And I wondered if maybe I’d made a mistake in the moment. If she’d wanted me to lean closer, to press my lips to hers. It had felt like it for a fleeting instant, but was it just me feeling these things? I had so little practice with women, and that didn’t even consider my sad lack of social smarts.
I grabbed a T-shirt and headed out, cursing myself for not being able to read people.
I stopped short of the marina gate the second I recognised the paunchy man standing on the other side of it. Emotions churned in my gut, and I clenched my teeth against them.
“What do you want?” I grated before noticing the bakery bag in his hand. “Are you driving Ubers now?”
“That’s no way to greet your dad, Henry!” He barked out a laugh that turned into a hacking cough. “And no, I’m not driving Ubers. Lost my licence eighteen months ago. But the nice Indian man who left it with me said it was for ‘Irina’.”
He smirked, as my heart stopped. “Is that her name? My new daughter-in-law?”
“What do you want?”
“To see my son, who won’t answer my calls. Does ‘Irina’ want her bread? Where’d you find her, anyway? Soviet Sluts for Hire?”
Fury burned at the base of my ribcage.
“You’re not welcome here. You’re not entitled to my time, and you’re definitely not entitled to Irina.”
“Ah, but I have your bread.” He smirked, dangling the bag like he was tempting a donkey with a carrot. “Wouldn’t want the little wifey to go hungry, would we?”
My vision swam, my skin crawled. Words of anger and hurt pressed against the cage I’d locked them in—memories of going hungry while he gambled away rent money, of begging for secondhand uniforms, of drowning in Lucian’s too-big hand-me-downs, and the bullying I endured at school as a result.
He’d always chosen the pokies, TAB, or a roulette table over me.
I’d tried explaining it once—at fifteen, when he started asking for money the moment I’d gotten a part-time job. Again, when PlayStation games I’d bought vanished, pawned for cash.
When I’d left for uni, I’d stopped answering his calls. He’d stopped trying—until Tickle blew up. Then the calls started again.
“Cat got your tongue?” he mocked. “You always were a fucked-up kid, having your little silent treatment tantrums.”
“You mean my nonverbal episodes,” I corrected coldly. Tension was building between my shoulder blades, and I clenched my fists to try and disperse it.
“Whatever you want to call them. You’ve gotta admit, you were a bastard of a kid to parent, and you owe me for the shit you put me through.”
“I owe you a sum total ofnothing,” I grated. “And I’d like you to leave.” I cursed the tremor in my voice, feeling the oncoming overload and wanting nothing more than to escape, to hide in my room and inhale my vape and hopefully get past it without a meltdown.
“You know, maybe I should just talk to your wife. She’s got more to lose here.”
Ice trickled down my spine. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He rolled his eyes, smirking. “Oh, come on, Henry. It’s obvious you imported a mail-order bride because you couldn’t find a single Aussie woman who would touch you with a ten-foot pole. It’d be a shame, wouldn’t it, if I tipped the police off, and she got sent home … it’s a bit of a legal grey area, isn’t it?”
My fingers slipped on my suddenly clammy palms.He doesn’t know the truth. He’s just guessing because of her name.
But there were people out there whodidknow the truth. People I should be able to trust, like Atlas. And then people like this ex-girlfriend of Irina’s. But even if she had linked Irina to me, I doubted her plan of attack would be to track down my estranged father and have him do her dirty work.
Could I take the risk, though? Even if he didn’t know the truth, if he went to the authorities … that had the potential to be disastrous.
I needed him gone. I needed him away from me. And away from Irina.
“How much?” I hissed. I hated that he could still do this to me—undo years of therapy and work with a single smirk.
“How much what, son?” he asked, leaning closer. The yellowing grimace he threw at me made me want to throw up.
“How much mon?—”
“Get the fuck out of here, Warren.” Lucian loomed over him, huge and menacing.
