My birthday.
My hands won’t stop shaking. My thumb hovers over the latch, my breath caught between my ribs. I press down.
The lock clicks open and I lift the lid, the sound too loud in the stillness.
A cold rush floods through me.
It’s empty. There’s nothing inside but a deck of fucking cards.
The airleaves my lungs in a sharp, broken exhale. Everything inside me lurches out of rhythm.
No.
I blink hard, waiting for something else to appear, for this to besome kind of mistake.
But there’s nothing.
My father lied.
There’s no fucking money.
Chapter Twenty-One
DAMIAN
The second I see the empty box, heat rises through my chest, crawling up my throat, and I see red.
I grip the table, the metal pressing into my palm. I can feel the anger pulse through me, sharp andvicious, rattling through every bone in my body. I grab the box and shove it toward her. “Where is it?”
She doesn’t answer.
Her eyes stay fixed on the deck of cards in her hands, her fingers pressing into the edges as if she can pull something from them, as if the money might still be there, buried beneath the useless game left behind.
I let out a breath, rough and jagged. “You knew.”
Her shoulders tense. She shakes her head, her voice barely audible. “I didn’t. He wouldn’t do this.”
The words set something off inside me. I move toward her, the distance between us shrinking, everything around us fading into the heat building in my chest, pressing at my ribs. “Your father is a liar. And so are you.”
Her face cracks.
She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t fight back. She just stares down at the cards, her hands trembling, her body swaying like she can’t find solid ground beneath her feet.
I swallow back the fire in my throat. “I should’ve let Joel kill you.”
Her breath stutters, catches, like something inside her has broken.
Then she moves.
She pushes past me, toward the cabinets, toward the couch, tearing through drawers and cupboards, tossing aside old newspapers, pulling down stacks of junk. Her hands shake as she shoves them into the recliner cushions, reaching for something that isn’t there. “It has to be here.” The words spill from her lips, over and over, the pitch rising, cracking, shattering. “He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do this to me.”
She pulls open the fridge. Nothing. The drawers. Nothing. The sink cabinet. Nothing. Her breath catches in her throat, and suddenly, she’s moving faster. She storms down the narrow hallway toward the back of the trailer, where the sleeping area is cramped between peeling walls.
The mattress is the first thing to go. Shegrabs the edges, flips it over, sending dust and crumpled sheets spilling onto the floor. Her hands shove beneath the bed frame, feeling for something hidden, something tucked away.She comes up with nothing.
She jerks open the cabinets, yanking out old shirts, shoving aside jackets, her movements turning reckless. A bottle crashes to the floor, glass shattering around her feet. She doesn’t flinch.
Another cabinet, more clothes, moreempty promises.She rips a lamp from the nightstand and hurls it at the wall. The crash splinters through the tight space. Her hands clutch the edge of the dresser, her head bowing, her shoulders heaving with uneven breaths. Her fingers press into the wood, white-knuckled, like she’s trying to keep herself from falling apart.
