The Kiss Plot by Nicole French

Fourteen

Itook an Uber with a complete stranger just to piss Eric off. It worked—his tall shadow was shaking in his bedroom window as we drove away. Point Jane.

Zola was waiting for me at a lounge in the Lower East Side. It wasn’t until the driver pulled up to the address I’d provided that I realized it was in fact the Green Goose, the exact place Eric had recommended. Dammit. Point him.

“Who the fuck names a bar after an off-color water fowl?” I muttered to myself as the car pulled away from the curb. “Goose is the least sexy name on the planet.”

But when I entered the bar, I immediately felt at home. The Lower East Side was a long way from the tall, posh buildings that surrounded Central Park. The lounge itself was nestled in the basement of a sagging brick walk-up that had the beaten charm of a building that used to be “bad,” but was now repurposed to New York’s young bohemian contingent who either hid their Wall Street wealth under ripped jeans and concert tees or lived five to a bedroom just to afford Manhattan rent. As I looked around the lounge, I was just as likely to see biker jackets as crinoline, combat boots as ballet flats. Vintage labels mixed with full-sleeve tattoos, and there were mohawks and bobs alike.

I smiled. These were my people, eclectic and weird. And not for the first time, I wondered what life would be like once I could trade the radius of Central Park for a bit more…diversity.

I approached the bar and flagged down the server, a cute, femme guy with a nose ring.

He gave me a look that should have set my dress on fire. “What’ll you have, gorgeous?”

I wrinkled my nose—not just because Eric sometimes called me that, but because this guy looked young enough to be my offspring. Okay, maybe not that young. But close enough.

“Just a PBR.” I set a five on the stained bar top.

Nose ring nodded lasciviously. “Vintage. I like it.”

I scowled, unsure if he was referring to me, my dress, or my beer choice. My thirtieth birthday was in three days, just before Thanksgiving. I wasn’t particularly happy to be entering the more “mature” stage of my life. Weren’t people supposed to have their shit together by thirty? My life was messier than ever.

“I had to stop drinking that stuff a few years ago. Gives me heartburn.”

I turned to find my “date” for the night taking a seat at the bar next to me, looking a hell of a lot better than any public servant had any right to look.

I’d met Matthew Zola a few times. After the trial that involved Skylar’s family, he remained friends with the Crosby-Sterlings, attending their random extravaganzas with the rest of the ragtag group of family and friends they had assembled over the years. He looked the same as ever—about six feet, but with the bearing of a taller man, lean and wiry with shiny dark hair combed neatly back, penetrating eyes fringed with long black lashes, and a full mouth that was always curled in a slight smirk. Zola was a good guy, as clean-cut as it got. But sitting there in a plain leather jacket, white t-shirt, and jeans, he still had an edge that, like his five-o’clock shadow, couldn’t quite be erased.

I grinned. “Hey there, stranger. Nice to see you again.”

He offered a distinctly European kiss on each cheek—I knew his family was Italian or something, so I wondered if he’d picked it up from them. Then he ordered a beer for himself. The bartender gave him the same firestarter look he’d given me, served the drink, and dashed off to flirt with the other clientele. Zola smiled at me with certified bedroom eyes. And I almost scowled.

Because despite the fact that I was enjoying a drink with a man whom I had flirted with off and on for years, I felt nothing. Nothing.

My mojo, that finicky, conniving little bitch, had decided to go missing. Again.

“You’re a bit underdressed for the office,” I remarked, pushing all negative thoughts to the side.

Zola looked down at his casualwear and smirked. “Sunday. No court. You look…wow. Really great.”

“Do you live far from here?”

“Oh, a bit, yeah,” Zola replied. “But it’s all right. You gave me an excuse to come into the city. I don’t get out of Brooklyn much. Traffic, you know.”

I nodded, though I really didn’t know. Despite having spent the last six months in New York, I wasn’t very familiar with much beyond the basic Manhattan neighborhoods below 125th Street. And, of course, one neighborhood in Queens with a rock-climbing gym.

“Where, ah, where in Brooklyn are you from?” I asked, though I wouldn’t really know the difference.

Zola finished his sip of beer. “Well, I’m from the Bronx originally, Belmont. My parents still live there, but the rest of us left.”

I smiled. Bronx neighborhoods were basically Latin. “The rest of you?”

The lawyer smiled, his mouth twisting sheepishly. “I have a few brothers and sisters.”

“How many is a few?”

The smile widened. “Ah, five.”

I blinked. “Bit of a stereotype, aren’t you? Big Italian family?”

“Italian and Puerto Rican, for your information,” he said. But his grin informed me he wasn’t irritated by the question. “They’re like roaches—I can’t get rid of them. My sister lives with me in Brooklyn. Sheepshead Bay. We couldn’t afford to be any closer to the city. She’s a teacher; I’m an assistant prosecutor. Public servants, you know?”

