Page 20 of How to Kidnap a Fake Date
‘I’ve had a busy week,’ I lie. That’s just my face. My natural stayed up too late stalking my neighbour flair.
‘Nearly dying will do that,’ she says.
Traitor.
Dad doesn’t bother with pleasantries.
‘Graham Elroy,’ he says, and I shrink back in my seat.
Eliza doesn’t look in the slightest bit fazed. Why should she? If there were a sticker chart for bad bitches, hers would glitter with gold stars. She doesn’t just fulfil contracts, she does it with style.
My stomach drops. ‘Right, yes, about Graham?—’
‘You approached from behind,’ he continues, cutting straight over my excuse. ‘You had the advantage and you ballsed it up.’
‘I didn’t—’ I give up when Dad narrows his eyes at me. There’s no way I can convince him that I didn’t fuck up. ‘It didn’t quite go to plan.’
‘It went exactly to plan, until you hesitated.’
Hesitation might as well be my middle name. I feel like a hesitation in their perfectly murderous family. So competent, so perfect, and then there’s… Maggie.
‘I was making sure?—’
‘That he deserved it? That he wouldn’t fight back? That you wouldn’t get blood on your fucking shoes?’ Dad doesn’t raise his voice, yet the words come with a cutting intensity that makes even Eliza squirm.
I purse my lips. ‘I just needed a second.’
‘You had a second, and youwastedit.’
My chair squeaks as I shift with discomfort. I can feel Eliza staring at me through the screen. I’d love her to come to my defence, but I know that although she loves me, she thinks I need to learn these lessons, too.
‘If Eliza hadn’t intervened,’ Dad continues, ‘you’d be dead.’
‘That’s a bit of an assumption.’
Eliza’s mouth twitches up at one side.
Dad’s doesn’t.
‘Is it?’ he asks. ‘You’re nearly thirty. You’ve been given training, time, and opportunity.’
As if I’m unaware of the amount of effort that’s been expended on myeducation.
‘I know, I just struggle with the final bit of it.’ It’s not that I don’t know how to kill, nor how to get away with it, but snuffing out a person’s vitality has always weighed too heavily on me.
‘The final bit,’ he says. ‘You mean the bit we actually get paid to do.’
‘The fun bit,’ Eliza adds.
‘I will mute you,’ I glower at her.
Dad ignores us.
‘I’m working on it,’ I blabber, needing to fill his silence with words. ‘It’s not like I’m not trying.’
‘You’ve been working in anoffice,’ he says.
Ah.
