The Fall(54)

“I have my trust fund, I can wire—”

“Paper trail.” He shook his head. “You want to disappear, you can’t leave one of those. I’ll take care of it.”

He sat back down in front of the computer, his fingers busy until there was a voice coming through the speakers.

“I take it you’ve calmed down.” My father’s voice coughed. “I hope you have good things to tell me.”

“Firstly, go f*ck yourself, Jimmy,” Michael spat back. “You’ll hear from me when I want you to. I want access to her trust fund. All of it, and that one point five mil, that’s mine too.”

“I don’t have access to her money—”

“Not my problem,” Michael snapped, not giving him a chance to finish. “If you want this done, you’ll find a way. My usual account.”

“It will take a few days.” My father breathed heavily. “And this is already taking longer than I would have liked.”

“Then tick-tock motherf*cker.”

Michael ended the call and then turned to look at me. “Your dad is a cocksucker.”

“You’ll get no arguments from me.”

***

Waiting for the money gave us a small reprieve. Until the sum had been paid, I could legitimately stay breathing. Not the best of circumstances, but you had to find positives where you could.

Initially, I’d been worried my dad would renege on the deal and possibly come up with another solution. It’s not like he was honorable or anything. But the one thing my father hated more than losing money was losing face. He’d come up with the idea of neutralizing me, it had been his plan to involve Michael, and if now he had somehow lost control of that—well, there was no telling what the trickle down would do. No. He would play this out—he had to—at least until it became obvious there was no other choice.

Getting the information I needed was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Combing through pages and pages of accounts, transcripts and surveillance footage. Literally piecing together criminal activity in a timeline with a trail of proof. It would take weeks—weeks I didn’t have.

Michael didn’t say much. I mean he interacted normally, asked me how things were going, but for the most part he let me be. His file had been packed away, or destroyed—he didn’t tell me which—but I knew it still bothered him that a part of him had been exposed.

“How long you think we have?” I whispered in the dark.

It was either late at night or early in the morning, I couldn’t tell which when he finally walked into the bedroom. He’d usually come in and not say a word, just lie beside me and sleep. But tonight, with the lights off, I didn’t feel the barriers there usually were.

“Not long, a day. Maybe two.” He blew out a long breath. “I expect he’ll send the money soon. After that he’s going to want a return on his investment.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me.

“Are you scared?” he asked, his voice turning toward me.

“No.” My hand absently went to the cross around my neck.

“Liar.” He laughed. “You should be scared. Any sane person would.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“You just said any sane person would.”

“I think you answered your own question.”

Even though my eyes had adjusted to the blackness, all I could see was his silhouette, the strong lines of his body. His face was hidden in the shadows and somehow that made it easier to talk.

“Do you think you are insane?”

“I’ve always known I was different. My mind works differently.”

“How?”

I didn’t expect an answer, but I couldn’t help asking.

“When I was fourteen I left the foster family I’d been assigned to. I was done being with people who didn’t want me and being around a piece of shit who thought hurting little kids was entertainment. There was a local library that didn’t have surveillance cameras. It was warm inside and I didn’t have to worry about some pervert trying to rape me in my sleep or stealing whatever I had. First time ever that I could remember feeling safe. I read a lot—newspapers, books, magazines—reading until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. Figured if knowledge was power then I wanted as much of it as I could gather.”

I stayed silent, pushing aside the questions that were burning through my mind hoping he would keep going.

“Learning wasn’t hard for me for some reason. I guess I wasn’t as dumb as people had assumed, I used what I’d learned and applied it to the street. I slept in that library for four years before they finally upgraded their security system. By then, I had gotten what I needed and made enough money to get my own place.”

“Is that when you went looking for your mother?”

“No, I went looking for her after I killed my last foster father. I wanted to kill her too,” he responded with zero emotion.

I gasped. I couldn’t help it.

“Yeah, that part didn’t make it into the file.” He turned, the smile in his voice. “They never connected it to me. He’d deserved it. They had another foster kid living with them at the time—a girl this time—and I’d heard he liked to touch her while she slept. Liked to brag about it when he was drinking at the bar and there weren’t many places the * liked to drink. I’d been biding my time. As for my mother—the whore who’d brought me into this word—well, she was guilty by default.”