Page 11 of A Fine Line

Nettie: Exactly. You don’t need another man-brain leading the charge.

Boy Scout: I can’t argue with her logic.

Nettie: *smiling devil face emoji*

Beast:You’ll never win, man. You may as well just tell her.

Tony: Never mind. I’m thinking it was a fluke. I’ll circle back to this if it persists.

Nettie: You don’t do flukes, Tony. That’s absurd.

Tony: *heart hands emoji* TTYL.

I close the app and then turn my phone off. I know the next time I turn it on, I’ll probably have about a million angry text messages from Nettie, but I can’t deal with it right now.

Surely this situation is not as dire as I think it is.

There’s a thud from the bathroom, so I walk over to the door and press my ear against it. “Are you okay in there?”

“Goddamn it, Tony,” Carolina huffs in agitation. “Give me some space.”

I scowl, glaring at the door in a moment of uncharacteristic petulance. This fucking woman. I fucking hate her.

Unfortunately, my cock likes her just fine.

I walk back into the kitchen area and start pulling things out of the fridge. By the time Carolina exits the bathroom, I already have mushrooms and onions sautéing in the pan, and I’m whisking eggs in a bowl. She moves closer until she’s standing at the counter, giving me a skeptical look. “What are you doing?”

“Seems pretty obvious to me,” I reply blandly.

“I’m allergic to eggs.”

“No, you’re not,” I huff out, rolling my eyes at her attempted lie.

“How the fuck would you know?”

“I know every fucking thing there is to know about you. You’re not allergic to eggs.”

Carolina raises her brows at me and crosses her arms over her chest, resting her hip against the counter as she replies, “And why would you know that?”

“When I set my sights on someone, I make it my mission to make their life hell, and I tend to know every fucking tiny detail of their existence. And I know yours.”

She doesn’t say anything for a few moments as she stares at me with a thoughtful expression on her face. Then she says, “Do you excel at finding out things about people?”

It’s not so much a question as a statement, and I nod as I carry on with food preparations. “So,” she continues. “Say I needed help trying to find out what happened to a person. Can you help with that?”

I nod again, removing the vegetables from the pan, wiping it clean, and adding some butter to it. I slowly pour the whisked eggs into the pan and give her a look as I put the bowl in the sink. She hasn’t said anything else, so finally, I ask, “Were you going somewhere with this line of questioning?”

She presses her lips together and inhales deeply through her nose. “I need to find someone.”

“Are you gonna ask me to find your boyfriend or something? I’m not fucking doing it.” The words come out with more emotion than I’m used to, and it catches me off-guard. I clear my throat, then add, “Unless he’s on that list you’re going to make for me. Then I look forward to slitting his throat.”

“I imagine one or two of those probably would be involved, but they’re not who I need you to find.”

“Who is it, then? Out with it.”

“My daughter. Flora,” she whispers, pain crossing her features.

I glance away, allowing her sadness without reproach, and ask, “Is she the reason you’ve been living your life as a prisoner for so long?”

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