I can barely form words.
He shakes his head, crouching in front of me. “I needed you to listen.”
“By drowning me?” I rasp. “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
He doesn’t answer. Just stares. The silence stretches. The drip-drip from the showerhead fills the space like a metronome.
“Daniel, listen to me,” I start, forcing my voice steady. “I don’t have what you think I have.”
He laughs—short, bitter. “Bullshit. Your dad dies, and suddenly you’ve got a new house, new furniture, a new car. Long termsabbatical. You think I don’t see it?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then tell me how it is.”
My mind races. I could lie, but he’ll see through it. He always could. He knows my tells—the way my voice rises, the twitch in my jaw. He used to find it endearing. Now it’s ammunition.
“I did get money,” I admit. I don’t say it out loud, but after inheritance tax, it was about one-point-six million.
His eyes flash.
“Most of it went into this house,” I continue quickly. Again, not that I’m telling him this, but it was around nine hundred thousand, gone straight into the purchase. “The rest—it’s tied up. Locked away in schemes, investments, stuff I can’t access. Not tonight. I can’t get to it, Daniel.”
Again, this is true. Most of it is not readily accessible.
He tilts his head, studying me. “How much can you get?”
“I told you, thirty thousand. Maybe thirty-five at most.”
He gives a humourless smile. “You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Truth?” he snorts. “You don’t know what the truth is, Tom. You’re a liar, you always have been! A liar and a cheat.”
My throat tightens. I can’t find my voice.
Daniel crouches again, inches from my face. His breath smells faintly of whisky and toothpaste. “Sneaking off, behind my back. Your weekly hookups with lover boy in that sleazy hotel.”
I say nothing. Even now, the guilt kills me.
“I felt sick when I found out,” he continues. “When I got those videos.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Videos?” I ask. “What videos?”
He shakes his head, eyes burning into me. “Videos of you and him, walking into that hotel on Park Street, every week.”
My heart stops for a beat.
The hotel on Park Street.
Our regular meeting point outside of work. Mine and Guy’s time together, alone.
Daniel knew about it.
“That’s how you found out?” I whisper.
“They came from some mystery number. And it was clear as day what was going on. It still makes me sick to think of you and him together, behind my back.”
