The Formidable

36

Madison slouched in the quilted leather chair that felt too clunky for the room. Swirling the brandy in her glass. Jase was disagreeing.

"You can't be the target, Greg said this was about more than you."

"Okay, but why would all three of us have a common enemy?" Madison asked. She looked at Jase and then her dad. Madison didn't mingle in their kind of social circles and Jase was too young to know many people her dad would have rubbed shoulders with.

"The only thing that connects us all is Madison," Mickey said. "Her being the main target isn't much of a stretch, the only thing it doesn't correlate with is what Greg said but it's not like he can be fucking trusted."

"Maybe he was expecting one of you to take the other out. Because if you did that, I wouldn't want to be around either of you, leaving me alone," Madison said. "Whoever he is, we've all pissed him off one way or another, be it recent or indirectly. What did you find on him?" She looked to Mickey who shook his head and threw his hands up in defeat.

"Nothing. There's no records of him, no social media, not even a mention until I was told he was looking for you," he admitted. Jase slowly tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling.

"Caspar's not his real name," he said quietly.

"What?" Madison asked, he looked forward again.

"Caspar's not his real name. That's why we can't find anything and why he knows so much about us. It has to be someone we all know, probably someone one of us knows well." Madison and Mickey remained silent, thinking it over.

"Who would we all know?" Madison asked. Jase shrugged.

"Fuck knows." He focused on the brandy that had been left untouched in his glass, chewing the inside of his lip. Madison had been in the house long enough to know, or at least be able to recognise, anyone Jase knew, and her dad was evidently notorious considering the reach he had. The sample pool of people that would want all three of them dead wasn't huge if it included Madison doing them wrong, but it wasn't exactly small enough to pluck a list of suspects from the top of his head.

Madison huffed, slapping her hands on her knees as she began to rise. "Well, this has been lovely, really great to see you again, Dad, but if there's nothing else to say we should get going-"

Mickey wasn't finished though. "Sit. Down," he ordered. Slowly, Madison lowered herself back into the chair. "Now that Greg is gone, it's only a matter of time before Caspar will have to reach out elsewhere. I want the pair of you to be aware of any strange behaviour from people around you, and Mia isn't to be left with anyone but Lily or one of you-"

"First of all, don't tell me who is safe for my child to be around. You're hardly the model parent," Madison cut in. Mickey raised his brows.

"Have the skills I taught you never been of any help?"

"That's not the point. If it wasn't for your shitshow life, those aren't skills I would have ever needed. Secondly, you don't get to summon us and then lay down the law, dictating what we can and can't do," she finished. Jase felt for her. Mickey wasn't being unreasonable, if there was anyone Jase would want to listen to, it was someone who had been in their world for as long as her dad. Madison was lashing out for entirely different reasons.

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Mickey asked, sitting back and lacing his fingers across his stomach. Madison was stumped. Something in her kept trying to get him to snap so they could scream at each other and she could let out all the hurt and fear that had built up over the years but he wasn't giving her the satisfaction. Instead, he gave her legroom to prove herself. She wasn't sure if that was what she desperately wanted to do, to appeal to a parent in the way a desperate child craves, or whether she truly wanted to rip his head off and gut him through his exposed throat. So she did the only thing she could do and poured another double, leaning over the desk for the bottle and swiping the cigarettes at the same time.