Elle
I wake up to a warm body beside me, but the make is all wrong. Instead of lean, corded muscle, the person’s ultra-slender besides a fleshy hip that’s pressed against my side.
“Disgusting,” a feminine voice hisses.
I blink my eyes open and stare at the blasian girl next to me. Her steely grey eyes are scanning a tray of overcooked eggs, five per cent orange juice and soggy white toast on the rolling table she’s pulled across the bed. Our bed, apparently.
“Why the hell are you in bed with me?” I ask, sitting up. Not that it takes much effort. She’s already adjusted the back of the bed, so we’re mostly seated anyway.
As the words escape my dry lips, I lick them and get a mouthful of salty sweetness. It tastes sort of like pineapple. I love pineapple, but I don’t remember eating it or much of anything else since I came to this cursed hospital. Even swallowing is too painful. Everything is.
“The futon’s fucking up my back,” Rin says dismissively, spreading butter onto the toast. “Why the hell didn’t Zedd bring the food this time?”
My eyes snap from the tray to her murderously. “You knew Zedd was here? And you didn’t tell me…just like you didn’t tell me that Gant was real! That he wasn’t some figment of my drugged-up imagination.”
Rin’s been my plus one since I checked into the hospital four days ago if my time estimate is correct based on the weak sunlight streaming through the window.
She picks over the eggs, barely sparing me a glance. “Why would I? You weren’t fully coherent until now.”
I glance at the sparse tray again and eye the nearly grey eggs. Last time, it was stuffed with lasagna, a Caprese salad, and buttery garlic rolls. The time before that, it was loaded with a Belgian waffle as big as my head, with sliced strawberries topped with blueberries and dotted with whipped cream. I swore I’d imagined it. I swore Gant’s accomplices, fiends from the infernal regions, were just apparitions. I wanted them to be a dream, one I’d wake up from.
“Zedd’s been bringing me food, and you’ve been eating it,” I say slowly, accusatory as my blood overheats, though I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s Rin, after all. We aren’t friends or even frenemies.
She’s an accomplice, someone good at scheming and strategising as we play this insane game I’ve finally accepted I can’t escape. Not yet. Because I believe Gant. I believe he won’t let his obsession go until I break it irrevocably.
Him raising the steaks by slaughtering my feet, my dreams, my escape from my shitty reality has awoken something feral in me. Something that’s doubled since he had the fucking audacity to slip into my bed and hold me so tenderly after what he’s done.
I’m no longer in my piteous, sad girl trance of wanting to leave for good because I’m not finished here. I don’t want the quiet darkness.
I want to bathe in his blood.
“You weren’t going to eat it,” Rin huffs, pushing the rolling table away from the bed. “You could barely stay awake. Not that you didn’t try. I seriously think the doctors preferred to sedate you than deal with you.”
“Deal with me?” I ask incredulously. “You’re sharing my bed. Eating my food—”
“Oh, so it’s only cool when Gant does it? It’s a problem when I do it.” She rolls her eyes and shoves the toast into her mouth. “I thought he’d never leave. I hid in the bathroom for four freaking hours before falling asleep in the shower. Thank goodness he’d rather keel over than sit his precious ass on a semi-public toilet.”
I roll my tongue, sucking the salty-sweet taste off of it. “When did he leave?” As if I care.
“About three hours ago, before the sun came up. He spoke to the night nurse before he left. You’re being discharged at ten, and he’s coming to pick you up.”
“Like hell he is,” I mutter, my eyes flying to the clock again. I have less than an hour to get the hell out of Dodge.
Rin grins wickedly. “That’s the spirit. You did amazing last night.”
I freeze in utter shock at the compliment. Rin of all people is complimenting me?
“Gant believes that you hate him and that you need space. It had just the right amount of fury and tension. Step one is complete. Now, we temper for a few days before easing into step two with the feigned forgiveness. That way, it’ll feel natural, believable.”
“I wasn’t acting,” I say, wrinkling my brows. “I do hate him.”
