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A verification code arrived on the authenticator app. I texted it to Toby, hurriedly deleted Toby’s text message from Marco’s phone, and replaced it exactly as it had been on the sideboard.
I couldn’t believe it was done. A hundred grand, just like that.
I grabbed my clothes from the floor and rushed into the bathroom, where I quickly washed. Now that it was over, I wanted to be out of here before Marco got back.
My mind was buzzing, both with anxiety from what I had just done, and also with a stab of guilt. I felt like scum. All these years I had blamed my dad for ruining our lives with his stupid fraud, and now here I was getting involved in something dodgy.
Was this how it had been for dad? Suddenly getting sucked into a situation he hadn’t wanted or asked for but couldn’t say no to?
And had he felt this guilt? This panic?
Standing before the bathroom mirror, I brushed my fingers through my hair, fixing the tangled mass that Marco had made. My cheeks reddened at the memory of his fingers gripping it while he was inside of me. The intensity of it all.
Fresh guilt filled me. I hadn’t even been thinking of any of this during our encounter. I had forgotten what I came for the moment I had seen him downstairs in the back corridor. The moment he came towards me, that challenging look in his eyes.
He is a mobster, I reminded myself. A criminal. He does this to other people every day. There’s no need for you to feel guilty.
My hand dropped to my stomach, and I forced it away. I could not think of my baby right now. I had no time to get trapped in those thoughts.
I put on my dress and threw my stockings in the bin because they were torn.
I rushed out of the bedroom, down the hallway to the lounge, and came to an abrupt stop. Marco was standing by the couch, a white towel wrapped around his lean hips, water dripping from his dark hair down his muscular back.
For a moment, I wondered what to say to him. For a moment, I was scared that he would know what I had done. Somehow.
But then I registered the awful stillness of his posture. And the thing he was looking down at, sprawled on the floor in front of him.
A body.
So still. Weirdly sprawled out. A woman in a hot pink dress. Blood pooling on the pale carpet where she lay.
Marco turned and looked at me. Saw the guilt on my face, the tension in my limbs, the way I had been fleeing.
“What the fuck have you done?” he said.
Chapter 8
BETH
I stood frozen, halfway between him and the door that I had been about to escape through, my eyes upon the girl on the floor.
I knew that pink dress. I knew that blond wavy hair.
“Dolly?” I said, my voice choked.
I took a trembling step towards her, and both of my knees collapsed. Marco reached me in a heartbeat, grabbing my waist to stop me from falling.
But I fought him off, sagged forward, and crawled on my knees to where she lay. Face up. Staring. At nobody.
“Dolly!” I screamed, reaching to cradle her. But he grabbed my hands and stopped me.
My friend Dolly, who had always looked out for me.
The one person I could always rely on to make me smile.
I turned on him, filled with rage, hurling my anger at him. “You bastard! You’ve killed her!”
I beat his chest with my fists and screamed because he did not seem to feel the blows. I wanted to hurt him.
