She’d had a choice back in that visitation room. She could’ve called him “Mr. Peluso.” She’d gone with “Joe.” For all the classic reasons. It created kinship with the person, established power dynamics, blah blah blah. She also knew herself. She’d just wanted to hear how it would sound. How it would feel to call a merciless brute by his first name. It felt powerful. She felt powerful.
For someone who had to speed up on the sidewalk and curl her fingers around her keys when she heard a noise behind her, that was a heady feeling. Addictive. She couldn’t do anything about the assholes on the street, or safe in their places of power, but the ones on the inside…? For just a little while, she held their fates in her hands.
That was fucked up. She was aware. She’d had friends tell her that fifty percent of a psych degree was a “heal thyself” thing. They were not altogether wrong. But she’d take empowerment where she could get it. She sure hadn’t found it with her last two boyfriends. One had kept bugging her to learn to cook saag paneer and be more Indian—a rich request from a guy named Brad who grew up in Connecticut—and the other one tried to make erotic choking a thing…a surprise thing. No thank you. She preferred to negotiate her kinky play beforehand. A man like Joe Peluso probably didn’t ask first, either, but she’d find details like that out. She had to. How he treated women would help set a baseline for how he viewed humanity in general. Mass shooters, for instance, often had a history of domestic violence. Joe Peluso didn’t—or at least he’d never been arrested for it—and one violent act didn’t necessarily mean he was a violent person overall. They needed to prove he was a victim of circumstance, or someone who had acted irrationally for the first time in his life, not point to a pattern of behavior.
Ugh. Neha wasn’t sure she was up to the challenge. Human behavior was a specialty of hers. Human misbehavior was her job. Supernatural misbehavior… Well, it was about to become her new field of expertise.
It wasn’t something little girls dreamed of. Not something she’d dreamed of. She’d wanted to be a princess or a fireman or a princess who fought fires. But she was good at this. At the mountains of paperwork and equal amounts of legwork. She wouldn’t have made it through L-school and the DA’s office otherwise. She’d make it through this case, too. Nate, Dustin, and Joe Peluso were counting on it.
By the time Neha got back to the firm, it was mostly deserted. Some of the first-years were milling around. Assistants, too. But the partners were all gone. Nate and Dustin had likely turned their hired car toward the city. They loved knocking back shots with hedge-fund bros. She couldn’t say she shared the fascination. Most men of that set thought she was a ballbuster, a bitch, and had an overly high opinion of how hot she was. In a guy, that kind of attitude was just considered confidence. In a woman, it was somehow the worst thing in the world. Women needed to be modest and subservient and accommodating. Fuck that.
She wouldn’t have survived long in criminal justice without some steel in her spine. She wouldn’t have made it through that first meeting with Joe Peluso either. If she were the good and sweet Neha Ahluwalia, with coconut oil braids and a terminal case of the blushes, he would’ve been the wolf to her Red Riding Hood. And, sorry, but she refused to walk through the woods unprepared.
Sure, she was little bit fucked up…and she refused to be fucked over.
* * *
There was nothing bearable about being in prison. Anyone who said they liked the rec room or the yard or, hell, even the three squares a day was a damn liar. The nights were the worst. Everything echoed. Joe was in a max-security unit with a bunch of repeat offenders who were looking at first or second degree and would probably end up at Sing Sing or one of the border camps after their trials. There were a handful of other supes on the block. A yaksha who accidentally killed someone during a bank robbery. A vamp who took out some MTA workers in a frenzy.
Having a bloodier rap sheet than the rest of the pop didn’t make anybody feel all warm and fuzzy. And being a little fuzzy, or at least furry, didn’t earn any friends either. Especially with the Emergency Service Unit boys breathing down your fucking neck. You heard someone getting beat, someone crying into their pillow, someone busting a nut, and nobody looked anybody in the eye in the morning. You tried to keep out of ESU’s way but still ended up getting shoved into a wall. And a floor. And the bars of your cell. Knowing that if you let the monster out, it would just be an excuse for them to put you down. It wasn’t survival of the fittest, just survival.
Joe had always been good at that. Surviving. After he enlisted in the Marines, he figured he’d get through boot camp on a prayer, but it turned out he thrived in the Corps. He made a good grunt, an even better sharpshooter. And a “truly exemplary” shifter on an elite team of military operatives. He managed to come back from multiple tours alive. He’d get through this, too. Unless he got life in prison, courtesy of the State of New York, or a death penalty courtesy of anyone who didn’t like his altered DNA.
“We’re aiming for a reduced sentence,” Feinberg had told him during one of his weekly visits. “And, of course, we’re fighting for your rights as a supernatural as well. But there are no guarantees.” Joe had to admire that. No bullshit. No promises that he’d walk free.
There was blood on his hands. He shouldn’t be allowed to walk free. But then again, there were a whole fucking lot of other people who shouldn’t have been on the street either. And they were all still out there—while he slid his arms behind his head and stared up at a concrete ceiling. Decorated with dried gum, graffiti, and hash marks no one ever bothered to scrub clean. The Brooklyn Hilton got a fancy upgrade way back in 2012, but it hadn’t taken long for it all to go to shit, especially with the new governor shutting down Rikers Island in 2020 and the rest of the prisons in the area still scrambling to pick up the slack. Jails were overcrowded. Everybody was overworked. Nobody was about to come by and fluff Joe’s pillows. They were too busy cursing Governor Nixon’s name and telling the mayor where to fuck off to.
He was no stranger to less than five-star accommodations. He’d slept in muddy trenches. On rock and stone and concrete. Hell, he could catch a power nap standing up. When he got back stateside this last time, he’d crashed in Mrs. Castelli’s spare bedroom—his old high-school haunt—and that was like fucking luxury. After he landed a steady gig on a crew working out in Long Island City, he’d rented a cheap efficiency off the E train. Shared bathroom and a pay phone in the hall. No lease. No questions. They’d probably tossed his shit out on the curb the minute the cops took the yellow tape off the door. It’d been almost two years since he last saw that place, and he wasn’t exactly dreaming of going back. The NYPD had confiscated anything worth a damn. All he had left was himself. Stuffed into a six-by-eight cell.
Sometimes they let him have books. A guy came by with a cart. Paperbacks falling apart and falling off it. He’d snagged a couple Patricia Cornwells and some medical thrillers by Tess Gerritsen. Not for nothing, but lady crime writers did love themselves some gory shit. He got creeped out—and wouldn’t that crack up the guys from his old team—but he read them anyway. Squinting at the pages in the dim light of his cell.