27. Elle
ELLE
The red light on the lift panel and I are in a staring contest, which it is winning. “I hate you,” I grumble and turn from it because the spots in front of my eyes are worse than trying to use a force I don’t have to get it to turn green.
My stomach growls, and with reluctance, I make my way to the kitchen and pull open the fridge.
There is cold toast on the counter, which I purposefully ignore.
I can make myself food. I’m not a child.
Even when I was a child, I could make myself food.
Since becoming an adult, I’ve barely had the funds to cook anything that required any skill, but I used to be able to cook a full Sunday roast dinner for my parents and their arsehole friends.
“I hate you too,” I murmur, thinking of them.
I haven’t thought of them in months. I try not to.
Being here in the luxury I once took for granted has brought it all crashing back, and Lorcan’s revelations that he has dug into my life and knows everything is something I’m going to have to confront at some point.
After food.
I root around until I see a beef casserole in a glass dish that only needs reheating.
I place it on the counter and bend to find a saucepan to empty it into.
I find one easily enough and turn on the stove.
I dump the casserole into the pan, and my stomach clenches with a hunger I’ve been ignoring since morning.
It’s now growing dark outside. I stir it slowly, watching the stew bubble at the edges.
The silence presses in. No music. No television. No phone to scroll through mindlessly. Just me and the sound of dinner heating in a pan.
I try not to think about Lorcan’s battered face.
He had knelt at my feet, and it had looked like it broke something in him to do it.
The apology had sounded like it had been dragged out of him with pliers.
He is not a man who says sorry, even when he’s wrong.
I should be honoured, but it just makes me feel sick that he knows everything now—the pregnancy, the abortion, the way my parents looked at me like I was something dirty they needed to dispose of quickly and quietly.
I stir the casserole harder than necessary, the wooden spoon scraping against the bottom of the pan.
When it’s heated through, I scoop it onto a stupid paper plate and carry it to the island, sliding onto one of the stools.
The steam rises in lazy curls, and I blow on the first wooden forkful before putting it in my mouth.
It’s rich and savoury, better than anything I’ve made myself in years.
I don’t want to enjoy it, but my body doesn’t care about my principles.
I’m starving, and this is food. Good food.
I eat mechanically, each bite filling the hollow ache in my stomach but doing nothing for the one in my heart.
Harry’s face flickers through my mind. He used to smile at me in class, like we shared a secret, and he’d ask me to stay after lessons to discuss my work, his hand always finding a reason to touch my hand, my arm, the small of my back. I was fourteen, stupid, and thought it meant I was special.
Six whole months we had an affair where he promised me he’d leave his wife—no mention of his kids, of course—and I believed him because you do when you are groomed. That’s the whole point.
Lorcan’s threats to make Harry pay are tempting, but is that really me? I might wish he would die, but I don’t really mean it. It’s something you say and think in anger. Not a reality.
Except maybe it is now.
I shove the unsavoury thought from my mind and finish my food.
I scrape the last of the stew from the plate, rinse it off and throw it and the fork in the recycling with a shrug.
I return to the fridge and spot a bottle of wine, which I pull out and unscrew.
It’s expensive. One of those that doesn’t need a cork to prove it’s worth.
Everyone in the room already knows it’s not a five-pound bottle from Tesco.
I look for a glass and see they’ve all been cleared out in favour of paper cups. “You thought of everything, didn’t you, Fintan?”
Grabbing one, I slosh the wine to the brim and then bend to sip it from the rim without picking it up.
“Classy,” Tiernan says from behind me.
I don’t turn around. “I’m a stripper. You want class? Go to your fancy club.”
“More than just a stripper, sweetheart. You are worth a lot of money.”
“Not according to anyone I know.”
He moves around the other side of the island and slaps a stack of papers in front of me. “Think again.”
I straighten up and stare at him. “What is that?”
“Your parents’ last wills and testaments. They never removed you.”
My blood spikes, and it feels like someone reaches in and squeezes my lungs. I stare at the papers like they’re a bomb about to detonate. My hands shake as I reach for them, and I pull back at the last second. “I don’t want to see this.”
“Too bad. You need to.” Tiernan pushes the stack closer. “Your father is worth two hundred and thirty million. Your mother is worth ninety. A combined estate of three hundred and twenty million pounds, and you get all of it when they die.”
