Ivy’s eyes grew wide, and I knew why. Finch legitimately looked like Ariel. Full lips and long wavy hair dyed coral-red. She even had a seashell necklace around her neck. “Folksie,” Ivy stage-whispered. “Who isthat?”
“My sister. She’s annoying.”
“She’sreallypretty.”
I sighed. “Don’t tell her that.”
“Oh no you don’t.” Finch poked a finger at me. “She can tell me whatever she likes. Now go away so we can talk girlie things.”
I set Ivy down and passed her the phone. “Take it inside, bug. Go sit by the Wi-Fi hub so the screen doesn’t glitch.”
Ivy took my phone and disappeared inside.
I watched her until she was crouched by the TV unit. Then I braved a glance at Decoy and met his anxious gaze. “You need to know what happened.”
He gave me that slow nod he sometimes did when he wasn’t sure what he needed, aside from a pickaxe to the head. “She wouldn’t tell me anything.”
I dusted off my hands and gave into the urge to sit next to him again. “That’s not your fault. Or hers.”
“What if there’s other shit she hasn’t told me? I put her in the shower so I could check she had no fucking bruises.”
“Did she?”
“Not that I could see, but when I picked her up from school, man... she would hardly look at me. It took me an hour to convince her teacher it wasn’t because I’d done this to her.”
Decoy was twisting his hands into a mess. I stilled them. “But you did convince them?”
“Honestly?” Decoy made that distressed sound again. “I don’t know. For all I know, they called social services as soon as I left.”
I remembered what Mateo had told me. “Someone believes you. Juana heard some gossip in the car park.”
“Great. Who else knows?”
“Mateo. Alexei.”
“Alexei?”
“He intercepted me as I was leaving.”
Decoy finally raised his gaze from the concrete slabs in front of us. “That sounds scary.”
“It wasn’t. But I didn’t have time to ask him not to tell anyone, so if that’s what you need, it might be too late.”
“I don’t know what I need, aside from a spirit level to fix that barnet.”
Or a hitman. And I knew a few, but if Decoy had been the kind of man to wish deathly harm on the mother of his child, I wouldn’t be sitting here.
And I was joking about the hitman... mostly. Or, at least, I wanted to be, and that was half the battle, right? “What do you want for dinner?”
Decoy blinked. “What?”
“Dinner. And don’t tell me you’re not hungry, cos I’m not having it.”
“Not having it, eh?” The faintest of smiles warmed Decoy’s face, though his eyes were still a war zone. “That sounds like a promise.”
“If you want it to be.”
For a blazing moment, we were back where we’d started this day—together and happy, content in the little life we’d carved out over the past few weeks. Then Ivy skipped out of the house, and despite the obvious change in her demeanour, Decoy’s expression clouded over again.
