Page 14 of Fanged Secrets
Don read the words quickly, tilting his head and skimming the notepad with a glass of wine at his lips. Then he turned his gaze to me, his expression one of mild annoyance. He started talking, wine-tinted lips moving faster than I could follow. Mybrow furrowed as I struggled to keep up, trying to piece together whatever it was he was saying. Occasionally, I’d catch a phrase or two, but the rest of the one-sided conversation was lost to me.
“...understand? Time is of the essence...” he was saying, but I had missed the beginning of his sentence.
I nodded, hoping to appease him, but he noticed my confusion. His face contorted with irritation.
“Pay attention!” He bit out the words, lips pulling back over yellowed teeth.
I kept my expression impassive, but under the table my nails dug into my thighs. If my father had only bothered to learn sign language, we wouldn’t have such a hard time communicating. Don could have spared himself from plenty of miscommunication if he’d just put in a minuscule amount of effort. I quickly doused the spark of anger in my chest.
My father was the flint and my sister had been the fire. I had always been the pail of water nearby. It would seem I was still playing my part, meekly scribbling, “Sorry, I missed that. Could you repeat it? Please.”
Don sat back in his seat and sighed, shaking his head in frustration. “I don’t have time for pleasantries. What do you have for me?”
In response, I calmly handed over an envelope holding all the information I had managed to gather on Dylan so far. It wasn’t much, and I knew it wouldn’t satisfy him. None of it was of use to Don unless he planned on torching Dylan’s flower pots. I winced at the thought.
I had at least managed to put together a kind of timetable of Dylan’s daily routine, keeping track of when she came and went, and how long she stayed out each time. I made note of certain patterns and hoped it would mean something to my father.
Don scanned the papers briefly before tossing them aside. Tight-lipped and nervous despite myself, I watched them flutter to the floor.
“This is all?” he scoffed, waving a condemning hand at the pile of discarded papers. “You’re not trying hard enough.”
I fought to keep my expression neutral, flipping to a new page in my notebook and writing, “I’m doing my best. Dylan is very secretive and she expects a betrayal of some kind. I have to gain her trust before she’ll share anything useful.”
My father reclined in his chair, swigging down the last of his wine as he glanced over my words. When he was done, Don tilted the empty wine glass toward me. His lips moved swiftly and I kept my eyes glued to them so as not to miss anything.
“I have plans, Amara. Big plans. You’ve had it easy all your life because of me, the least you can do is put in a little effort.”
I instinctively opened my mouth to protest but quickly shut it again. Don preferred I didn’t talk. Over the years, one too many comments on my way of speaking had evolved into an insecurity I couldn’t quite overcome. In the years before the incident that cost me my hearing, my father had been indifferent toward me. But afterward, what had initially been neglect on his part morphed into open disgust. In my father’s eyes, I was an embarrassment to the family name.
My nails in my thighs dug deeper, drawing tiny beads of blood. Dylan’s words came back to me then. “You’re a better daughter than Don could ever deserve. I hope you know you’re worth more than what that piece of shit thinks of you.”
My father was speaking again, and I caught the end of his rant.
“ – don’t care how you go about gaining her trust, whore yourself out if you have to, but the next time we meet I expect better results.”
I clenched my hands into fists under the table, my nails digging crescent moons into my palms. I recalled every instanceof my father using me and Aliyah to further his schemes. When he was pleased, we were granted an increment of praise. When we failed, we were belittled and hid in the scullery to avoid his wrath. The cycle of manipulation and control had been my reality for years.
I remembered that scarring night in the hospital. I had held Aliyah’s hand and trailed my fingers over the scars on her forearm while my sister lay unresponsive on the bed. Don didn’t even bother with a funeral. Aliyah was simply there one day and gone the next, all evidence of her presence scrubbed away as if she’d never existed in the first place.
I thought of Dylan, the woman I had grown quite fond of despite her prickly personality. The woman I would have to betray. I quickly pushed those thoughts aside. Earlier I had received a promising email from my agent. The TV series deal was moving forward.
I bowed my head. It would all be over soon.
After concluding my meeting with Don, Carlo dropped me off at the library and I was left to make my way home by foot. When I made it back to the apartment, the sun had fully set and the night sky was stained a sickly orange by the lights of the city. The meeting with my father had left me cold and abrasive, and I raked a hand through my hair in agitation.
I paused across the street, spotting Dylan’s sleek black car parked on the sidewalk. Without deliberation, I scrambled through my tote bag and pulled out one of Don’s trackers. I carried all his espionage tech with me on the off chance that Dylan decided to rifle through my things.
I looked back and forth twice, scanning the street for any prying eyes, but the place was deserted. Crouching down beside the vehicle, I stuck the tiny tracker under the hubcap of the back wheel. When I withdrew my fingers it stayed put, and my cell vibrated in my pocket as the tracker was activated.
I straightened up again, with one last glance over my shoulder before heading inside.
I learned, over the next three days of Dylan apparating in and out of the apartment, that she rarely used her car. On the fourth day of staring at the stagnating tracker location on my cell, I contemplated slipping downstairs to remove it. I wondered if Dylan had noticed it, and purposefully left her car on the sidewalk to mess with me.
I had just rolled off the sofa to make my way downstairs when the tracker suddenly started to move. With my heart thumping in my throat, I watched the small green arrow travel down the length of the street and turn left, heading further into the city. Before I could reconsider, I hurried to the door, tugging on one of Dylan’s discarded coats as I went.
Downstairs, I hailed a cab and clumsily directed the driver according to the direction the tracker was moving in, my usual social anxiety overrun by a rush of adrenaline. Somehow, he made sense of my pointing and gesturing and we caught up with Dylan’s car pretty quickly.
I kept my eyes on the tracker’s signal and the city passed by in a blur as we navigated through busy streets and quiet neighborhoods. We headed toward a part of New York I was not familiar with; a rundown segment filled with abandoned apartments and decaying shop buildings that had long since gone out of business. I reasoned it was the perfect place for the Leyore gang to conduct their shady dealings.
