Gant
“Elle and Jarett weren’t close. He hated her. How the hell does Bart expect some bizarre family reunion to pry the whereabouts of this mystery baby out? How do you even know the baby’s Jarett’s?”
“Because Bart’s desperate.” If only he’d look for the clues in the letters. The mind-numbing musings of a cunt. “And the connection between Jarett and my mother only makes sense if he is the father.”
“But you don’t know that!” she says, her voice cracking. “Hasn’t Elle been through enough? Are you really going to subject her to him again?”
“I never want to hurt her again.” If I don’t have to.
Aria’s shoulders relax. “Good, because I don’t want to hold any more of your secrets.”
“So Elle’s mad with you too?” I ask the obvious.
She gets to her feet, annoyance overtaking her features as she storms up the ramp, not sparing the death portrait a single glance. That’s the best thing about Aria, she can just pretend for my sake.
“You’re welcome, by the way. For taking the ballet shoes. If you think Elle’s angry now, imagine how pissed she’d be if you’d been the one to actually do it. She’d never talk to you again. Not even to spit on you.”
“I wouldn’t have used them,” I say, following her to the couch.
“You were still on the fence at the time.”
“My decision solidified the moment she came to me that night.”
“Because of a fuck?”
“Because she gave me her heart. She trusted me. With everything.”
She squirms and settles into the cushions, looking guilty. “Aren’t you going to question me about the shoes?”
“Why would I?”
“Stassi did. Elle did.”
“I already know the answer. I know you wouldn’t have sabotaged Elle.”
“You do?” she asks, and even in the dim lighting, I can see her nose reddening like she wants to cry. I don’t think Aria’s ever let anyone see her cry besides Etienne.
And me.
I look deep into her eyes. “I never had a single doubt.”
The smallest of smiles tugs at her full lips as silence settles over us again. Then Aria’s leaning forward and making a puzzle of the pieces I’d shredded on the coffee table. I just watch her, that numbness I’d been craving creeping over me again. Finally.
“Hungary,” Aria says finally, handing me a sliver of the paper she’d picked up earlier.
Holy king’s hand.
I pitch forward. “What?”
“They saw the holy hand of the king. Hungary’s first king was Stephen I. Etienne and I saw it last Christmas when our parents took us to Budapest. Remember, my mother had that fashion show.”
Aria’s mother was a famous luxury handbag designer. She’d been to almost every country in Europe at least three times over by age nine.
I think back to Etienne’s feed where he posted that macabre mummified hand. The literal hand of a king.
Hungary…
Did Hungary regulate baby names?
I shake my head slowly, remembering something else. “Hungary is landlocked. They went to the beach. All the time.”
“They still call them beaches, even if technically they’re massive lakes. They have lots of thermal springs too, though there’s no way she took a baby into one, whether she was still pregnant or had just delivered. She must’ve just observed from the sidelines. They’re beautiful after all.”
“Did you and Etienne go in?”
“Of course.” She nods.
“Some of those baths are nude,” I say, an intrusive image prodding at me.
“If you know where to go,” Aria says matter-of-factly. “Seriously, how didn’t Bart piece this together?”
Because he always undermined her. Because he never thought she had anything important to say. Had he taken a second, even after her death, to just listen, he could have seen the clues. Ones I don’t have any intention of sharing with him. Yet.
“He didn’t care to read the ramblings of a cunt,” I murmur as Aria’s eyes shoot down the dark theatre’s ramp in horror and I gaze over at the city landscape below.
Hungary.
This bastard could be in Hungary. Did my mother, our mother, leave him there?
My father’s paranoid over portions of the Auclair estate that could go to a stranger, and yet, this man could potentially be clueless about his heritage. Seeking him out could be the trigger for him to claim everything.
‘Whatever’s in the dark always comes to light, . Always. Cheaper we drag it into the light than let the light find us first,’ my father’s words echo in my mind as my phone buzzes in my pocket. For the one-hundredth time.
I ignore it because I know it isn’t Elle, and how can I give a fuck about anything else until she’s back in my arms?
Aria pulls out her phone and shows me a text from Beaussip. A party flyer.
Did you miss me?
Beaulieu may be on break, but the party’s just getting started.
Our new king is christening his club, Libellule, via Stassi and Zedd’s birthday bash.
Did you get a golden ticket when you opened the flyer?
I watch the gold confetti drifting across Aria’s screen.
Then you’re in…for four figures with authentic nineteen twenties to forties dress attire.
Did you get a silver ticket?
Then you’re a lucky blonde with a vagina, and Hale’s blessing you with a waitressing positions for one night only, on the house.
Aria snorts.
The attire? Your birthday suit. Hale will handle the rest.
And what if you didn’t get a virtual ticket at all?
Well, if you have to ask, then you already know.
It’s not your party, though, so you can’t cry if you want to. You can, however, watch from the comfort of your cat-hair strewn couch while I live stream the entire event via my minions with bodycams. It’ll be just like you were one of the chosen ones.
So here’s a ticket.
Aria clicks it out of sheer nosiness.
A digital dark green ribbon saying ‘participation’ floats across the screen along with a button demanding ten ninety-nine for the streaming access that goes live tomorrow night.
So Hale had managed to pull off Zedd and Stassi’s birthday bash after all.
“Want to be my date?” Aria asks, tapping a button to pay for her golden ticket.
“And suffer decapitation?”
“I told you, Eti’s gone,” she says, her voice hollow.
“The last thing I give a fuck about right now is partying.”
Jarett’s muffled cries echo up to us like a reminder.
“It’s not about the party. It’s Stassi and Zedd and Hale.”
“Elle—”
“Has been your hyperfixation for months. But what about your friends? They’ve been there for you. You can sacrifice a few hours.”
“Elle—”
“Will be fine for one night.”
“Not without me. Look at me,” I mutter, spotting my rough reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I’m not fine without her.”
“You can think about someone else for one bloody night.”
“No, I can’t. She says I’m a demon, a fiend, but she’s the one that’s haunting me.” I flutter my eyes closed for a half second and see her. “She’s everywhere. Everything. Every place.”
Elle.
El
Ll…
Aria pinches me, hard.
“Fuck.”
“For one night, even I can pretend for the people I love. Even when I know they hate me right now. Even when all I want to do is rot.”
“We both know there’s something you want to do more than just rotting in this penthouse with me. Someone. And you’d fuck that party to be with him.”
“But I can’t be with him, and you can’t be with Elle.”
Something within me snaps. “ Don’t ever say that again .”
“They’re gone, ,” she hisses. “For now. So let’s pretend for them,” she nods at the flyer where Stassi grins up at us and Zedd smirks, his sharp jaw clenched.
Above their heads is a smaller figure. Hale. His arms are wide open, ready to receive all the heathens into his lair.
Hale. How had he done it? How had he got the club together so quickly to pull off an event as huge as Stassi and Zedd are bound to make it?
He must’ve called his mother finally.
I gaze down the ramp to where the death portrait waits.
No matter how betrayed I feel, no matter how special I never was, I’d give anything to call her again.