The Starling Saviour

Chapter 71

Over the next couple of days, I went through with more therapy sessions with Adrian, his support and kindness helping me to sober up and focus my mind. It was so easy to open up to him, almost like he was my own guardian angel, my hope in the storm of despair that encircled me.

'I'm so sorry, Aria,' Adrian repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. 'I truly am, I feel so, so guilty.'

'Stop apologising, Adrian,' I told him firmly, but a hint of care in my voice. 'The Count put Vertigo in that pill bottle, you couldn't have known.'

'I should've looked in the bottle before I gave it you,' Adrian carried on, not refraining from feeling responsible for my overdose.

'Don't blame yourself for this, please,' I rhetorically asked of him. 'I was the weak one, and considering my history with narcotics, I should've declined any drugs you could've offered me.'

'Are you going to press charges?' Adrian wondered aptly, his lawful, attorney side showing. 'Count Vertigo basically put you in a position you couldn't prevent.'

'That's the weird thing about it, though,' I realised slowly but suddenly. 'The Count is still at the Institute for Mental Health he was put in after the Hood injected him with all that Vertigo and made him go insane. Somehow, he escaped the hospital, and I bet he's planted Vertigo all over the city.'

'Wouldn't the police know about something like that?' Adrian thought.

'The police cover up a lot of things like that,' I told him. 'I remember, when I was working there, Lieutenant Pike would quietly look at my findings and not tell the other people in the department about certain cases. He was very... Secretive.'

'And you think that the SCPD could be brushing the Count's escape under the rug?' Adrian concluded for me, a suspicious look on his face. 'I'll try to ask some of the detectives and Pike some questions tomorrow about the Count, see if they've heard anything.'

'And how are you going to do that without them getting suspicious?' I worried pessimistically.

'I'm an attorney, remember?' Adrian grinned. 'People tell you a lot of stuff when you're the face of the law.'

And I could verify that. I had told Adrian so much too, and maybe that was because he was lawful, a good person in a city full of crime and manipulation. I just hoped I had been correct in confiding my troubles with Adrian and that he was someone I could trust.

---

'How we doing?' Oliver asked as he entered the club in the early morning, joining Tommy and I after we had been going through numbers and statistics in the books.

'We're in the black,' Tommy answered. 'And, the green.'

'I like how we've gone from throwing money at clubs to catching it,' Oliver smirked at Tommy on reflection of our accomplishment.

'Oh look at these,' Oliver said as he looked over the bar into a box. 'What sort of business has a lost and found that's just filled with women's underwear?'

'The best business ever,' Tommy grinned proudly, making me roll my eyes at them.

'You two are sometimes so disgusting,' I commented as they held some of the articles out in front of them. 'Why did I ever think that working with Oliver Queen and Tommy Merlyn, two spoilt playboys, and in a nightclub, may I add, would be a good idea?'

'Because it's fun?' Oliver smirked. 'You just need to lighten up, Aria.'

'Hey, Aria, is any of this yours?' Tommy joked, referring to the undergarments box, waving someone's bra in my face.