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He’s angry. Livid, even.
“Bringing you here was a mistake.” These words don’t leave him as forcefully as anything he’s said the past few minutes. But they hurt the worst. “All of this. It’s a mistake.”
“You don’t mean that.” He can’t mean that. Not after everything we’ve been through. Not after everything we’re about to go through.
It’s like watching a house of cards crumble after you’ve spent hours painstakingly putting it together. Alexander is slipping away from me right before my eyes, and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can say to stop it.
“Why do you care about my father so much?”
I understand why he would be upset that I lied to him. But why does the truth of my father’s identity, the fact I’ve been talking to him, matter? Did Ezra tell him I planned to run away? Even if he did, I never called my father by his name on that phone call.
Alexander’s expression grows guarded. “Why are you protecting him?”
Protecting him? No, I’m protectingyou.
“I’m not fucking protecting him,” I hiss, the insinuation shifting my mood almost instantly. “He threatened to hurt you, and I didn’t want that to happen.” It’s more of the truth than I ever expected to tell him. But he doesn’t seem swayed by my admission. If anything, it only upsets him more.
“When?” It’s a simple question.
“A few weeks ago.”
“While you thought I was the one who grassed you up?”
I’m backed into a corner. I don’t even trust myself to use my voice. By his question alone, I know what he’s thinking, what this all sounds like to him. I nod slowly.
Alexander narrows his eyes at me. “Your father threatened to kill me whileyouwanted to kill me, and you expect me to believe that you lied to me about him to protectme.”
My mouth falls open as I try to think of a way to diffuse the situation. “it’s not what it sounds like, Alexander, I—”
“Where is he?” Alexander interrupts me.
“What?”
“Where is your father?” he says, pinning me with a glare that makes my stomach grow cold.
I shake my head. “I don’t know—”
“Stop fucking lying to me!” Alexander’s voice roars from him, so loud the whole car quivers. He lunges at me, ripping the gun from my fingers in my moment of surprise.
In the next second, he grabs me by the neck, pulling me across the center console toward him. “If you don’t want to tell me the truth, I’ll get it out of you one way or another.”
I’m aware he’s choking me, of how dangerous that can be for the baby. I dig my fingernails into his wrist but the pain doesn’t even faze him.
“I’m telling the truth,” I squeak. “I don’t know where he is. He never told me. It’s not what you think.”
Those words seem to break through his haze of anger, enough for him to loosen his grip on my neck. I take a deep steadying breath. “Yes, I planned to use him to escape you at some point. But that was when I thought you had snitched on me. I changed my mind as soon as I found out the truth.”
Alexander gives me a long look. “Then give me your phone.”
I throw my purse at his chest. Why is what I say not enough for him? What’s so fucking important about my father that he refuses to listen to reason? Yes, I lied to him, and I shouldn’t have, but why is he being such a hard-ass about this?
Alexander lets go of me and dumps the contents of my bag onto his lap. I nibble on the corner of my fingernail. There’s nothing really incriminating in my phone apart from the texts from my father—and the most recent one, he’ll see that I didn’t want to go with him.
I’m not trying to betray him the way he thinks.
There’s a long silence. He’s angled himself away from me so I can’t see what he’s doing. His expression gives nothing away either, his face is stone as the minutes tick by. My mind starts to wander again as I watch him. I still can’t get over the fact Alexander seems more interested in my father than I expect him to be.
“How did you know that I told you the wrong name?” Whether it’s Michel or Louis, neither of those things should mean anything to him. Unless he knows more about my father than he’s letting on.
