Asylum

Chapter 51: The Backstory

There was a moment when neither of us moved, but at least he was looking at me now, even if his eyes, his entire face, were entirely unreadable. Slowly he reached up a wet hand and took the badge and ID from me for a closer look.

After a moment he looked up again, the wallet still open to my stern-faced photo and true identity. "And are you here to arrest me?" he asked calmly. "If so, I'm afraid I will have to remind you that Miami is a bit outside of your jurisdiction."

"No! No, of course I'm not trying to arrest you," I blurted. "I just ... I had to tell you ..."

"... that you're a liar who's been spying on me for months?" he finished.

"No!" I realized I was practically shouting, and lowered my voice with Herculean effort. "I ... well, yes and no ..." Ivan was unnervingly calm, whereas I felt like something was trying to crawl out of my skin to run screaming into the night. I took a deep, steadying breath and allowed my eyes to drop closed. Maybe it would be easier if I couldn't see him staring at me.

"I joined the NYPD almost two years ago," I began. "I told you about my parents being killed while I was in college ..."

"So that part is true."

I opened my eyes. "Almost everything I've told you is true," I insisted. "I've just ... had to leave some important ... details out." He looked unconvinced and unimpressed. I took another steadying breath.

"Their murder led me to get a law degree – I thought I might join the DA's office, put criminals away, make some kind of difference – but that just didn't seem ... direct enough. I decided to enroll at the police academy and join the force. After my rookie year, I was recruited into Vice, where I spent some of the most ... depressing, humiliating months I could imagine. It was Christmas Day, last year, and I had decided I would rather quit the force than keep working that job, when I was unexpectedly tossed a sort of life line – a chance to work in the Organized Crime Control Bureau – and I took it.

"Of course, it wasn't really the big opportunity I'd hoped it might be," I continued, looking down at my twisting, interlocked fingers. "They wanted someone inside Asylum, to record your comings and goings, and the comings and goings of anyone who might be meeting with you. They only brought me in because they couldn't get one of their officers hired for security, and I fit the general age and appearance profile for an employee and had a couple years of experience as a bartender. They picked Malcolm up on a possession charge to create an opening, I walked in right when Stefano was looking for cover, and it was done ... they had eyes and ears in place."

I waited for any sort of reaction on his part. "I see," he bit out finally. Ivan looked back down at my ID before returning his gaze to me. He was being way too calm about this – icy – and truth be told, it was starting to freak me out. "And sleeping with me was supposed to ... what? ... help you learn secrets through pillow talk? Get you into my apartment to look for incriminating evidence? Or were you supposed to seduce me and convince me to turn on the cartel?"

I couldn't help the bitter laugh that exploded from my lips. I looked up helplessly at the star-speckled obsidian canopy above. "If my L.T. had gotten wind that you had even noticed me ... spoken a single word to me ... I would have been bounced out of that club so fast I'd be suffering from whiplash. I ..." I paused, not sure how to explain my actions, the fine line I'd been walking, which I'd now accepted was a hazy middle ground of my own fabrication.

"When you did notice me, when you actually spoke to me, I knew I should report the interaction to the department and just deal with the inevitable reassignment, but I ... I didn't want to leave Asylum yet. But for me to stay ... I shouldn't have let anything happen, should have kept things between us strictly professional, but ..."