She stares at me, head tilted. “Like I said, you were a lot to deal with. They’d sedate you to calm your hysteria and stop you from trying to get to your feet. Stop you from trying to dance to see if they really were fucked and not just a bad dream. And whenever you’d go night-night, you’d still yap and moan and you know who got you to shut the fuck up even when opioids couldn’t?”
I don’t answer her. I can’t hear her say it.
“Maybe that’s why I kept my mouth shut, your haziness aside.” She shrugs. “I needed the silence for my beauty sleep. We have a long week ahead of us.”
Us.
“I still don’t see why there’s an us.” Nor do I see why I need to split the reward money for finding the driver who killed Marisol Auclair with Rin.
Yes, I’d been so stupid that the prize money Stassi spoke about on day one at Beaulieu never registered before Rin brought it up again. But still, she hadn’t helped me find the driver even if she warned me not to tell Gant.
‘Don’t play your last card until you’ve assessed the risk and understood the potential reward. Don’t go running your mouth to Gant just yet. This isn’t about love or loyalty,’ Rin had said the night of the play.
Sylo’s father and Gant’s uncle appear on my last playing card like the Joker, his lips spread unnaturally wide, a cruel gleam in his crystal eyes. The same grey eyes that dismissed me after running me over like rubbish in the same vintage car that killed Madame Marisol. A deep green car with a silver ornament of a woman holding a disc between her palms. Not a Rolls-Royce like Gant thinks, but a what?
“You don’t see why I’m needed?” Rin balks. “Do you have a contact in the vehicular licence and registration office to prove who owns that car?”
I don’t have a lot of things Rin has at her polished fingertips. Or formerly polished fingertips. She’s due for a retouch on her ballet slipper pink gel polish — not that I’m one to talk. I’ve never even had a gel manicure before.
“That’s what I thought,” she says, slipping from the bed. “We have to be strategic. The Auclairs aren’t going to hand over three hundred grand without concrete evidence. You open your mouth without it, and they’ll confirm it on their own, cutting you out completely. Proof. We need undeniable proof that ties up all loose ends, not just for the Auclairs but for the public if it comes to that. That car’s registration is only the tip of the iceberg. We need testimony and confessions, and we need them from someone only Gant has access to. The killer.”
His uncle. My uncle.
But Rin doesn’t know about my familial connection. Not that my tie to Jarett’s brother is anything that I could use. If he’d brushed Jarett away for all these years, what makes me think the billionaire real estate tycoon, Silas Parrish, would give me the time of day? But his nephew Gant…maybe he’d give him, and his girlfriend, the time of day…
Rin’s plan to play nice with Gant to get the information that we need puts my teeth on edge. How could I pretend that everything’s fine in a few days? How could I just pretend to be his girlfriend again?
You’ve done it before, my inner voice says. You knew it wasn’t real before the rigged ballet slippers. It’s not so different now.
It is. He’d sabotaged me.
He told you that he would, and you still folded for him. You can do it again.
But I hadn’t loved him then, and that makes all the difference now.
“And because we need that access, you have to play nice with him by week’s end. We have to get into that penthouse — ”
His penthouse?
I nearly choke on my spit. “I’m not staying with him! I don’t need to live with him to pretend.”
“It’s probably loaded with clues Gant hasn’t told you about. Clues that we can use to piece together the whole mystery start to finish.”
As if rich people keep family secrets scrawled across parchment paper for all to see on their expensive furniture! Does she think I can sneak into vaults and crack safe codes?
“To get the reward, we just need the driver,” I grit.
“You’re so short-sighted,” Rin snaps, pounding her fist into her palm. “We need collateral in case the Auclairs renege or are tempted to bump up their initial offer once they know all the dirt we have on them. They can buy it for a prettier penny, or we’ll sell it to the press, who’ll pay anything . Trust me. This town fucking hates the Auclairs just as much as they worship them.”
The press? She means Beaussip, her favourite news outlet that’s been extremely quiet over the break. But Beaussip is a school gossip site. They can’t pay more than the Auclairs… Right?