I laugh. It’s a broken, jagged sound that scrapes my throat. “They disowned me.”
“Legally, no. Emotionally, yes. But the paperwork doesn’t lie.” He taps the top page. “Eleanor Hargrove-Pierce, only child, sole beneficiary.”
“How did you get this?”
The corner of his mouth lifts up. “I have my ways.”
“Well, stop with your ways. Why are you doing this? So that I can be worthy of you now?”
“That is fairly insulting.”
“Well, boo-fucking-hoo.”
“Elle. Your parents might’ve thrown you out, but they never changed their wills.
Maybe they thought you’d come crawling back.
Maybe they couldn’t be arsed with the paperwork.
Maybe deep down, they felt guilty. I don’t fucking know, and I don’t fucking care.
What I care about is that you’re sitting here thinking you’re worthless when you’re worth more than most people will see in ten lifetimes. ”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
“No, it doesn’t. But say the word and an accident can be arranged. You would be able to do whatever the fuck you wanted with this money—”
“Get out,” I grit out. “Just get the fuck out.”
“Elle,” he warns.
“Go!” I scream but don’t wait for him to move.
I go instead. I run out of the kitchen, across the living room, and up the stairs to the bedroom.
I slam the door and go straight to the tatty backpack with the stashed eight thousand.
A fucking fortune to me. I stare down at it, and it suddenly feels like pocket change.
Eight thousand pounds. That’s what I thought would save me when I fingered myself in front of Fintan and watched him come all over his hand.
But it’s nothing, less than nothing compared to what Tiernan just told me.
Three hundred and twenty million pounds.
It’s gone up. I think this with a vicious laugh. Ten years ago, it was two hundred and ten. I know because they kept telling me over and over this is what I was worth when they passed, like it was something to be proud of.
The number doesn’t even feel real anymore. It sits in my head like a foreign object. My parents’ money. Their legacy. Their blood-soaked fortune built on generations of privilege and cruelty.
I zip the backpack closed with shaking hands and shove it back in the drawer.
The bedroom suddenly feels too small, the walls pressing in despite its ridiculous size. I pace to the window and press my forehead against the cold glass. The city spreads below me, thousands of lives moving through their ordinary problems.
I’m not normal anymore.
I was never normal, not really. I was born into money, raised with it, breathed it. Then I lost it all, and I learned what it meant to be invisible. To be nothing. To strip for men who looked at my tits and nothing else.
I half expect Tiernan to burst in and force me to read the copies of the wills, but he doesn’t. I don’t know if he left, but he doesn’t come up. I want to go back downstairs for the wine, but I don’t want to see him.
In the end, the war for the wine wins. I need it. I can always ignore him and fuck off back upstairs again once I’ve retrieved it.
I open the bedroom door cautiously and then stare down. My paper cup full of wine is on a silver tray waiting for me.
“God, you’re a dick,” I say when I see him lounging further down the hallway, on the floor, legs outstretched. “Where’s the bottle?”
He doesn’t get up. He doesn’t have the papers with him that I can see. “Oversight. Drink up, Elle. You look like you need it.”
“I need you to go away,” I grumble and scoop up the cup. I down the smooth-as-silk wine in three gulps, waiting for the inevitable burn in my nose that doesn’t come.
“Feel better?” he asks, eyes on me.
I glare at him and scrunch the cup in my hand like I’m proving a point, and drop it on the tray. “I was fine to begin with.”
“Nah, you were spiralling. I get it. It was a shock. I could’ve been a bit more tactful about it. But I’m not a tactful man, Elle.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” I say, pleasantly buzzing now. I walk over to him, placing my feet either side of his legs. My pussy is close to his face, but he doesn’t look there. He looks up.
“Can I help you?” His tone is dark, giving away his arousal.
I tilt my head to the side and stare down at him, seeing his green eyes darken with want. “Maybe.”
His hands come up to my calves, sliding up slowly until they reach the backs of my knees. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
“Am I?” I ask, my voice steadier than I feel. “Seems to me you’re the one who came up here with shocking news designed to get a reaction.”
“I came up here to tell you the truth.”
“You came up here to prove I’m not worthless.” I drop to my knees, straddling his hips. His hands move to my waist, gripping me through my t-shirt. “Mission accomplished. Now what?”
“Now you tell me what you want.”