Page 44 of A Lethal Game of Trust
He only lifted the phone higher before turning it and saying as he typed, “My birthday… your birthday… It’s a birthday, correct?”
“Correct.” I normally wouldn’t have given him anything, but I was slightly taken aback by how he remembered my birthday.
“Issy’s birthday…” Then he froze and glanced up through his lashes, his voice no longer playful. “Luís’ birthday.”
My father.
“Yes.”
He didn’t try — not necessarily because he didn’t know the date, the Belovs and I celebrated it together every year — and, instead, looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time in years.
“He’s getting out, you know,” I told him, all the anger and frustration in my body gone and replaced by a desire to cry pinching my eyes.
“Out?” he asked, frown deepening.
“Firdman. The man who killed my dad. He’s getting out.”
“Of prison?”
“Yes, dipshit.”
“Dipshit?”
He kept that startled expression, blinking.
“Are youokay?” I asked, questioning his judgement, hisability to even put together a rational thought.
“I didn’t know that,” he said as if he should know that. As if he knew anything about my life. “Does your mum know?”
I shook my head. “It wouldn’t do her any good in the state she’s in.”
I hadn’t gone to visit her at the unit in months.
If I rocked up with bad news, it would only reinforce the new nickname she’d given me in the last ten years: Bad Omen.
We’d never got on. But she never saw me as the villain when I was a child.
Since Dad’s death and her mental lapse, she blamed everything on the two of us, spouting poison to all who would hear.
“Have you spoken to Derek?”
“Of course,” I said. “But he’s up for parole. He’ll likely get it. He has some hotshot lawyers and Derek can’t do anything.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know—”
“You do,” he said, his voice heating as he stepped towards me. “Tell me.”
So with a sigh, I did. “What are you going to do?”
“Not your concern.”
I scoffed. “You really are a fucking dip—”
“If you call me dipshit one more time, I swear—”
“You’ll what, huh?” I asked, stepping closer to him now. My nipples skimmed his chest through my top.
