Page 41 of Silver Sinner

"Where…" Trik leans down, his neck almost elongating as he moves. "Is. My. Daughter."

A hundred excuses rush through my head in the seconds he holds my gaze, but all of them are useless. All it takes is for Maddie to wake up and need the bathroom and all of this will be for nothing. So I try something else.

"She's not your daughter."

"Bullshit."

"You gave up any right to call her that when you dumped me on the side of the road with a handful of cash, and told me to buy myself a nice coffin because you never wanted to see me again."

Trik scoffs. "Times change. I grew up."

"Bullshit."

Trik moves in a flash and secures his hand around my throat, thrusting me up against the doorframe. My hands fly up to his wrist and I choke as he glares down at me with nothing but disgust in his eyes.

"Where is she?"

"She… she…" He squeezes so tight that my eyes bulge, and all hope of taking a breath is robbed from me. Then as quickly as he attacks, he releases me and lets me collapse to the floor with a ragged gasp.

"I'll find her myself."

"No!" I grab at his ankle as he stalks past me, but he kicks me out of the way and moves down the hall. Several weak gasps tear past my lips as I scramble to my feet, and I chase after him with my heart pounding like thunder in my ears.

This apartment is too small.

Trik finds her almost immediately and stands in her room right next to her bed, gazing down at her. I freeze in the doorway, terrified that any movement or sound from me will trigger him into harming her.

"She looks like you," Trik says quietly, his voice completely flat. "Weird."

I can't breathe. He's taken all the air out of the room and holds it all within him as he stands over my daughter, inches away.

"What do you want?" I choke out, my voice barely a whisper. "Why are you here?" How is he here is a better question, but I don't have the capacity to say any more.

"This is where you keep her?" Trik casts an eye around the room and sighs, then he moves away from Maddie and toward me. Like a ghost, he slips past me and I begin to wonder if I'm hallucinating this whole exchange until something clatters in the kitchen. It spurs me back to life and I close Maddie's door, then hurry back to the kitchen.

Trik's there, opening cupboards and rummaging around in the fridge almost as if he's looking for something, but it quickly becomes apparent that he's just being nosy.

"Why?" I croak in the doorway. "Seven years and not one word."

"Not true." Trik spins on the spot. "I've texted you plenty of times. You never text back."

"Those… those threats you would send me? Telling me to kill myself? Telling me that I diseased you because it was such a low point in your life, having to sleep with a prostitute? How should I have responded to any of that?"

He smirks. "A hello would have been nice."

"How did you find me?"

Trick picks up a box of pasta and tosses it between his hands as he approaches. "I never lost you."

"What?"

"Do you really think I wouldn't keep an eye on you all these years?"

No. This doesn't make any sense. "You hate me."

"I do. You disgust me. And fuck, if you haven't let yourself go." He glances down at me with open disgust and shudders, igniting a shameful warmth in my chest. "Only reason I didn't kill you back then was because I didn't want to raise that brat. What age is she now?"

"S-six."