Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(79)



When the cop had touched his gun, all that confidence had fizzled like a candle doused with a flood. It had been snuffed out without so much as a hiss of smoke. And she had been the one to put him through that. Because she had been blind, even when he’d tried to get her to see.

She hadn’t told Nisha about their conversation in the car coming back.

“Are you . . . are you okay?” she had asked, feeling incredibly stupid. Of course he wasn’t, but she had needed to reach him.

“Peachy,” he’d said. “You needed a demonstration of what happens when a black man tries to break into his own car and you got it. I hope that was entertaining.”

He thought she was entertained? “You blame me for what happened back there.”

He hadn’t even taken a breath. “No, it was my fault. All the way mine. I should have walked away the moment you started that madness.”

His anger returning had been a relief.

“I’m sorry.” She’d say those words a million times if it would ease him. “But how could you have been so calm when that cop was treating you that way?” She hadn’t been able to keep the question inside.

He had laughed then, as though she’d made the most tasteless of jokes. A sound so harsh it had gouged out everything she had been up until that moment. “Maybe because I don’t have a ‘U.S. Attorney brother’ card to pull.”

She’d deserved that. “So you just let them do what they want?”

“Yes! I’m not keen on the idea of a bullet in my head, or finding my arse dumped in jail. I have a sister who needs medical care and has absolutely no one to take care of her if I disappear. So, yes, they can do whatever the bloody hell they want.”

After that she’d stayed quiet.

When he pulled up next to her Tesla, she hadn’t wanted to leave him. She’d wanted to apologize again, to do something to erase her unforgivable stupidity, erase the hurt she had caused. “Tell me what I can do.”

All his simmering rage had darkened his eyes, tightened his muscles under the fine, laundered cotton of his shirt. But in the end all he did was let out that ugly laugh again.

“Are you laughing because you think you taught me some sort of lesson?” Because he had, he had pulled the world from beneath her feet.

“You give me too much credit, Dr. Raje. It’s not my place to teach you anything.” She hated when he did that, withdrew behind those clipped words. But his eyes continued to blaze, and that she couldn’t hate.

“We can do something about this. I have it on video. We can file a complaint against Officer Dunn.” The need to do something screamed inside her.

He had drawn up at that, fear dampening his gaze. “Absolutely not. Listen to me, I do not want to go down that path. I do not want this to go any further. My focus has to be Emma right now. If you feel the need to mete out justice, find a way to get my sister into the OR. Save her life.” Then with every iota of his anger gone, with everything gone, he met her eyes again. No armor, nothing but the truth of who he was naked in front of her. For the first time since she’d met him, she felt like she was seeing him, all his strength, all his fear. “I mean it. Please. Let me have my privacy and let what happened today go.”

Every single time Trisha came in contact with the man, she had come away feeling childish and petty. Today she had felt insubstantial, as though she were a feather held up against the wind in unsteady fingers, seconds from being blown into an endless sky.

She sat up in bed. “Go back to sleep,” she said to Nisha, tucking the sheets around her. “I have some work to do. I’ll be in my office if you need anything. And don’t worry, I’m never going to let anyone see that video.” Not when she had promised DJ.

“A person is only as good as his word.” Nisha mumbled the line with a sad smile and fell back to sleep, satisfied.

Trisha poured herself a glass of milk and opened up her laptop. It was barely two A.M. and there was an email from HRH in her in-box. The email she’d sent him yesterday had completely slipped her mind. She had finally gathered the courage to let him know that she had run into Julia at Green Acres. She opened his response. It was, as usual, serialized into a neat clinical list.

Dear Trisha,

I have information that she has been working on interviews with terminally ill patients. (attached: PI report of cases against her for stealing funds from families of patients after claiming to help them raise funds)

This is the second reminder to review your terminal cases.

Do not take this lightly. Covering up for your errors in judgment will not be possible this time around. Think about your family when you make decisions, please.

Inform me of ANY and EVERY detail of your interactions with her.



Sincerely,

Dad

There are no interactions, Dad! she wanted to scream.

This explained what Julia was doing at Green Acres. It wasn’t a hospice, but patients sometimes went there prior to entering hospice care.

Trisha had said nothing about DJ knowing Julia to HRH—or to anyone in the family—because even the hint of a connection would mean that DJ would not be catering Yash’s dinner. Restlessness swelled inside her at the thought.

She responded to the email with “Dear Dad: Check, check, check, and check. Sincerely, Trisha.”

All her conditioning to never be rude to her parents made her almost delete those words and type a more appropriate response. But something made her hit send.

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