Descent (Black Heart Romance presents Heaven & Hell)

work, but when she opens her briefcase and begins drawing things out, I have a strong suspicion
they’re not legal documents from work.
No, they’re not.
I watch her categorize my sins for Hallie. She starts with Jackson, which can’t be proven. Of
course, Hallie had no idea he was dead, so I watch as she covers her mouth—shocked, horrified
even, but she doesn’t know what this has to do with me. When Charity tries to link me to it, she comes
off crazy, and I see Hallie’s skepticism. I enjoy it. That’s my girl, sticking up for me, saying there’s no
reason to assume I’m behind that—Jackson liked to party, it’s not unbelievable that he took it too far
one night and paid the ultimate price.
It’s true, but I am behind it, and I’m not a damn bit sorry.
Jackson was an idiot. The world doesn’t need more of those.
Then she slaps down incriminating printouts—including some I feel sure should be confidential,
but I’m reluctantly impressed with her for risking her license to practice law in her efforts to save
Hallie from me. It won’t work, but I appreciate her energy.
She tries to tell Hallie that Ross Ellison—her doltish first boyfriend—was arrested for
possession and found with drugs he swore he’d never seen before. It’s an incredibly flimsy argument
—what criminal doesn’t claim innocence when they’re caught doing something they shouldn’t?—
but for one thing. I did go slightly overboard with the amount of narcotics I bought for him. I hadn’t
realized the extent of the poverty Hallie came from and I was a little overzealous.
It didn’t matter, of course no one believe that the drug fairy gifted him with more than what he
bought with the intent to distribute, and there was corroboration with a girl he fucked for a couple of
weeks and then ditched to go back to his on-again-off-again girlfriend that he had been talking about
how he had an idea to make some money.
Spurned women come in very handy sometimes.
Hallie still isn’t convinced I’m behind any of this, and I love her for that.
I pull up Nordstrom’s website on my computer so I can absently order something for her while I
watch the rest of this.
The next part is the problem.
I was angry when she told me about what Mark had done to her when she was younger. Not on
moral grounds because he’d done a bad thing, but how fucking dare he do it to Hallie?
Hallie is mine, and it doesn’t matter that she wasn’t back then, she gets retroactive protection.
Anyone who ever fucked her over from the time she sucked on pacifiers had better hope like hell that
I don’t find out about it.
I said more than I should have that day. She was upset and I wanted to comfort her. Hallie is too
gentle to be able to appreciate something like, “Don’t worry, darling, I will deliver that man’s roasted