I did know. Man, oh, man, did I know. Chicago was almost as expensive as New York, and I did not relish the idea of going back to a studio. Nope. Wasn’t happening. Not if the next almost-six weeks killed me.

But even so, it was nice sitting here with Zola, listening to him talk about completely normal things like his family’s crowded townhouse and the price of rent in Brooklyn. It was the first time in months I’d had a conversation with anyone who didn’t consider forty-five-dollar steak a cheap meal. I liked it. I missed it.

I drained my PBR and signaled to the bartender for another.

“Someone’s looking to get sloshed,” Zola remarked.

I shook my head. “Just letting off some steam. So…Skylar mentioned you work in the racketeering bureau here still.”

“Oh, yeah. She said you might be interested in a job. The new DA wants to beef up my bureau, actually.”

“Oh?” I had no experience with organized crime, but I wouldn’t say no to an option.

Zola waggled his dark brows. “Wanna go after some big baddies?”

“Like who?” I asked. “The last big case that made the news were those rich people who paid their kids’ way into Harvard and USC.”

“Well, we did help the feds a bit on that one. None of them were de Vries, by the way, but we did hear whisperings…”

I remained silent. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to find out that anyone in Eric’s family had bribed their kids into college.

“Most of the crime we have is on a smaller scale, sure,” Zola rattled on. “But you’d be surprised. Every now and then, someone big turns out to be involved. There was this heroin ring in East New York that was ninety percent small-time dealers, plus a basketball star for the Nets. It’s crazy, you know? Like these fat cats would rather risk their lives to stuff a few extra thousand in their pockets that they wouldn’t even notice.” He shook his head. “They do it because they can.”

I nodded. I’d heard of similar kinds of thrill-seekers in Chicago too.

“So, are you taking the bar in February or have you applied for reciprocity?” Zola asked, referring to the potential to waive the UBE because I already had admission in Illinois.

I nodded. “I applied, but in the meantime, I’m studying for February. I have to take the NYLE in December anyway.”

Zola waved away that concern. “My dog could pass the NYLE.”

“You have a dog? What kind?”

He scoffed. “I’m a lawyer. I don’t have time for a dog. I meant that figuratively.”

I grinned back. Zola was cute when he was awkward. Cute, and yet, still doing absolutely nothing for me. Which was weird, because the man was fucking gorgeous.

He arched an eyebrow at me. “So, here’s my real question, though. Why in the hell do you want to practice law when you just married into one of the most powerful families in New York?”

I sighed. “You heard about that, did you?”

“Jane, it was on the cover of every paper in the city. The whole world heard about it. But I, uh…” He pointed his beer bottle at my hand. “I can’t help notice there’s something missing there.”

I examined my naked finger, then tucked it into my lap. “You want to hear the real joke?”

He cocked his head, waiting.

I shrugged. “It’s fake. All of it. Eric had to get married for money…and now that Celeste died, we found out that she adjusted her will. We only have to cohabitate through the end of the year, and then we’re done. No marriage. Nothing.”

“Ah,” he replied. “Which explains why you want to work. You want out of their shadow.”

I held a finger in the air like a lightbulb had just appeared. “Bingo.”

Zola examined me for a moment, tapping his lips. “Don’t hate me for saying this, but that doesn’t look like the face of someone who’s only marrying for money.”

“Oh?” I asked. “And what kind of face does it look like, then? Inexplicably fabulous, I hope.”

“It looks sort of like someone with a broken heart,” he said, then turned his attention back to his beer. “So why did you really call me? You could have just sent me your resume if you wanted a job.”

“I need…” I looked up with sudden awareness. “Hold on.” I pulled a dollar from my purse and handed it to him. “Can I trust you?”

Zola looked at the dollar. “Ah, shit, Jane. You know I can’t take that.”

“It’s not against the law.”

His slim black brow rose. “Actually, it is. Prosecutors can’t have a private practice here. I guess you’re not that far through the course yet, are you?”

I sighed and withdrew the bill. When I set my hand back on the bar, Zola covered it with his own. I looked up.

“I can’t be your lawyer,” he said. “But I am a friend. And you can trust that. Are you into something?”

I shook my head, causing my hair to move around my face. “No, not…not me.”

“Eric, then?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Zola’s dark eyes were earnest, but kind. “Tell me.”

For a moment, I was struck with indecision. This was exactly what Eric was scared of. That I would share his secrets, my biological father’s secrets, and imperil both of us. He was convinced that Carson had some way of listening or tracking or seeing whether or not we were telling the truth.

Gingerly, I removed my phone from my purse and stared at it for a long time. I felt paranoid just wondering about it. Not like I-had-one-too-many-hits-on-a-bong paranoid. Like Edward Snowden paranoid.

But Zola didn’t seem surprised when I dropped the phone camera-first into my glass of water.

“You know, you could have just asked the bartender to put it in the microwave over there,” he remarked as we watched it sink to the bottom of the pint glass.

