Page 50 of Cherry Auction

His words shock me like a bucket of ice water thrown on my head. I suddenly feel sick. Is he just trying to be cruel again? “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Stop pretending you don’t know!” he keeps shouting.

And then he hurls the glass of whisky against the wall opposite where I’m still on my knees. I jump at the explosion of glass even though it’s nowhere near me.

“Just like you pretended you didn’t know then!” His voice quiets, but it’s only more dangerous. “He made me his dog. He pretended to be my mentor and then he raped me. Over and over and over. And youknew—” His voice breaks on the last word, pointing his finger in accusation at me.

I’m shaking my head. “I didn’t.”

He laughs bitterly. “So now you’re done with the amnesia act.”

“I didn’t,” I deny again. I couldn’t have. The girl in that picture couldn’t have known?—

“Youdid.”

“How do you know I did? There’s no way I could’ve?—”

“I know because you told me you’d seen!”

My shaking head stops at his words, too frozen in horror.

“You said you’d seen, and you were gonna go get all the money for us. You said for me ‘n Moira to meet you at the airport. That we’d go start a new life together.”

His face twists, again a mix of the young man in thephotograph and the dark creature he’s become. “I was so ashamed when you said you knew. So full of self-loathing. That you’d seen. I couldn’t bear to look at you. But ya reached out and took my jaw, jus’ like this,” he reaches out, hand caressing empty air as he continues, brogue suddenly heavy, “an’ tol’ me, with your eyes full of dew an’ rage, that you’d go steal the only t’ing that bastard held dear and t’en we’d go start our life toget’er.”

He smiles cruelly, eyes focusing back on me as if returning to the present. “But you weren’t at the airport, were you? ‘Cause you’d already run. With that fuckingmonster,after ya knew what he’d done to me.”

“And to cap it off,” he laughs caustically, walking to the nearby bar cart nestled against the wall, his shoes crunching on the glass from the cup he already shattered, “you left all the illegal shit pointing to me.”

I’m still shaking my head. He’s wrong. “Something must’ve happened. I couldn’t get to you.”

“O-aah, I thought the same. Until I learn’t you’d fecked me over the same as you ‘n him did ta at least two other lads I know of. You were just a soulless pair o’ cons leavin’ a pat’ of destruction.”

He glares back at me, unscrewing the cap of the whisky and lifting the whole bottle to his lips. “You’re the hook ‘n he swoops in on the prey you soften up for ‘im. Cause he likes soft little boys, doesn’t he? At least he’s dead and burnin’ in hell now.”

He stares at me for a long, hard, horrifying moment before he starts to swig gulps of whisky straight from the bottle.

And I just stay there stunned on the floor. My mind cascades with all he’s just told me.

No. There’s no way. No.NO.

I wouldn’t have— Not if I’d known what my father was?—

I’m not that kind of person. Absolutelynofucking way.

But then I blink, spirals starting to whirl in my head, thought after thought.

Because what if… I mean…

Wouldn’t anyone in my position say that? I’ve just been walking around assuming I was a good person because the me now wants to be.

But literally not a single person came forward when I went missing. Wouldn’t that indicate that I’m… not that great? I literally havenoone in my life.

Okay, but there’s a difference between not having that many friends or family—or even being not that great a person and being the kind of incomprehensibly evil shit human being Domhnall is describing.

So no!

Of course fucking not.

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