Naive by Charles Royce (world best books to read .txt) 📕

“He’s got what could be over thirty stab wounds in his chest, throat, and abdomen. Thirty.”

He cocks his head, piercing his eyes into Micah’s.

“And your very first thought … is CPR?”

C h a p t e r   3

“Let me out here, please.”

Jenna has experienced a rather wretched night at the launch party for the September issue of her former company’s most elite fashion magazine and wants to rid herself of the lingering unease. Despite the unexpectedly chilly August evening, she decided about two seconds ago that she wanted to walk the rest of the way home, and somehow a cigarette is already in her mouth.

The car screeches to a halt at Orchard and Grand. Jenna, put together in a timeless little Armani black dress, swipes her credit card through the cab’s smudged and tilted machine, grabs her coat and purse, and exits. With an unlit Parliament Light in her mouth, she situates her Burberry trench over her left arm and her Chanel clutch under her right shoulder. The addition of trying to maneuver her Manolo Blahniks within the grooves of the cobblestone street proves too much for her tipsy condition, and she slams the taxi door like a sloppy sailor during Fleet Week.

“Oh my God, I’m drunk, girl.” She laughs, noticing her French accent is thicker than normal. “I’m that girl, that girl who hobbles around the Lower East Side on a Friday night.” Realizing she’s mumbling out loud to herself makes her laugh even more. “Yep,” she says, affirming what she just said to herself. Her heels manage to take refuge on the sidewalk, and Jenna stops to take in a deep breath.

It was one of those quintessential Manhattan nights … the crisp, cool air mixed with the smell of wine from restaurant patios, and the occasional whiff of the unknown. She is anxious. And because the evening has not turned out as she had planned, she congratulates herself on using the walk to clear her head.

A French-born, mostly American-raised thirty-four-year-old, Jenna Ancelet is a tall, stunning woman, graceful in appearance, but unaware of these qualities. She carries herself like a bull in a Waterford crystal shop, is the first to light up during a nice seven-course garden dinner with the company executives, and normally dresses in J. Crew sweaters and jeans. She believes her current ensemble is a bit too much for her. Timeless, sure, but comfortable? Hell no.

She jostles her left arm to resituate her trench and puts her Bic to the cigarette that’s been hanging off the side of her mouth. As her mind turns to earlier in the evening, one thought begins to gnaw at the back of her mind: Lennox. She remembers how Micah had been anxious all night at the party trying to get his husband on the phone and still wonders why he’d left so abruptly.

She takes a huge drag and continues walking.

Jenna often finds herself worrying about Lennox. Still. She first met Lennox when she became his executive assistant three years ago. Having handled everything for him during that time, both personally and professionally, she still wonders how he’s managing without her, how he ever could.

Despite leaving Lennox under precarious circumstances to work for his competitor, they have remained friends. He’s a handful, very precise and businesslike, and not very intimate, which she has come to accept. She has grown to love him, not in spite of these qualities, but because of them. She feels safe with him, and with his husband Micah, too. They all plan dinners together, weekend jaunts to the Hamptons, and even housesit for each other.

She puts on her coat and continues walking, ruminating. It’s so cold and quiet and peacef—.

She sees a tall man walking toward her and stops. She holds her clutch closer to her body. The young man pivots to the opposite side of street and disappears into a bar, the door opening and closing in staccato, unleashing a brief but loud interlude of music and lively patrons that echoes down Orchard Street. The subsequent silence helps to slow her heartbeat. She exhales.

Jenna continues walking, ruminating, swerving. Being intoxicated sometimes impairs Jenna’s sense of judgment when it comes to being alone on the streets of New York. The longer she lives here, the more confident she feels, the more potential danger she ignores. These streets are my ’hood, and the Lower East Side is not what is used to be, she muses as she turns the corner at Orchard and Canal. After all, what was once semi-abandoned real estate filled with displaced immigrants, active druggies, and extremely active prostitutes is now a gentrified playground and a young New Yorker’s dream come true.

She passes her favorite restaurant, PM, a relatively new high-end establishment. Around five or six in the morning, the restaurant changes to AM, and becomes a breakfast/brunch place, which Jenna thinks is brilliant. She’s been wanting to catch them changing the “A” to a “P” on the sign outside, or at least the “P” to an “A,” if she could get up that early.

“So cool,” she says, as she laughs to herself. “AM, PM.” She chuckles again. She’s completely drunk. She turns the corner at Canal and Rutgers, one block from her apartment.

She sees red and blue lights flickering from behind the two-hundred-year-old church with the bell tower.

C h a p t e r   4

“Thirty times?” Micah asks.

“Yeah. Somebody had a vendetta.” Detective Penance wants to elicit a reaction.

“I had no idea. I mean, it looked like a lot of blood, but I didn’t know where it was coming from.”

Detective Penance leaves a moment of silence to see if Micah will continue. Of course, Penance has his suspicions. In his experience, he has found such displays of psychotic overindulgence to be crimes of passion. And who usually commits these types of murders? Someone extremely close to the victim. New perp. Same old story.

“What happened?” Micah breaks the silence. “Who could’ve done this to him?”

“That’s the question,