Elle
Gant’s smile as he peers at Delphine, a mirror image of his mother in living flesh, isn’t his usual calculating snarl. It isn’t his indulgent grin when he’s come up, chin wet from between my thighs. It’s a genuine smile that makes me envision a little untainted Gant, like in the baby photos his aunt showed us. Pictures she’s collected and organised into an album alongside her family photos to foster a pseudo-relationship with her nephew from afar. I shouldn’t want to see him happy, and yet witnessing it first-hand puts a litheness in my heart.
But it’s an illusion, remember? Remember the last time you allowed your heart to feel?
Phantom pains shoot through my feet, and I shift them in the boots I’d been so self-conscious about for no reason because Gant was right. I have nothing to worry about because if Delphine is a fashion snob, she hides it well.
Her smile is as soft as her palm that’s gently found my arm a few times as we flipped through the memories of her old photo albums. She’d even leaned her head against mine, and my hair is as dry as straw compared to her baby-smooth strands. As a kid, people always assumed I had lice because my hair was greasy and yet so fucking dry at the same time. They’d think I was dirty even when my clothes were clean and ironed, it’s just that they were faded and worn. But Delphine’s touching me, her hip pressed against mine, her four-figure bracelet pressing into my skin as she turns the album’s pages. Women like Delphine only sneered if they noticed me, including her sister Marisol. Seriously, how could Marisol hate this woman? Then again, Delphine’s married to a potential killer.
My eyes flicker to Sylo, who’s watching me over the rim of his teacup, and suddenly, the warm sunshine, tea, and Delphine’s perfume all fade away.
Sylo was with Jarett at The Watering Hole. Maybe.
Stay focused.
Sylo slips away to the tea cake table, and I try to slip my fingers from Gant’s. He’s not gripping me for dear life like when we first arrived. His fingers are warm now, relaxed, but the second I pull away, he tears his eyes from Delphine and curls his fingers tighter.
“I’m just going for another tea cake.”
“Try the raspberry lemon tart,” Delphine says between bites as she pulls out another photo. “It’s divine.”
“I’ll be fine,” I whisper. “You’ll be fine.”
And truly I think he, they, could use this moment without my presence. Even Sylo got the clue, or at least his boredom lured him away.
“Hi.”
Sylo turns to me, a smirk playing on his lips. “Are you allowed to talk to me?”
“Gant isn’t my puppet master.”
“No, but he delivers consequences to anyone who doesn’t listen.”
“I’m sorry about the spider incident, by the way.”
“Are you? If so, you wouldn’t risk talking to me now.”
Not that he seems scared in the slightest. I think he likes this weird cousin rivalry.
Cousins…
I glance over at Delphine and Gant, who are on their feet now, peering out the giant window that overlooks the gardens. She’s showing him something, but from his reflection in the glass, I can tell he’s staring at me.
“Better make it quick.” Sylo snaps my attention back to him.
“What?”
“I know you don’t give a damn about these tea cakes or finger sandwiches, so what do you want?”
I’m momentarily speechless, my mouth hanging open.
“Did you want to chat about your mother throwing herself at my father before the play? You know, before Gant humiliated you again.”
“I stopped her in time…” I mumble.
“She would’ve thrown her legs around his waist if she could.”
“Look, do you know how they know each other?”
Sylo picks up a raspberry lemon tart, pressing his finger into it before tossing it back onto the tray. He’s done it to all
the raspberry lemon tarts his mother loves.
“Probably fucked at some point,” he says dismissively.
Jaime would never cheat on Jarett, but Sylo doesn’t know that. Does that mean he doesn’t know about Jarett at all? But The Watering Hole…
“Oh, when they were teens or something?”
Sylo snorts. “Probably last month. Last week…”
I look at Delphine. “Your father cheats on your mum?”
“Yours doesn’t? They always do. This,” he uses another tart to gesture around the room, “gets boring fast.”
“Is that why he isn’t here to meet his nephew? Too boring?”
“He’s an orphan and an only child. Family doesn’t mean as much to him as it does to my mother. She never got over her sister not forgiving her. This little reunion with Gant is her dream, no one else's.”
An only child? So, he doesn’t know about Jarett?
I grab a tart, one he hasn’t touched, and he does the same, reaching for another raspberry lemonade, but before he does, he tucks a long lock behind his ear, and I see a headphone.
“You’ve been listening to music this whole time?”
