Page 102 of So Steady

“That’s right! Fuck you. Fuck both of you. You have no idea what I’m like. I let you talk in my head, and you don’t even have the slightest idea. Noah has a better idea than you. Noah treats me like I’m a real person, and my own fucking twin doesn’t!”

She tried to shove Sam again, but her twin grabbed her arms. “What are you talking about?”

Nicole struggled to get free. “I’m not Little Miss Perfect. I had chlamydia. I had an STD. I had a dirty vagina, and I’m not. Fucking. Perfect!”

Silence. Outside a bird chirruped and traffic roared. Nicole pressed her hands to her cheeks, feeling a near religious sense of relief. It wasn’t enjoyable, but it was something. She felt like she might keel over from howsomethingit was.

“When…when was this?” Sam whispered.

“When I was nineteen.”

“And who…?”

“Greyson. He gave it to me.”

Her twin’s mouth fell open. “That long ago? When you were still at home? Oh, Nix…”

Sam took a step toward her, but it was her turn to back away. “Don’t you fucking ‘Nix’ me after what you just said.”

She’d wanted Sam to look hurt or contrite, but her face crumbled like a sandcastle. Big tears welled in her eyes. To her left, Tabby was white as a ghost. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know.” Nicole took a steadying breath. “Actually, it was because you both act like I’m boring and perfect. You always have. And whenever I do anything that isn’t boring and perfect, you make fun of me. Like I’m not allowed to exist outside the idea you have of me.”

She looked from Tabby to her twin. “You always call me when things are wrong, expecting me to fix your problems, but you want to make fun of me, too. You want to tease me because you’re so bad and I’m so good and it wasn’t until I met Noah—”

Just saying his name made her heart convulse. She shook her head, unable to finish the thought. “I’m not who you think I am. I wish I was, but I’m not. Sorry. But also, fuck you.”

“Nix…” Sam extended a hand, but Nicole took a step back.

“I’m going downstairs to find out what happened to the money. If anyone comes near Dad’s office in the next ten hours, I’ll freak the fuck out.”

And she turned on her heel and left.

***

Sam had a point. Not about her being Little Miss Perfect, but that it was easier to track the loss of income when you knew what to look for. She scanned the cash deposits Silver Daughters Ink had made at the bank for the past three years. Eighteen months ago, there was a noticeable decline. About six hundred less per week. When she checked BackBooks, their staff register, this was indeed the time Noah’s login was used to shave hours off his weekly work roster. And this had indeed thrown off the studio’s totals, concealing the wads of cash that were vanishing from the till.

Neat. Not particularly clever, but neat.

So who in the f-word had done it?

Sam and Gil thought she was being naïve, no doubt the cops would feel the same way if they were brought in to assess the situation. Bikie works in tattoo parlour. Bikie’s login is used to conceal theft in tattoo parlour. Bikie committed the theft in tattoo parlour.

Neat. Not particularly clever, but neat.

Only it f-wording wasn’t. This wasn’t about her attraction, or crush, or whatever you wanted to call her bone-deep longing to hold Noah’s hand once more. This was about the fact that Noah skimming thousands from their till made no gosh-darnsense. Hewasan ex-bikie, which meant that if he wanted fast and easy money, he could sell drugs, or hire himself out as muscle, or tattoo patches onto bikies in his beautiful, highly sought-after style. He could do real crimes.Blood in the Gearscrimes. This sneaky shoplifting just…wasn’t his f-wording style!

But the money had gone missing at Silver Daughters Ink. That was undeniable. She’d come to Melbourne because it was undeniable. And the cash skimming was the most convincing reason as to where it had gone that she’d been able to find in months. But what no one else had considered was that a thief using Noah’s client login to change their hours was way more logical than Noah incriminating himself in such a boneheaded way. As she read and re-read bank statements and daily rosters, Nicole became convinced it wasn’t an accident. Someone was framing Noah, or at least exploiting the fact that he was the dodgiest-looking person at SDI.

But how to prove it wasn’t him? Cash was hard to trace, and shuffling the hours had kept the thief out of sight for almost two years, even when the losses crippled the business.

Who’d done it? Who’d taken the money?

Not Sam. She was the worst actress in the world, and she’d been devastated when Silver Daughters nudged bankruptcy. Not Tabby. She’d been in Bondi until a couple of months ago. Not her dad. The karmic implications of stealing money and blaming it on someone else would have killed him before he’d taken a single note.

There was Scott’s dad. He’d tried to burn their studio down, and he’d wanted their business gone for years. For a second it seemed utterly plausible, then Nicole realised sneaking in every week to take small amounts of cash out of the till and frame Noah Newcomb was an incredibly convoluted revenge plot for a guy who’d hurled Molotov cocktails at their building. No, this wasn’t about revenge. It was theft, pure and simple. The common blight of the small business. The reason she’d told her dad to update their financial software every year because employees…

She wanted to pinch herself. She wanted to slap herself. She wanted to go back in time and pinch and slap every day for two years. She knew who it was. She knew who the dog c-word was.

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