“Blackmail?” I ask, suddenly hoarse.
“Don’t get onto that damn high horse again. What happened to wanting blood?” Rin says, tossing a lock from her bloodthirsty eyes. “You don’t know families like the Auclairs the way I do. They’re the last people you should feel guilty about blackmailing. Now, come on, we have to leave before Gant shows up. And take off my damn coat.”
I eye the tiny trench coat that I’d wrapped around my body last night before squinting at her. Her frizzing hair, which was pin straight and glossy a week ago, is frazzled and dull as is her skin, which is normally glowing.
“Rin,” I say as she drops onto the futon with a plunk to put on her boots. “Why are you here? You don’t need to sleep over to strategise with me. Besides, like you said, I was out of it anyway. We could’ve chatted over the phone while you went to South Korea with your sisters to visit your family.”
No, she couldn’t have. We both know that although I’m lost as to the ‘why, ’ not that she’ll tell me. She has no problem being in my business, but hers is strictly off-limits.
“There’s no time to dick around overseas,” she says, not meeting my gaze. “My mission is here, and now that you’re sane again, it’s the perfect time to discuss the details. After we get out of here.”
She crosses the room to where Gant had kicked the wheelchair and brings it to the bedside.
“We?” I ask incredulously.
Rin may be scheming with me now, but it doesn’t mean I like her any more than I did four days ago.
She’d dumped food on me. Poured scalding hot tea over my heart, where a red mark still scars my skin as a reminder. She’d destroyed a four-figure computer in the lab and pinned it on me.
No, her helping isn’t for my sake. She’s just helping herself to a cut of the earnings, which is fair, I suppose. But I don’t need to spend any more time than what’s necessary with her.
“We may be in this plan together mentally, but physically, there is no we. I don’t know why you stayed with me here but out there,” I nod at the window. “You’re on your own. We both are.”
She arches a brow, her expression darkening as she watches me slide into the wheelchair with a grunt.
“Oh yeah?” she snorts. “And who’s going to check you out? You had Jaime banned from the visitor list, too. Not that she ever came.”
I flinch. I’d purposefully kept any thought of Jaime at bay.
“Plus, you can’t drive. It’s not like the staff will let you roll out of their front doors alone. Not when Gant’s on speed dial. That aside, where are you going with no money?”
“You’re right. I can’t do this all alone,” I say. “I need someone for the next stage of my plan, just not you. As you said, we need a few days to temper, then I’ll…make something work with Gant.” Just saying those words makes bile rise in my throat. “Once I do, I’ll find a way to meet his family, the killer. I’ll get the licence plate number, then you’ll confirm the records and bring me the paperwork to confront the Auclairs. Until then, we don’t have anything to discuss.”
“You know,” Rin drawls. “If I have the documents, it’s you I don’t need.”
“True. But I don’t think you want Beaussip to know that you’re homeless and I have the footage to prove it, like you sleeping on that futon for three days. Besides, you want your winnings anonymously, don’t you?” I arch a brow. “I doubt blue-blooded Oppa Jung would be happy if the public found out his daughter was collecting reward money from the Auclairs out of desperation. Even if he’s unwilling to give you his funds for whatever reason.”
She swallows.
I know Rin’s reputation is everything to her.
“I learn from the best. What? You thought I was too loopy to think of that? I’ve thought of everything.”
I haven’t. But at least I’m two steps ahead.
Before another word can leave her parted lips, high-heels sound down the hallway. Not the hollow, cheap kind like the ones I wore for special occasions, but the kind with blood-red soles.
Rin’s clearly used to the sound of the make and model because she hisses quietly. “They’re Gant’s friends first.”
True.
“And you’re my friend last.”
As the steps draw closer, she slips into the bathroom, her expression suspended between disbelief and sheer seething.
The doorknob turns, and two breaths of fresh air with brand-new platinum highlights and caramel low lights slip into the stale room, respectively. Stassi and Aria.