“No one can leave because there was a…” I paused to check there was no one around, “murderon the train and the police are coming.”
He fell silent, then grunted his least favorite word, “Police?”
“Yeah, they're coming on the train, so I’ll have to be interviewed because I might be a witness,” I told him. “So, I don’t know when I could go.”
He sighed heavily, and I could almost hear the disdain in his breath at how infuriated he was. “I’m sorry, A, if I knew, I’d never…”
“I know,” I replied, and was close to blaming my stepmother, but held back because I didn’t want to seem bitter, even though I was.
“I always knew this day would come, where we meet our enemies head on, but I just…didn’t imagine it would play out like this,” he specified smoothly.
“Me neither,” I said softly, feeling hopeless.
Silence fell down the line, but I could hear a female voice in the background asking him something, possibly his secretary, then a door closed. Several beats passed before my father spoke again.
“There is a secret compartment in your trolley bag,” he said in a lowered voice. “The orange bag that I gave you. Please tell me you took it with you.”
“I did. Confession, Dad, I hate the color, but it’s easy to find it in a barrage of bags, which was why you gave it to me,” I answered proudly. “It has a secret compartment?”
“Yes,” he replied sternly. “Look for it. There’s something in there for you.”
“Okay,” I whispered as an older man appeared before me with silver hair and smiled as he passed. He was dressed in a white button-down shirt and black pants, holding a coffee cup from one of the cafes. I waited until he was gone before I said, “I’ll look when I get back to my room.”
“Good.”
“Dad,” I hesitated to find the right words, “you’re the only one who uses your phone, right?”
“This phone? Yes,” he replied with certainty, but I wasn’t so sure. It took only half a minute for that woman to search his messages while he was in the shower or in bed, asleep.
“I have trust issues, Dad. I need to know that you’re the only one who reads our messages,” I needed clarification.
“I promise,” he asserted, “that no one else would dare to snoop on this phone.”
“Okay, I'd better go. I’ll message you once I check the secret compartment,” I told him.
“Good. Keep safe, A,” he ended the call, leaving me hanging, not feeling any better than before we spoke.
6
“Is that her?” Sickle screwed his face up, unimpressed as Boleyn walked past the café where we were sitting. Stupid girl. She should never walk alone. Everyone around here knew you always walked in groups and, even better, paid for personal security. Her daddy must really fucken hate her.
“She looks better without the large shades,” I tried to convince him, not that it’s important for our enemy to be attractive, even though she was. It’s not like we were going to pursue her in that way, well…maybe a little bit.
“Where is she going?” Sickle glared at her as she walked to the end of the road, then paused at the campus police station.“She’s got a complaint already. Fuck, she’s only been here five seconds.”
“Maybe Lev got to her. The dead rat in the bathroom,” I told him, and his face cracked in a small smile. The only time you’d see Sickle smile was when he was being cruel or when his team won a game. I can’t remember the last time he laughed, perhaps before Dad was arrested when we were teenagers.
“That is only the beginning of what else he has in store for her,” I laughed as I watched Boleyn walk across the road toward the Social Sciences School.
“Yeah, there’s nothing like a little tickle with a knife,” he said snidely as I drained my coffee frap and pushed my chair back. “Where are you going?”
I tilted my head in the direction of Boleyn’s path. “To do some homework,” I replied, and he cocked his black eyebrows, knowing exactly what I meant.
As I left, a blond who had been hovering nearby, waiting for the right time to come over, appeared at the chair I vacated. “Is this seat taken?” she asked sweetly to my older brother. She was his type—big tits, curvy ass, eager to please.
But Sickle’s response was to ignore her, as if she were invisible, and I assumed she must be new and didn’t know how the Warwicks vibed. When she asked again, assuming that Sickle didn’t hear her request, he impatiently snarled, “You’re blocking my view.”
Fuck, he’s entertaining. He had no concept of the feelings of others, and I hadn’t changed as he got older, as he was too much like my father.