I sighed. “Some say I have a flair for drama. They might be right.”

His black brow rose again. “I think you better tell me exactly what’s going on, Jane.”

I took a deep breath, then checked around the bar. Yeah. Even with my phone deep-sea diving, I still didn’t feel safe. “What do you say we go for a walk?”

Zola chuckled. “You’ve watched too many gangster movies.”

“No, I’m just antsy. Come on, Matlock, let’s get some air.”

* * *

We meandered down Orchard Street,and Zola shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket while he waited patiently for me to speak. I recognized the trick. Sometimes when you question a witness, the best thing to do is wait them out.

We turned right onto Houston, and it wasn’t until we passed Katz’s, the famous diner where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in When Harry Met Sally, that I finally started talking, soothed by the hum of traffic.

“Have you ever seen anything to do with secret societies?” I asked.

Zola peered at me. “What, like the Illuminati? I didn’t take you for a conspiracy theorist, Jane.”

I shook my head. “No, not like that. More like Skull and Bones.”

“Those Yale assholes?”

I chuckled. “It’s a real thing.”

“Yeah, I know it is,” Zola said. “Half the criminal defense attorneys in the city went to Ivies like that. Meanwhile, I made do with CUNY.”

I nodded, but didn’t mention my alma mater. Since Zola knew Skylar and Brandon, he also knew that Thanksgiving at her house was basically a Harvard alumni party.

“So, what?” he asked. “Eric’s in a society, and you don’t like it? Don’t those guys just dabble in some mild vandalism and wear hoods and shit?”

I giggled. Then sighed. And then opened my mouth, and before I realized it, the entire story flooded out. The wedding. The coin around Eric’s neck and the other strange men who wore ones just like it. My biological father, John Carson. And my mother, who was scared shitless of him.

The way Eric seemed to be too.

“So, wait, you’re telling me Eric was abducted for ten fucking days by a bunch of Latin-loving assholes who wear matching jewelry?”

I chuckled. I quite liked that characterization.

“And no one reported it?” Zola prodded further. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

I rolled my eyes. “I was a little mad, you know.”

He shook his head. “That’s cold, Jane.”

“Skylar called for us.” I stared at the sidewalk, ashamed. Why hadn’t I looked harder?

“And what did they say?”

“Later that evening, they received a call from Eric saying he was fine,” I said. “Only that he wanted us to leave him alone, and he’d be back for the funeral. They dropped it.”

The family had bought it, mostly because he had done it once before. So I bought it too. It had stung like hell, but somehow I’d swallowed that pill right alongside being left at the altar.

“And now this…society…headed by your long-lost dad…is forcing you to live together without sex for sixty days?” Zola frowned.

I did too. It did sound weird. “I just…something is off. Why would Eric agree to it if they hadn’t done something to him? Something really, really awful? His face was all messed up when he came back. And then Carson threatened me too, you know. Plus that stuff he told my mom.”

“Jane, that’s speculative at best, and you know it. What if Eric was just pissed and wanted some space? What if—and I really hate to say this—what if he realized he just didn’t want to get married?”

“Because he said he loved me!” I shouted, loud enough for a couple of passersby to startle. But as soon as I was done, I immediately felt exactly like someone I had never wanted to be—that girl. The one who says her asshole boyfriend is an angel when everyone’s not looking. I might as well have yelled “you don’t know him like I do!”

Zola, to his credit, just continued walking, unruffled. But I knew what he was thinking. And I was right.

“Jane,” he said after another block had passed. “I’m going to suggest something you’re probably not going to want to hear. I don’t know you. And I don’t know Eric. But I do know that people do weird things when they are grieving—”

I shook my head. “No.”

“And a lot of guys will say a lot of things to get laid—”

“No, no, no—”

“And from what you’ve been telling me, it sounds like you two have a history of maybe being a little vindictive with each other. So maybe—”

“Listen,” I snapped. “Eric left me one way and returned ten days later with a black eye and some pretty insane paranoia. I guarantee if you saw us together, you’d understand what I’m talking about.”

Zola gave a long, low exhale. “What makes you think that I—”

“Because half of what you do is read people, Zola,” I interrupted for the last time. “I know that because I used to do it too. You’re telling me that after, what, seven, ten years cross-examining people who are determined not to snitch, you don’t know if someone is lying? If they are feigning indifference? If they care about something when they say they don’t?”

We stopped, finding ourselves at last at the end of the island. Across the FDR highway and the East River twinkled the lights of Brooklyn. To the south lay the Williamsburg bridge, under which I could see the tail end of a small container vessel. It wasn’t one of the de Vries boats—they were all much bigger and operated out of South Street and New Jersey. But it still made me think of the man who owned them all.

“Fine,” Zola relented at last. “Fine, I’ll take a look. But, Jane?”

I turned. “What?”

“When I tell you there’s nothing there, you have to believe me, all right?”

I smiled. “When you tell me that, I’ll believe you. But you won’t.”