Feed Your Fiends (Blue Blooded Boys #2)

Gant

I scan my mother’s beautifully slanted handwriting and reread the words, the pretty poetic pose that makes my blood curdle.

I thought I knew what love was.

I thought it was a rush, a boiling point.

Something that needed to roil over and saturate everything in its path.

The intensity of the heat. The chaos of the bubbles. The warmth that permeated in the aftermath…

I thought that was love.

I thought I’d found it in him, but then you were placed in my arms.

The agony. The excruciating, twelve-hour pain that could never lead to anything but lifelong scars and wounds spun to a stop.

Then there was a rush, but it was different.

It wasn’t this scorching whirlwind but an indescribable peace that washed over me—a rush that wasn’t electrified but as gentle as your soft skin against mine.

You weren’t a by-product or consequence but a personification of pure love, from your curled pink toes to the auric tips of your hair.

I thought I’d found love in him.

But then I found you.

I fist the crisp parchment paper and revel in the crunch, in the destruction after nearly two decades of being so carefully and perfectly preserved in my vault for me. Or who I thought was me.

The pretty mother-of-pearl paper sails through the air into the fireplace, where the flames roar in victory at being fed. The hisses as the letter singes into ash echo the vitriolic chants of my inner voice.

Destroy… Demolish… Devour this memory that was never ours.

Bewitched, I watch the flames lash and split into smaller sparks that fall to the burning tinder, only to rejoin the mad dance. Eventually, the chaos calms, but my thundering heart doesn’t because nothing will ever be the same.

My identity was solidified in my mother’s love… the way she cherished me, her little prince. But that version of myself is crumbling like the ash disintegrating before my eyes. It’s souring, growing rancid in my stomach and rising in my throat.

Then there’s the other love I’d grown absolute about, that of my little dove, Elle. Now it’s smouldering in blood and glass, like my mother’s corpse. It’s dying, just like she did. And I can’t let that happen. Not again.

Someone had fished the rigged pointe shoes out of hell itself and slipped them onto Elle’s feet as she became my princess in front of everyone. They, whoever they are, will expire excruciatingly, but my Elle… I’ll excise the wound I created when I commissioned those tampered slippers. I’ll extract every shard that pierced her precious soles. Lick every wound. Suture every laceration. Kiss every cut. Every puncture. Every scar, because she’ll scar. Horribly. And wasn’t that what I craved all along?

I’d dreamed of Elle’s destruction from the moment my mother died, believing I’d leaked her sex tape. But dreams change, and instead of just destroying Elle, I demolished my new dream of us. I’d crucified her, stabbed the stakes of blame through her heart and feet, and now through necromancy, I’m resurrecting her because, despite it all, she can’t leave me too.

Still, I’ll never be apologetic about the hunt itself, despite my remorse over the carnage.

My little doll. I won’t let go. Ever .

The lift’s doors open soundlessly, although I haven’t granted anyone access. I rarely have guests, thanks to my mother’s portrait immortalised in indestructible glass.

I tear my eyes from the flames, letters, glittering emeralds, canary and white diamonds that I thought were mine too. I’d even slid one I’d stolen before they were locked away in the vault onto Elle’s finger during the play. Instead, I refocus and stare unsurprised into the metal box.

Despite Bart’s absence for nearly two years, it was just a matter of time before he re-emerged. Like a phantom, my father only appears when he senses something especially heinous he can feed on. After dropping his bombshells at the play where Elle was whisked away from me in a haze of flashing blue lights, I’m surprised he didn’t reappear sooner.

The first bombshell? I have a secret older brother set to inherit my mother’s assets. Assets Bart gave under his calculated assumption that he wasn’t losing anything to gain her hand in marriage because I would inherit them. The second? Elle’s father, the fucktard whose sex tape with my mother went viral, could be the bastard’s father. Or so Bart thinks. That’s why he suddenly needs me because I have the one thing he doesn’t, Elle.

Why did I think we’d finally bonded over my mother’s tragedy? We’re both bloodthirsty, but he craves it over money, titles, and pride, while I lust for it over an inexplicable pain that hasn't faded since her death. I should’ve spotted the difference then. He never cared to avenge her. He only pretended to because our goals overlapped.

This whole time, he knew where Jarett Colt and Elle Ginhart were. Elle. The only person I’ve craved with a depraved madness that has me on the verge of scaling a twenty-three-floor hospital tower. That incites a lunacy within me that nothing, not even thirty-year-old cognacs, can ease.

Bart could’ve eased my pain sooner had he shared the prey he’d trapped two years ago and clued me in on Elle’s whereabouts, but he hadn’t. Now he thinks I’ll help him for the sole purpose of helping myself. For finding my mother’s crowned prince and ensuring he never sees a dime of her ballet empire, I was meant to rule.

He’d hoped…no, he knew that my raging betrayal at discovering my status as my mother’s spare would drive me straight into his spindling arms, ready to ally his convoluted web. A transaction. That’s all our relationship is, after all. I’m too emotional for his tastes.

My eyes flicker from his face, a mirror of my own, just a few decades older, to his latest transaction resting by his knee.

What the fuck is that?

A ‘sorry for betraying you’ present? My father would never utter that word after all.

“I wanted a puppy when I was seven,” I say, my tongue thick and heavy as my father shoves the dog crate into the foyer with his boot. It sails across the glossy tile, the wheels spinning manically. “It’s a little too late for a pet.”

“You’ll love this one.”

I swallow the last drops of dark liquor in the crystal decanter and set it on the end table with a bang that makes a canine cry escape from the cage. “No one’s at the penthouse when I’m at Beaulieu. I don’t have time for it.”

I think of Zoi, Bae’s wolf-like dog he’s trained to near perfection.

“Don’t worry,” Bart drawls dismissively. “This breed doesn’t need much training.”