“Did you think I could take more than twenty minutes on a memory lane I’ve travelled down fifty times before?”
So, Delphine always spoke about her and Marisol’s past? It isn’t news to Sylo?
“What are you listening to?”
“A rock band.”
“I love rock. There’s this indie band from the late nineties, That Night.” I search his face, but he looks at me blankly.
“Are they any good?”
“Yeah, they just had a small concert at the Watering Hole.”
“What’s the Watering Hole?”
“You’ve never been there?”
He smiles. “Maybe my height makes you forget that I’m in the year below you.”
“You don’t have a fake ID?” All rich kids do.
“To get into the Watering Hole if it’s legit? No. It worked well enough for Stassi and Zedd’s party, though, until Hale kicked me and my horsemen out.”
The Watering Hole would accept a sticker of the anime character Sesshomaru, Sylo’s likeness, and let him through. If he didn’t know that, then he didn’t know Harod or the bar.
“You have horsemen?”
“Gant and his clique graduate in eight months. Who do you think will take over?”
Eight months. Just eight months until the real world.
Focus.
If Sylo didn’t know about Jarett, then who accompanied Jarett to the bar?
“Come on, you two,” Delphine sings sweetly. “We’re going to the gardens. I want to show Gant the wishing well that finally granted me this visit.”
Sylo rolls his eyes but allows his mother to drag him out of the sitting room, a tart stuffed halfway in his mouth.
You aren’t here for a fucking family reunion. I tell myself as Gant laces our fingers and we enter the foyer. The garage. The car. Find the car!
“I’ll meet you out there. May I use your powder room?” I ask, and Delphine quickly nods over her shoulder.
“Of course. There’s one on the left.”
Right near the garage, but I already knew that. I’d scoped out the layout from the outside.
Delphine reaches for Gant, and I smile at him encouragingly. “Be a good escort. It’s only a tinkle, Gant.”
He squeezes my fingers before letting go because he feels safe in his pseudo mother’s home. Yet, goosebumps crawl my spine as I squeeze him back before slipping into the half bath. I count to thirty when I can no longer hear their footsteps before slipping out again. I creep right, ease the heavy wooden door open and slide into the dark garage.
There are six bloody cars. A six-car garage.
Again, why am I surprised?
When I reach the fourth, I spot it gleaming that blackish-green. The body is perfect. Still, I feel for any imperfections as I run my phone’s torch and my finger over the left fender. I hadn’t bothered with the overhead lights in case Delphine or Sylo noticed them flickering on from the garden. Still, I don’t need to see a dented fender to know I’ve found the right car as I eye the ornament.
Quickly, I unlock my phone. Not the old one Gant’s given me back but my burner from Rin. It’s slow as fuck, and I shift my weight as I wait for the browser to load before typing in the description.
Hood ornament. A kneeling woman holding a disc with wings.
I search through a dozen images, ignoring the Spirit of Ecstasy, a pelican, and an angel until I find an identical match.
Packard. 1940. Discontinued.
The company didn’t even exist any more.
I snap a few photos before fiddling with the passenger door. It’s unlocked, so I slip inside and rustle through the glove box. I need his legal documents as undisputable proof, but of course, there are no papers, just an air freshener, and my hopes of axing Rin from the plan are slashed.
I find the VIN number, take a picture, and send it to Rin without context. Not even a second passes before she responds with the devil horn emoji. Was she just waiting around with our chat open at all times?
Damn, maybe she needed the money even more than I —
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My eyes shoot to the rearview mirror, where Silas is leaning forward, emerging from the shadows.
“I-I got lost looking for the powder room. I’m Gant’s girlfriend — ”
His fingers clamp around my neck, and in my struggle to break away, I ram my elbow into the car door, hard, hoping to nudge it open. It’s no use. Blinding pain from both my elbow and my neck explodes before my eyes like little starbursts.
“Do you think I’m that fucking stupid? You mistake a garage for the toilet?”
I try to swallow, but I can’t. “I love vintage cars, so when I stumbled into the garage, I couldn’t help myself.”
“Try again.” He squeezes tighter, and my heart pounds in my ears, the drums about to burst.
I lick my dry lips. He knows that he hit me. We both know, so why lie?
He can’t kill me here, despite the murderous look in his eyes. Not when everyone thinks I’m in the bathroom. Or would he make it look like an accident? Like the scaffolding, just a metre away, fell on my neck? His eyes are already lingering on the contraption, having followed mine.
