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I had.
“So here’s the deal.” I stared straight over my steering wheel and tried to avoid seeing any part of him in my peripheral vision. “I don’t need the drama of bringing you down in my life. But I’m willing to do whatever the fuck it takes to protect your daughter. Both your daughters.”
I couldn’t ignore his smirk. “Tamara’s boyfriend, are you? You’ve certainly never had anything to do with Jess.”
Para always spoke low, careful, only doing voice when her father was out of the house. That was part of how I’d missed how young her voice must have sounded in those early days. This fucking overconfident idiot had no idea she’d found a way to reach out to the world through the gaming rig he paid for to keep her docile, that she’d found her voice just enough to tell me what I needed to know to eventually save her. And I was not letting this asshole go until I was certain I’d saved her.
“All you need to know is I’m not going to let you hurt either of them again.”
I was watching him in spite of myself, so I saw the way he made a sudden shift into a more lounging position. He was trying to convince me he didn’t have anything to worry about, the prick. “You know I haven’t had anything to do with Tamara since she was little. Wasn’t even allowed to send her a fucking birthday card in case I tainted her perfect little life away from me. She poisoned my own kids against me, their mother, just because she couldn’t take the fact that I’d been unfaithful—”
The way he went on, if I hadn’t heard the story from Para first, I might have thought there was something to it. “Just shut the fuck up, will you?”
“I love my girls, kid. Make no mistake. I—”
“Yeah mate, it’s the way you chose to express that which really disgusts me.”
“And you think you know everything about that because Tamara spouted some of her mother’s old lies to—”
I couldn’t take it any more. I couldn’t be in that box with him and not explode. I pulled over hard, hopping the side of the road and rolling into a field. “Get the fuck out,” I ordered. “Now.”
He slithered out one leg at a time, which gave me plenty of time to get around the side to meet him. My arm was already swinging backwards; I punched him right in the face, the contact making a sickening smack. What had me on my knees and one hand gagging on the ground though was the pain. My fist felt like a fireball.
I cocked my head up at Brad, standing legs spread, his own fists just fine on his hips. Proud as the champion footy player he never got to be, though from the belly he had on him now it had been a while since he’d worried about staying in form.
“Go on, champion,” he said with a nod. His cheek was swelling, but not nearly as fast as I would have hoped for the effort of nearly breaking my hand. “Have another swing, why don’t you?”
Even if I could have, I could already see my mistake. Trying to take justice into my own hands had a way of leading me into trouble, didn’t it? If I let him goad me into hitting him more, either he’d have the perfect excuse when he knocked my block off with one swing, or I’d get myself into trouble and be no use to Tamara or Para. Brad fucking Chalmers had no idea just how much trouble. I might know everything about him… but I was nothing to him. Never on his radar, or anyone’s.
I got up and put my hands in my pockets. “No, thank you. Actually, I’m feeling pretty guilty over this whole thing, and I’m sure you have your share of demons to purge. How about we go have a chat to the cops? I can own up to my little violation of basic human decency and… you have your own violation you need to account for.”
Brad was breathing hard like he’d just broken out of a proper fistfight. “What do you want from me, then?”
“You need to let P—Jess go. We all know she wants to get away from you but you’ve been convincing her she has nowhere to go. Turn that around—today. She has somewhere to go.”
With his eye a darkening mess, he could still laugh at me. “Tamara can’t look after her, boy. She’s still a baby herself. And if you think you’re going to get anywhere with her when she’s got a spoiled fourteen-year-old to parent… you two think you’re going to be her mummy and daddy huh?”
My fist moved without input from my common sense. I fell over again, nearly biting through my own lip from the pain, but so did he. Hadn’t been expecting me to cut right past his bullshit like that. He sat up, but didn’t stand. Didn’t speak. He was waiting for me, finally.
Maybe sometimes you had to take things into your own hands a little.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I said. “Either you kill me and get rid of my body right now—and trust me, plenty of people know where I am right now—or I am going to drive to the nearest police station with what I know, with or without you… or we’re going to drive back to your house, and I’m taking Jess with me.”
He was up again. “Sounds like kidnapping to—”
“Not if she wants to go. How about you give her the option, asshole? Or if you’re still not convinced, I guess we could have professionals come in and discuss things.”
I could see him trying to process how much harder it was to get to someone who hadn’t suffered years of being worked on already, who wasn’t going to be charmed by him. The awful thing was that I had been charmable for a while. When I thought he should still have been a champion. When I thought he and I might have some things in common. I wasn’t so far gone as to believe that any more.
He slumped a little, and got back in the car.
“I’m going to expect you to contribute towards her upkeep as well,” I said once I got in. “You keep worrying about how we’ll take care of her: well, this is your chance to do something about that. I’ll let you know where you can send the money as soon as possible… so long as you’re okay with that, of course, and you wouldn’t prefer to handle this through more official channels.”
Brad’s eyes lit up. “That sounds a lot like blackmail.”
“Contributing money towards the support of your underage daughter who is going to be under the guardianship of her sister from now on?” I shrugged. “Sounds like the only right thing to do if you ask me.”
The fucker didn’t say anything else for the whole ride back. I was so fucking glad. If he’d tried to connect with me over how he really wanted to stop, how much he actually cared about his girls… well maybe I’d surprise myself and Tamara, and prove I was able to kill him.
