Page 42 of London's Calling: Part 1
I sigh, zipping up my fly and doing the button of my jeans. “I told you, work.” I stop in front of her, gesturing for her to move with a raised brow.
“Hmm, sure,” she mutters, raising her hands in surrender and stepping out of my way.
Soft footsteps follow me as I walk toward the guest room and the secret door. I don’t stop, look back or say anything else as I step into the wardrobe and through the door, closing it behind me.
I stomp down the stairs to my apartment, slamming the door behind me. The minute I step inside, I know I’m not alone.
“Mickey?” comes Priest’s voice from the kitchen.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I call, making my way to him. “What the hell you doing here?” I ask, seeing him resting against the counter, a beer in hand.
“Checking on you after you left in a hurry this morning.” He scans me up and down, pausing on my hair. “But you seem satisfied,” he adds.
“Fuck off, Priest.” I shove him as I pass and grab myself a beer from the fridge. “Thanks for last night, man.”
He raises his chin at me. “But you know what I’m going to say, right?”
I scowl at him before looking away, then lower my head and pretend to read the bottle label. “Don’t say it.”
“I got to, man. You’re free falling without a fucking parachute. You’re going to hit the ground hard.”
“It’s not like that,” I snap. “It’s just sex.”
“Yeah, then why you hitting it multiple times, Mick? What happened to the no strings, one hit and done motto you’ve been living by since you lost your V-card to Amelia Sharpe in high school.”
“Look, I hear you but hear me when I say it’s just fucking sex.” I take a mouthful of my beer, aware Priest is watching me and doesn’t believe a word of what I just spouted. And he’d be right not to.
Chapter Thirty
Roni
The click of the secret door closing echoes around the room like a boom of thunder. My shoulders slump and a deep, painful breath exhales from me. I’ve no idea how we went from enjoying each other, eating and watching TV to…this. Emptiness, a silence that stretches beyond reality. The only sound is my breathing and the dull thud of my heart inside my ribcage.
I walk away, not bothering to close and lock the guest bedroom door again. Mickey won’t be back. And that’s a good thing. Right?
Yes, Roni, it is.
But it’s not. Now, I need to figure out how to get what my father wants another way. Thankfully, I have a few contacts who might be able to help me dig around in the murky background of Kurt Rawlins.
In the bedroom, I take in the messy remnants of our afternoon and hurry to strip the sheets and put on clean ones. I spray the entire room in a sickly floral body spray, which I’ve had in the back of my bathroom cabinet forever, the complete opposite of Mickey’s lingering scent.
After showering and dressing in some clean PJs, I grab my laptop and email Haydn. If there’s anyone that can get me what I need, it’s her.
I trawl the internet while I wait for her to reply. Fed up with the usual parade of gossip and highly elaborated garbage I find on Kurt and his business, I do something stupid. Some might say desperate.
I send a phishing email to Kurt Rawlins. Do I believe he’ll be stupid enough to fall for it? No, but it’s worth a shot. No clue whether it will give me anything of interest, but I guess I really am desperate.
Next, I look into Kerr, his business, who he spends time with, other than my father, and his high-profile hotel guests. Almost all of them could easily make up a list of the UK’s most likely criminal millionaires and high society.
When a picture of my mother and father pops up on the screen, I freeze. Guilt floods me, the kind you slowly drown in. The kind that keeps the fire of hate burning, one that ensures I’ll stay, do what my father asks of me, even though it might destroy me. My vision blurs, replaced with the memory of that night.
The song finishes, and in the quiet between tracks, I hear my father’s voice. He’s angry about something, and he and my mother have been arguing since she came home forty minutes ago. It’s become a regular occurrence lately, but every time I enter the room or ask what’s going on, neither of them tell me. They just brush it off like it’s normal. In some ways it is. My father has always had a temper, but over the last six months, it’s become more and more pronounced.
The next song begins, drowning out their arguing, and I try to ignore their heated exchange. I focus on the book in front of me, but the words don’t sink in, they simply float through my mind as all my hearing tunes into to my parents. Leaving the music playing, but turning it down a tad, I pad to my bedroom door, opening it a crack, just wide enough for me to slip out.
With every step that brings me closer, tension rises, cloaking me, and fear tracks a path up my spine as I round the corner at the bottom of the stairs. The only voice I hear now is my father’s, but as I draw closer to where they are in the lounge, whimpers drift between my father’s angry words.
“I always knew you’d spread those legs for anybody and anything. Is she even mine?”
