in some way, you’ve been looking for her for fifteen years. Most people don’t get a second chance to make things right. Don’t fuck it up.”

I can’t see his face, but I can feel his words. There’s loss there. Emotion. Pain. Almost as if he’s speaking from a dark place he’s locked away.

“Alexandra’s messes are your responsibility now,” he adds, the spicy scent of cigar smoke hitting my nose as I walk away. “My job is done.”

Chapter Forty-Nine

Dominic

A plain black cup of coffee sits untouched in front of me as I lean back, watching people rush back and forth. There are all types in this town. You get the good with the bad, the beautiful with the ugly, and the guilty with the innocent. Sometimes they get so good at hiding who they really are, it’s impossible to tell them apart.

So, who do you trust?

There’s no clear-cut answer. Sometimes you just have to take a blind leap of faith and hope it doesn’t land you at the bottom of a cliff.

The scrape of a chair against rough sidewalk draws my attention away from the street and toward Detective Rubio as he slumps into the seat across from me. “I got your message.” The conflict skirting around his face tells me he’s intrigued but cautious. “So someone gave you a tip for me, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Why cooperate with me now?”

“Because I have nothing left to lose.”

He scratches his chin. “Okay, let’s hear it. What do you have that supposedly is going to blow the Romanov case wide open?”

I take a running start and jump. “I need you to find anything you can on Larry Kramer.”

His eyes widen. “My dad’s old partner? The man’s dead. What the hell does he have to do with anything?”

We can sit here and dick around about this all day, but neither of us have the time for it. I’ve already leaped, and now he needs to, or I’m fucked. “It’s asking a lot, but just trust me on this. What you’re looking for isn’t going to be easily accessible. They’re buried files. Misfiled, backlogged. Shit, I don’t know the names for what you guys do.” I think of Luciano’s advice and add, “Just look below the surface. Meet me back here when you find something.”

“You might want to sit down for this.”

Four hours later, I’m at the same table, watching what feels like the same people when Rubio sits down in the same seat in front of me and slams a dark blue folder down. Whatever’s in there isn’t good. His eyes are wide and barely blinking, and he keeps sawing his jaw back and forth.

“Did you find something?”

“I found a lot of somethings.” Flipping open the folder, he spreads out papers like a kid dumping out Halloween candy. “Seems that your buddy Greg Rosten had some serious ties to Nicholas and Katerina Romanov, and I don’t mean contractually.”

I scan the papers, one catching my eye immediately. The more I read, the harder I clench my fists. “Are these molestation charges?”

Rubio nods, the sawing getting louder. “Looks like you were right to send out that blast. Rosten’s a pedophile. One that Katerina pimped Alexandra out to in exchange for better roles.”

I fight back waves of nausea as his words sink in. I think about the bruises I saw on little Alexandra’s hands as she counted, tucked away in that corner. I think of Rosten’s insistence that I force Angel to sign with Silverline. I think of Brent’s voice telling me he saw Rosten touching her. I think of Angel’s insistence that he’d drugged and raped her.

Then my blood goes so cold I can’t breathe.

Because I think about eight-year-old Alexandra Romanov turning my gun on her mother and pulling the trigger.

“McCallum? You okay?”

Swallowing the bile crawling up my throat, I glance down at the paper crushed in my fist. “This is dated December 22nd.”

“Turns out a couple nights before they were murdered, Nicholas found out what was going on and planned to expose him.” Prying the paper out of my hand, he smooths it out and points to the date again. “Went to the police and filed a report.”

He doesn’t have to tell me the rest. I know how this story ends. “But it was never