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Wallace has never been convicted of a crime—you know that. And he does plenty of legal shipping. I didn’t even consider that my advisors might be lying to me. I had no idea it’d be…”
     
    He hesitated, lips parting as he struggled with the word.
     
    “People. Women. Children… ”
     
    “But you knew?” I asked him, horror knotting in my stomach. “You knew what he was bringing into the city was illegal, and you let him do it?”
     
    Nathan nodded slowly. “I suspected. Maybe… But everyone on the board wanted to take the contract. A substantial part of my inheritance is tied to maintaining my company. They could’ve voted me out if I didn’t do something, and once I lost the reigns, there was nothing stopping them from carving the whole damn company up for themselves. That would mean…”
     
    “No more fancy title, no more office?” I finished for him. “You would’ve had nothing except for your things, your fancy home, your garage full of expensive cars, and the hundreds of millions of dollars you probably have stashed away. Wasn’t that enough? You’re telling me you secured a job title on the backs of those young women and girls.”
     
    “I didn’t know ,” he insisted.
     
    “Because you didn’t want to know!” I replied, gripping the edge of the table so hard my knuckles turned white. I could feel the smoke of anger swirling in my lungs, tightening my chest as it rose into my throat and spilled out of my mouth. “You just wanted the money! If you’d bothered to look, you would’ve seen their faces. But you couldn’t have that, could you? You couldn’t have that kind of guilt on your head!”
     
    Nathan sat back, folding his arms and looking away from me. “You’re wrong. I never, not for one second, considered there might be people in that container. Look, my family, my whole company has a history of looking the other way. My father didn’t build a huge mansion in Miami on the back of Chinese imports—he built the foundation of this company on cocaine smuggling. Sure, he went ‘legit’ by the Nineties, but that was on paper, Chandra. There were people putting pressure on me to keep quiet and maintain business as usual. Maybe I wanted to make everything legal, but it was easier to let other people deal with the dirty parts of the business. I chose to look the other way and play stupid. That’s on me.”
     
    “We’re talking about lives here, Nathan,” I whispered. “Not drugs. Not guns. People. ”
     
    “If I had known… I would have done the right thing. That’s why I came to the police. Because when I heard what he’d been doing, about that container they shoved off into the ocean… When I heard what he was on trial for, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d had something to do with it. If I had, and I let that asshole walk free, I couldn’t have lived with myself.”
     
    I shook my head, and he blinked back tears. “Christ, Chandra… Haven’t you ever made a mistake in your life? One that you could’ve avoided if only you hadn’t looked the other way?”
     
    The question hit me like a kick to the chest. My words dried up in my throat and I looked away from him, staring at the dingy table and my fingernails pressing into it. I closed my eyes, letting the whirlwind inside me die down.
     
    Haven’t you ever made a mistake?
     
    “Yeah,” I said finally, nearly choking on the word. “A long time ago, before I knew better. Before I… became a cop. I didn’t see what was happening around me because I didn’t want to. I wanted to believe in a pretty little lie, and it cost my sister her life.” My stomach turned. “I guess that makes me just as bad as you.”
     
    Nathan’s expression softened. “What happened?”
     
    It wasn’t a story I told often—or ever, if I could avoid it. But there was no backing out of this conversation now, not with the tidal wave of my shame brimming in my eyes and on my lips. I had to tell him.
     
    “I got