Elle
“It’s about time you got back,” Rin says, snatching the key card from me the second I step out of the lift, but of course, she doesn’t return it to its hiding place. Instead, she slips it into the pocket of her pyjama top as leverage. Not that it matters. “Gant will be home any minute.”
“You care about that far more than I do,” I say. Gant’s creeping around, too. How could he have the nerve to get mad at me for doing the same? For keeping secrets too.
Still, I don’t want to fight. Not with Gant or Rin. Not now.
My journey tonight drained me far more than just physically.
Gant had Jarett all along, and I don’t know how to feel about it.
He set him free just to trap me instead.
I’ll do anything to keep you.
How should I feel about that?
Terrified? Relieved?
Manipulated? Wanted?
Loved?
The lengths that man is willing to go to for me…And against me.
I slip off my boots with a wince and slide them into the precise position they’d been in when Gant must’ve left. Then, I ease off Gant’s heavy coat and hang it on the hook. I’m about to slip out of the foyer when I notice Rin fiddling with the sleeves, cuffing one, and pulling the sash at the waist so that it hangs unevenly.
“You’ve been that observant?” I ask in surprise.
“You have to be if you don’t want to get caught.”
“Says the girl who leaves dishes in the shower.”
“I told you, the maid ambushed me,” she snaps, following me down the hallway to my and Gant’s bedroom.
Gant’s bedroom.
“What took you so long? I told you Gant’s normally back at three. It’s five after.”
“Why do you care?”
“Why do I care?” she asks incredulously. “Because if you’re gone, how can I justify being here alone if he happened to catch me? The maid — ”
“Heldina.”
“ Heldina almost did, and it freaked me out.”
I turn to stare at her, lips parted but no words will come out for a long ass time. “Rin, how the fuck could I justify you being here even if I’m here with you?”
She looks at me quizzically. “You’d tell him the truth. That you invited me over because you were helping a friend out.”
I’m too tired to laugh, but a deep chuckle shakes my shoulders as my head rolls back onto the pillows as I climb into bed and beneath the puffy duvet. Numb. I feel as numb as my feet because sorting my emotions right now is impossible.
“I didn’t invite you. You trespassed, and we aren’t friends.”
Rin pauses for a moment, a brief flicker of something passing over her features as she crosses her arms. “Like you would know who true friends really are.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I ask, but there’s no vitriol in my voice. No energy.
“It’s not like you have any to know.”
“I do. Stassi and Aria —”
“Haven’t called you this whole time you’ve been in Gant’s cave.”
I swallow because I haven’t contacted them either, so how can I have the audacity to feel hurt? But I do. I miss them, and I’m partly to blame.
“But you know who communicated with you daily?” Rin goes on. “Me.”
“Because you want money. Because you have nowhere else to go, not because you want to be here with me.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still here, and I have been since the hospital. I don’t see you’re other friends. I don’t even hear them call.”
“And where are yours? Why aren’t you in their homes?”
“I never said I had true friends. You did.”
I want to say that’s sad, but I’d never had friends before Beaulieu either, and technically, they’re Gant’s friends first, and I don’t need Rin to point out how sad that is.
I lean back against the pillows, deflated. It’s not like I’d been there for Stassi or Aria either. I was too caught up in my own shit and from the Beaussip articles they’re tangled up in their own too.
“You sound like Gant. It doesn’t matter the motive, just the outcome. ” Like me claiming to hate him and still wanting to be directly under him as I wait for him to come home and complete our bedtime routine.
I rub his side of the bed beneath the blankets, and suddenly, I’m craving his warmth. Maybe it’s Rin’s frigid bitch air that has me so cold.
“He surprisingly makes good points sometimes for someone that talks out of his ass. Speaking of asses, what did Jarett say?”
Should I even tell her? Then again, really, who has been there for me besides the two people I should hate the most?
“He confirmed what I think I ever knew deep down. That the Auclairs had him for two years because they think he’s Marisol’s baby daddy.”
“You said Silas is the father.”
“I think it’s Silas. Delphine all but confirmed it, but it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“And Jarett doesn’t know?”
I shake my head. “They split orphanages midway through their childhood. They only kept in contact a few times a year in their early twenties. Silas became a millionaire and forgot about him. Jarett never forgot, though. And he never knew Marisol until she gave me that fake scholarship.”
Rin’s eyes grow wide. “ No . Like mother, like son.”
Is that where Gant had got the idea from? Did he know what Marisol had done back then?
“What a fucker. Well, at least you're about to get your revenge. Speaking of, when will you get Bart’s personal number from Gant’s phone? We go back to Beaulieu in three nights, and it’ll be almost impossible to get it then. The dorm masters are strict the first week back, even Ms Trix will hold off on the liquor chocolates for a bit.”
“I know.”
“Did you look over his shoulder to get the code? I told you the best way to do it is through a reflective surface, so it’s not so obvious.”
“I got the code this morning.” I’d seen it in my mimosa glass at brunch. And in the vanity mirror when we did our skin care. And in the balcony windows when he’d texted Hale, and when he’d had his arms around me and opened his phone right in front of my face like he had absolutely nothing to hide.
“So? What are you waiting for?”
“He isn’t here yet, is he? Just you.” I roll my eyes. “But how do you expect me to contact Bart? And say what exactly? Hey, I found your wife’s killer. That’ll be three hundred grand.” I shove my palm under her nose as if waiting for her to put money in it. “It isn’t that easy.”
“Well think of something. I can’t make all the plans.”
“All you did was pay someone after I got choked out for snooping.”
“You still owe me for that, by the way. Add it to my cut.”
“Bart’s coming into town. Gant and Delphine are organising a cricket match.”
“ Ew . Why?”
“Seems like a mini-reunion for the parents. Apparently, some of them went to university together. It’s a rare occurrence for them to be in town, so Bart wants to meet up, and Gant wants me to meet Bart at the same time.”
“That’s perfect!” she says, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Wait, damn, his room…”
“Gant says he never stays at the penthouse. Even when he’s in town. I don’t think they’ve ever really lived together.”
“Perfect, for the both of us. Go to the cricket match. Get Bart aside at the best moment, without Gant and give him the folder. Demand the money. Threaten him with Beaussip in twenty-four hours if he doesn’t pay up.”
I sink into the covers, and Rin’s eyes narrow.
“What?” I ask.
“You want to pussy out!”
“I don’t.”
She shakes her head. “But you’re thinking of ways not to confront Bart directly, aren’t you?’
“I…”
“Why are you so scared? Was Gant scared when he got those rigged pointe shoes made? When he humiliated you and potentially ended your dance career? He didn’t give a singular fuck because he showed his face at that hospital not even twenty minutes after you were admitted. He’s never scared. You can’t be either.”
“I’m sorry I’m not a raging bitch who can take down a dragon in one conversation. Bart Auclair tortured my father for two years. Jarett’s… .fucked in the head. He’s acting like a damn dog with the brain capacity of a toddler. What do you think Bart did to him to make him regress like that?”
She flinches, seemingly speechless as the gravity of my true reality crashes down on her.
“ Exactly . I have no clue how he broke him either, and I don’t want to know because I don’t ever want to feel sorry for Jarett. He never felt sorry for me. But whatever Bart did, what if he did that to me?”
Rin unfolds her arms, and she says the last thing I expect. “Gant would never let him.”
“You really think Gant can take on his father?”
“For you.”
For me?