Fuck.
He doesn’t know that I’m Jarett’s daughter, right? He just knows about the accident. Or so I think. Mum had cried Jarett’s name, but I look nothing like my father. So maybe Silas simply thought some random lady mistook him for his near-twin? I doubt he knows that Jarett’s married with a kid. Jarett never posted about me or Jaime on social media because he wanted to appear single so he could cheat in peace. He’d blocked Mum’s profiles so she couldn’t tag him, although she’d post photos of our family when she caught him off guard. She and I would be grinning in the camera, and he’d be halfway out of the frame.
So, does my uncle know who I am? I stare into the reflection of his crystal eyes. I don’t see any recognition of a family tie, just that night of the accident.
So I go for a half-truth.
“I saw you at the play and recognised you from that night when you hit me in front of the dance studio. That’s when I realised you were Sylo’s father, and I wanted to see if your car was here. I wanted to see if I was right and if I’d finally found the person who nearly killed me.”
His fingers loosen a fraction. “We’re getting somewhere, finally.”
Diffuse. Diffuse . Then get away.
“I wasn’t sure. When I saw you at the play,” I hedge. “When I found out that you were Gant’s uncle, I didn’t want to say anything to upset the happy reunion in case I was wrong.”
“It’s obvious you haven’t told Gant, or he wouldn’t have shown up. My wife’s been prompting him for years.”
“He’s so happy in there,” I nod toward the shut door. “Seeing Delphine is like seeing Marisol again. I can’t take that away from him.”
Is he buying this?
“Yet,” He says coolly. “How much do you want?”
“S-sorry?” I sputter.
“Let’s not play cute. You’re a girl from bumfuck nowhere, latching onto a little rich boy going through his bad boy phase. You don’t care about Gant, you care about what Gant can do for you and when you found out I was his uncle, I bet you’re the one that pushed for this little reunion.”
I swallow, and his fingers tighten at the movement.
“Everyone knows that you’re temporary. Me, Delphine, Gant and deep down, you know it too. It’s just a polite biding of the time until you’re gone for someone more suitable for a billionaire’s son. But I don’t want to ruin things for my wife, and if Gant finds out about our little accident, he’ll pull away from her. She hasn’t been this happy for a long time, so maybe I can give you what you want sooner and make you disappear faster. There are a few ways I can make you disappear.” He eyes the scaffolding again. “But transfers are less bloody. Your price, name it.”
“My price?” I sputter. He thought I was here to blackmail him for money? Sure, I was here to get enough proof to cash in with the Auclairs before making my clean break, but it hadn’t even occurred to me to blackmail Silas.
But it would’ve run across Rin’s mind instantly.
Rin …maybe I did need her.
“For fuck’s sake, don’t do that poor person righteous bullshit. Why else did you want to prove it was me if not for money? I don’t have time for a fucking court case, and you can’t prove shit. So take the money, and let’s keep both Gant and Delphine happy.”
“I’m not righteous,” I whisper into the void. “And I’m not someone willing to play coy either, so you’re right. Let’s not play around.” I press the nozzle of the air freshener I’d taken from the glove box and blast it behind me blindly into his eyes.
His loosening fingers, which were ironclad before, falter enough for me to get away and slip from the car as he hisses in pain.
I don’t make it halfway around the hood before I hear the car door opening, but it’s too late. My index is poised over the button that lifts the garage doors, and it’s bound to make a fuck ton of noise as it exposes us to the gardens. To the two people whose happiness Silas seems to care so much about.
He pauses halfway to me, his red, irritated eyes darting to the small windows at the top of the doors. So he knew they were in the garden too. He must’ve seen them when he pulled in.
“You don’t need to come within a metre of me to send the transfer.”
How much would Rin ask for?
“I want one hundred thousand,” I blurt.
He shakes his head, a knowing smirk tugging his lips as he pulls out his phone as if my request were for mere candy and not four figures. So I hadn’t asked for enough.
“It’s only a matter of time before Gant sees that you don’t give a fuck about him.”
“Neither do you, and you’re his uncle.” And mine. “If you cared so much, you would confess the truth and keep your money. But the money’s worth a lot less to you than your wife’s happiness and your new nephew’s ignorance, right?”
He just peers at me as if wondering who the fuck I think I am.
“Eloisa Ginhart,” I say to his unasked question. “That’s the name on the account. Are you ready for the bank account number yet?”