I recognized my ex-husband Marcus the second he stepped out of room 1402 at the Grand Monarch Hotel, holding hands with his new fiancé.
Sondra Boudreaux stood in the doorway, her shoulders hunched against the damp night air. Her expensive silk scarf was askew, and her usually immaculate hair was disheveled. She looked like she’d been running.
“Sondra,” I said, a tremor in my voice. “What are you doing here?”
She stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind her with a soft click. Her eyes, usually sharp and calculating, were shadowed with something I hadn’t seen in years: raw fear. And regret.
“I can’t live with it anymore, Lisa,” she choked out, her voice raspy. She wrung her hands, not meeting my gaze. “Six years. Six years of silence.”
She sank onto the worn armchair, her frame trembling.
“Malik,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “He came to me. He had found something.”
Devonne and I exchanged a look. Malik had always been too trusting, too principled for Duke’s world.
“Duke told everyone Malik stole cash,” I said, my voice tight. “Four hundred thousand dollars. That’s why he was ‘dealt with.’”
Sondra shook her head violently, tears finally spilling down her cheeks.
“That was a lie, Lisa. All of it. Malik never touched a dime. He discovered Duke was selling high-grade syndicate weaponry. To rival cartels. Behind the council’s back.”
My breath hitched. My brother, a thief? I had never believed it, not truly. But to hear this… It was worse than I could have imagined.
“Duke was betraying everyone,” Sondra continued, her voice gaining strength. “He was cutting side deals, building his own empire. Malik found the manifests, the bank transfers.”
She reached into her oversized handbag, pulling out a thick, leather-bound ledger. It looked old, worn, like something from another era. She laid it on the coffee table between us, the thud echoing in the quiet room.
“This is it,” she said, her finger tracing a line of neat, precise handwriting. “Every transaction. Every date. Account numbers, shell corporations. Proof. Malik gave it to me right before… before Duke found out he knew.”
I stared at the ledger, the precise columns of numbers and dates suddenly making sense of years of unanswered questions, of a grief that had festered. Duke hadn’t killed Malik for greed. He’d killed him to protect his treason.
“I’ll testify,” Sondra said, her voice firm, a newfound resolve in her eyes. “I’ll give it all to Internal Affairs. But Lisa… you have to get me out of Illinois. Duke will never let me live once this comes out.”
She looked at me, her gaze pleading. The weight of her past complicity, her silent years, was heavy in the room. But now, in her eyes, I saw only a desperate desire for redemption.
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