Chapter 2 - The Woman Trevor Said Was Crazy
Nina Bell lived above a laundromat in a neighborhood Trevor would have described as unsafe if he were trying to impress a client.
Sadi recognized the kind of apartment before she ever stepped inside.
Thin walls. A radiator that clanged every nine minutes. A window unit held in place with white tape. Furniture chosen because it was cheap and not because it matched.
It reminded her of where she had once lived with Trevor.
That alone made her stomach tighten.
Roman remained downstairs.
He had offered to come up. Sadi had said no.
Not because she was angry with him.
Because this conversation did not need a feared man in a dark suit changing the temperature of the room.
Chloe came with her.
Nina opened the door wearing a gray sweatshirt and suspicious eyes.
She was thirty-two, maybe thirty-three, with short dark hair and a faded scar near her left eyebrow.
When she saw Chloe, she almost shut the door.
“Wait,” Chloe said. “Please.”
Nina looked at Sadi.
“Who are you?”
Sadi answered honestly.
“Someone he hurt before you.”
The door stopped moving.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting around a tiny kitchen table while Nina smoked a cigarette near an open window.
“I told HR,” Nina said. “They told me I had misunderstood a heated professional exchange.”
“What happened?” Sadi asked.
Nina looked at Chloe.
“You really want to hear this?”
Chloe nodded.
Trevor had supervised Nina on a merger case. He began sending late-night messages, then criticizing her clothes, then threatening her evaluations when she stopped responding.
“One night he cornered me in Conference Room C,” Nina said. “He grabbed my throat. Not enough to choke me. Enough to scare me.”
Sadi went still.
Nina noticed.
“He did that to you too?”
Sadi swallowed.
“Once.”
It had been years ago.
She had told herself it was not really choking because his hand had stayed there only two seconds.
That was how abuse worked. It trained you to become your own defense attorney for the person hurting you.
Nina opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out a flash drive.
“I copied my emails before they locked me out.”
Chloe stared.
“You kept everything?”
“I thought I might sue.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Nina laughed without humor.
“Do you know what his firm did? They offered me twelve months’ severance if I signed an NDA. I had student loans and a mother with cancer.”
Sadi’s jaw tightened.
“What changed?”
“Nothing. I signed.”
Chloe whispered, “Then you can’t talk.”
Nina looked at her.
“I can talk to police about a crime.”
Chloe looked down.
Outside, a black sedan waited at the curb.
Roman could have made one call and gotten the best attorney in the state upstairs within an hour.
Sadi knew it.
Nina knew it too.
That was exactly why Sadi did not mention him.
This could not become another story where a powerful man solved the lives of women.
“What do you want?” Sadi asked.
Nina’s eyes narrowed.
“What do you mean?”
“Not what will hurt Trevor. What do you want?”
The question seemed to unsettle her.
After a long silence, Nina said, “I want my name back.”
Sadi understood.
Trevor’s firm had allowed rumors to spread that Nina had been unstable, careless, dramatic.
Her career never recovered.
“I want the record corrected,” Nina continued. “I want the partners who helped him answer for it. And I want him nowhere near another junior associate.”
Chloe lifted her head.
“I can help.”
Nina’s expression hardened.
“You were engaged to him yesterday.”
“I know.”
“You wore his ring.”
“I know.”
“You defended him online when people asked why you were marrying a man whose first long-term partner vanished from his life with nothing.”
Chloe looked at Sadi.
“What did he tell you?” Sadi asked.
“That you stole from him.”
Sadi almost smiled.
Trevor had stolen her last six hundred dollars.
“He said you drained his savings and disappeared.”
“I had forty-three dollars after he left.”
Chloe covered her mouth.
Nina muttered, “Of course.”
Sadi leaned back.
Trevor had not just rewritten his relationship with her.
He had turned Sadi into the villain in the story he used to impress the next woman.
That realization hurt in a surprisingly clean way.
Not because Chloe had believed him.
Because lies like that survived when the people they were told about disappeared from the room.
Sadi had disappeared.
Not anymore.
Her phone buzzed.
Arthur.
She answered.
“We have a problem,” he said.
“What?”
“The mall footage.”
“What about it?”
“The boutique manager says the original file is gone.”
Sadi stood.
“When?”
“Between the police request and the export.”
Nina exhaled smoke through her nose.
“Trevor has friends.”
Chloe looked terrified.
Sadi asked Arthur, “Is there a backup?”
“Mall central security may have one.”
“May?”
“Someone tried accessing their archive remotely twenty minutes ago.”
Roman’s voice sounded faintly in the background.
Sadi could not make out the words.
Then Arthur said, “Roman wants you downstairs.”
“I’ll be there.”
She hung up.
Nina looked at her carefully.
“Roman?”
Sadi picked up her coat.
“My husband.”
Nina blinked.
Chloe gave a tiny, exhausted laugh.
“Apparently that part is also complicated.”
Downstairs, Roman was standing beside the sedan.
He did not ask whether Nina would cooperate.
He asked, “Are you okay?”
Sadi nodded.
Then she told him about the missing footage.
Roman’s face became still.
“Trevor cannot delete what he doesn’t control.”
“Someone tried.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Roman opened the rear car door for her.
“That,” he said, “is what I am about to find out.”
Sadi did not get in.
“Roman.”
He looked at her.
“No disappearing people. No broken hands. No favors from judges.”
Something almost like amusement moved through his eyes.
“You have a low opinion of me.”
“I know exactly who I married.”
“Do you?”
The question landed strangely.
Before she could answer, Arthur stepped from the other side of the car.
“Boss.”
Roman turned.
Arthur held out a tablet.
A photograph was on the screen.
Trevor entering a private members club two nights earlier.
The man beside him was not a lawyer.
Sadi knew him.
Everyone in the city knew him.
Councilman Everett Shaw.
The same politician who had spent six months publicly promising to dismantle organized crime.
Roman studied the image.
Then he looked at Sadi.
“This just became inconvenient.”
Sadi stared at the photograph.
May you like
“No,” she said.
“It became interesting.”
