It’s highly possible that this will be his first loss.
Losing is part of it, he knows it and I know it. This Cinderella run he’s been on has been fantastic and entirely to his credit, but he’s going to have to lose someday.
I’m worried about how he’ll take it.
It will be a shock for him if he does. I know, psychologically, he can weather that storm. But to say he won’t be bruised would be to say that he wasn’t human.
And he’s very, very human.
I make my way through the stands, go to the table where Dad and Frank sit with the other mob bosses. He beckons me to him, whispers into my ear, tells me he needs to speak to me privately.
“The fight’s about to start,” I say to him. Duncan’s already walking out of the back, and the gaggle of girls are now around him, screaming and screeching, cellphone flashes blinding.
But Dad’s expression is hard. He looks pissed about something. He gets up, excuses himself from the table, and pulls me by my elbow out of the bleacher-stands.
I cast a look over my shoulder, see Duncan walking around the cage. Any moment now he’s going to look for me, but he’s not going to find me.
God damn it, fighting is about routine! Dad is going to fuck this all up. Every fight has to be the same, same ritual. That means Duncan has to find me in the crowd. We have to meet eyes. He has to see that I’m there supporting him.
Duncan needs me.
“Dad!” I cry, trying to shake my elbow free of his grip, but he just holds me harder, and pulls me roughly toward an empty portion of the hangar, behind the bookie’s table, and into a back room where all the betting money is collected and kept under-guard.
“Hey!” I cry, but his eyes shoots daggers at me. He whistles at the two guards, and they leave, shut the door behind them.
Now that we have some privacy, I let loose. “What the hell is wrong with you, Dad? Why are you being such a fucking prick tonight?” I rub my elbow. His grip was hard. “You hurt me, you know!”
He ignores what I say. “Is there something you want to tell me?” he asks, hands on his hips. He’s huffing. His face is red, and I know the look of anger in his eyes when I see it. His gold teeth seem to glint a darker shade.
Inside my head, bomb sirens start to wail. I look around the room, see briefcases tagged, ordered, stacked on shelves. Duffel bags, paper envelopes. I spy one brown envelope with Frank’s messy scrawl on the outside. His fifty-grand bet on Duncan.
“No,” I tell Dad.
Dad pinches his brow, then rubs a hand over his gleaming, sweating bald dome. He’s really worked up.
“Deidre,” he says, his voice barely in control. “Don’t lie to me.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t lie to me, Deidre!” he snaps, smacking his fist against the wall. I wince, step backward reflexively.
“Dad,” I say, shaking my head. “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re scaring me.”
He takes a deep breath of air before asking in a low voice, “Are you pregnant?”
I swallow. I haven’t told anybody, not even Duncan.
How the hell does he know?
Chapter Twenty Eight
Dad is scaring me.
“Sit down.”
His tone is frosty, and he gestures at a stool in the room.
Great, I think to myself. I take the seat. What choice do I have? Dad’s not going to let me out of this room.
Dad is not going to let me out of this room.
How fucked up is that?
The steel stool is uncomfortable, moves a little when I shift my weight. He puts his hand into his suit-jacket pocket and pulls out a ziplock bag. It takes me a moment to focus on what’s inside it.
But when I see the thin, white, cylindrical object, panic sends my heart racing.
“I don’t know what that is,” I lie.
“I said don’t lie to me, young woman,” he barks. “It’s yours. Don’t try to deny it. There were others, too.”
“How could you possibly know that’s mine?” I ask a second before it dawns on me. I widen my eyes in shock. “You went through my trash? At my dorms?”
He throws the ziplock back onto the metal table beside me. The plastic pregnancy test pen rattles.
“I didn’t personally, no.”
“You made someone else do it?”
“Frank.”
I’m speechless. The world is spinning. Frank? That’s what he was on about in the limousine, acting all weird! But I know he was just following Dad’s orders. The good soldier.
God damn it, Frank!
“Why?” I nearly shout. It feels like the ground is shaking beneath my feet. The indignity… I’m… I can’t even put into words how I feel. “For how long have you been going through my stuff? My fucking trash? Did you do it when I still lived at home, too?”