Page 384 of Double or Nothing

My mouth drops open.

“Give Dad the phone, Jack,” Alice says, sitting up from the sofa. “I’m not going back. No way. I’ll tell him to piss off.”

“Give it to me! Let me speak to my daughter!” I hear Bill bark, and then some kind of scuffle.

“Get the fuck way away from my desk, asshole,” Jack says, with a spike in his voice that sends a ripple up my spine. “This is my office, you bloody idiot, not yours. Your Parker rules don’t apply here. Get used to it.”

Shit.

Alice is wide eyed with the phone in her hands.

“I’ll tell him myself,” she says, getting up from the sofa. “I’ll head over now. I’ll call a cab.”

“No need,” Jack says. “A car is already on the way. Time to break the news to your lovely daddy that the Parker bubble has burst for good.”

The line goes dead.

I’m up in a heartbeat. I take one of Jack’s coats from the hanger and wrap her up.

“You sure you want to do this?” I ask her. “I can go on my own. I’ll back Jack up.”

But she shakes her head.

“No. He needs to hear it from me, or he’ll never let it go.”

“Jack can get him thrown out of the casino.”

“Yeah, he can. But he’d be back tomorrow night. And the night after. And then he’d find out where Jack lives and he’d be here.” She takes a breath. “No. Let’s do this. Together.”

I take Soul Girl’s hand.

“Together. Always,” I say. “Let’s get downstairs for that car. I bet it’s breaking the speed limit.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

JACK

William Parker has been in my office for over thirty minutes now.

He declined the chair I offered when he first stormed in. Instead, he’s standing across from my desk, arms folded, staring down at me as though he’s arrived to dismiss an employee. Yeah, right. Christopher wank-stain Otley stands beside him with his arms folded too, as though that’s even vaguely intimidating.

Three of their legal advisers are waiting outside in the corridor. Parker brought enough intimidation to overpower a frightened daughter, only to discover I gave all of them the middle finger at my office door.

I remain seated. Calm. Leaning back in my seat like we have all the time in the world.

That appears to annoy Parker the most.

“You have no right to conceal Alice’s whereabouts,” Parker says for the umpteenth time.

“I’m not concealing anything.”

“You’re refusing to tell me where she is.”

“That’s called declining to answer.”

“My daughter is missing!”

“She isn’t missing. She left you.”