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“I should have known when she befriended you that it would only lead to trouble. I couldn’t believe it when you started working at that club. I told your mother she shouldn’t let you work there. But did she make you stop? No.”
“You are scaring me, Jonathan,” I said, trying to edge around him.
He took a couple of steps sideways to block my way. “You are not going anywhere.”
“I don’t know what this is, and I don’t want to know,” I said. “Marco knows where I am. He’ll be arriving soon.”
“No, he won’t. If he did, he wouldn’t have let you be here all alone with your ex-boyfriend.”
I frowned. “How do you know Toby was my boyfriend?”
“I’ve been keeping my eye on you, of course.”
“Why?” I couldn’t help but ask.
My heart pounded and my palms grew damp with perspiration. Something was seriously wrong here, but my brain couldn’t make sense of it.
Before he could answer, I darted around him. But I was much slower than I had expected on my heels. He snatched my wrist. Caught short, I stumbled, and fell face first into the snooker table, bumping my head on its edge.
I crumpled onto the ground. Reaching for my temple, my fingers came away with blood.
I clung to the table’s edge, trying to get up, but to my horror, Jonathan was crouching behind me, cradling me with his body, his thick hand going over my mouth.
I screamed then, but it was too late. His fleshy hand ate up the sound, and he pressed it tighter against my lips.
“This is your fault,” he whispered in my ear. “You should never have started working in that brothel. You should never have befriended that whore.”
Tears poured down my cheeks. Dolly had warned me. Never told me in actual words that he was dangerous, but insisted I must not work for him. Why hadn’t I listened?
“Please let me go,” I mumbled against his hand, not certain if he could hear me. “I didn’t know that you and she knew each other. I don’t know anything.”
“Liar. You’ve been telling everyone that Dolly told you my secret. If you thought I was going to pay you off, you’re mistaken. I’ve already learned that bitches never keep their mouths shut.”
His legs were around me, holding me in place, his thighs gripping my hips. His fleshy arm tightened around my waist when I tried to squirm free.
“You’re just a whore, like she was. She was fifteen when I sent her to your dad. He hadn’t a clue. She seemed much older, but she was already experienced by then.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I mumbled against his sweaty fingers.
His hand rose from my waist, slid up to my throat, and gripped it tightly. I felt a wave of terror. I tried to prise it off me, but that only made him hold me harder. His hand closed over my nose, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
“Your dad wouldn’t participate in the money-laundering,” he said. “I had to find a way to blackmail him. And the video of him screwing Dolly did the trick.”
The pain of finally knowing the truth was white hot. So that was why Dad did it. I had always thought him an honest man, but he had slept with someone who was just a girl. And then everything he’d done afterwards was to cover it up.
Tears poured down my cheeks.
And Dolly? Why had she befriended me? She must have known all along who I was. And it hurt to suddenly realise that maybe she had felt guilty about her part in Dad’s death in prison. Tried to make up for it, even though she had only been a child herself.
Rage filled me. I lashed out with my entire body, kicking him. He grunted in surprise, but did not let go. His hand tightened like a noose around my throat, crushing it.
I screamed and screamed, but no sound came out. My lungs were airless.
I was utterly helpless, far too weak against his bulk. He pinned me down on the ground and sat on top of me so he could apply the full force of his weight. So he could watch my face as I died.
Like he had watched Dolly’s.
Blackness swam in my vision, and I didn’t even hear the door crashing open. I only saw the horror on Jonathan’s face, and then Marco behind him, furious, ready to kill.
