Gant
“Good morning,” I whisper, as a warm body rolls over toward me.
“ What the fuck! ” Hot breath hisses across my lips as crystal clear eyes hooded a second before pop open to peer at me in the dark.
It’s still pitch black out, but it is one a.m., technically morning.
“?” Silas whispers, sitting up, his hand flying to his heart. “What are you doing in bed with me?”
“I had no idea you’d be in here,” I say, joining him against the headboard. “I was having a sleepover with Sylo, and he told me to pick any bedroom I wanted.”
And I did after he fell asleep from Zedd’s tea and after he showed me the car that killed my mother. The car I refused to get in but pretended to admire with him. The car Dove knew about all along. Bae confirmed my suspicions because his Korean contact is also Rin’s, unbeknownst to her.
It was Rin who drained her bank account to get the registration, insurance, and repair details of the nineteen-forty-two Packard pulled. And it was Dove who discovered the model while I was blissfully unaware in the fucking gardens huffing pompom patches of hydrangeas, my mother’s favourite flower and by default Delphine’s.
It's admirable, really, what Dove and Rin accomplished in days, we couldn’t figure out for weeks, and all it took was Bae’s obsessive stalking one night to change that. He’d watched Rin flounce away with her sacred green folder with the pretty golden embossed letters. I didn’t even need to pay the contact again. I simply photocopied Rin’s she’d left in Bart’s night table.
Maybe that’s why I let her stay and play with Dove. Because she’s been so damn useful.
“I just picked the closest door to Sylo’s,” I say innocently. “This duvet is so plush, I didn’t see you beneath the covers at first.”
He looks at me, eyes full of confusion and… fear ? Why? What’s so scary about a little nephew?
“What? You can’t blame me, right? I expected you to be inside the master suite with Delphine. Your wife. Your love.”
He watches me frozen, his knuckles gripping the duvet turning white.
“But here you are. In a separate room. Did you have a lover’s quarrel?”
He blinks, pulling the covers closer to his chest. “That’s not exactly appropriate to ask, is it?”
I shrug. “We’re already in bed together. I guess I’m just nosey. My parents fought a lot, too. They never shared a bedroom either.”
“Delphine and I are fine.”
“Is that why all of your clothes are in the closet?”
“You went into my closet?” he pulls back and wriggles over to the night table where he attempts to cut on the lamp, but I’d already unplugged it. I like the ambience of the silvery moonlight. The bluish tint to the darkness.
“I had to tinkle, and I confused the doors.”
Silas’s face contorts as he eyes my pyjamas full of little cars. Little nineteen forty Packards.
“There’s the one to the hallway,” he says hoarsely, gesturing to the bedroom door. “Get out.”
“But I just got comfortable. Besides, we never got to truly meet each other, and already it seems our reunion may be cut short due to trouble in paradise. Should I be worried about you and Aunty Delphine?” I ask, cupping my palm beneath my chin and leaning closer toward him on the pillows. The shortened distance makes him sink further against the headboard that rattles against the wall, no doubt in tune with his heartbeat. “I mean, she said you guys married for love, and here you are sleeping separately. I was so excited to have a new family unit, and it’s already crumbling before my eyes. Like a fender on impact.”
His breath hitches, but then he exhales. “Nothing’s crumbling, . I have snoring issues. It keeps Delphine up, that’s all.”
I nod slowly. “A deviated septum? Surgery can fix your airway, then you’ll be as good as new. If you get a surgeon as meticulous as your auto body technician, no one would be able to tell you got work done at all.”
“My auto body technician?” his brows furrow, but then they smoothen before I can answer as realisation dawns.
“Of your Packard. Sylo showed it to me.” I tap the little dark green vintage car on my pyjamas. “It’s my favourite kind of car. I had no idea you owned one. Sylo said you got into an accident two years back, so you rarely drive it. But I couldn’t even tell. It’s pristine, almost like that accident you were in didn’t happen.”
“ — ”
“My baby likes cars, too. Even though she was run over by one, she isn’t afraid of them. You remember my baby, Elle? You met her a few days ago.”
He’s momentarily dumbfounded, but then he straightens and turns stoic. “How could I forget? She asked me for money to keep our accident a secret. I did bump into her two years ago, but that’s because she ran into the street.”
My eye ticks at the word ‘our’. There is no our but ours.
“Since you obviously know about it now, I guess we can talk freely.”
“You don’t have to guess,” I say, waiting.
He sighs. “Look, , we don’t know each other very well like you’ve said. But I know Elle. As in, I know girls like her.”
“Do you?”
He nods. “I meet them all the time, or rather, they conveniently run into me. You do a few interviews and podcasts about rags to riches. About how you went from the orphanage to a real estate tycoon and they come out of the woodwork. They all know your name before you can tell them it.”
“And you think Elle knew who you were?”
“I don’t think. I know . I’m not talking about the night of the accident, but when she saw me again before the play with Sylo. I’d driven the car that night. I think she looked me up and pieced it together, the little extortionist. It’s why she pushed for you to meet Delphine in order to get to me. Because she did push for you to meet Delphine, didn’t she? You ignored your aunt for years after Marisol’s death, and then, out of the blue, you have a change of heart?”
“You’re very intuitive.”
“It comes from decades of dealing with people like her. She knew how happy your visit would make Delphine. How happy it could make you to see a resemblance of your mother alive again. And while you were distracted, she pounced because she knew I’d pay anything to keep my baby happy. To keep our secret and the newfound peace of our family reunion that was a long time coming. Now she’s six figures richer, and Delphine is none the wiser. And we can keep it that way, right?”
Wrong.
And that’s the wrong accident.
Did he and Elle only discuss their run-in and not my mother's? Mine? But that doesn’t make sense. Elle knows it’s the same driver.
“I bet she didn’t come on to you until after the play, right? That’s when she really pushed.”
I can’t stop the smile spreading across my lips even as I try to bite the corner. Come on to me? I pushed and pushed until I finally split her open and drank her bloody sacrifice.
“ Damn. You really do know all about girls like her.”
He nods, his stiff shoulders creeping down to their normal position by the second. “It was inevitable that you’d learn the hard way too, with your tax bracket. Better now than later. They’re all the same, after your money but never your love.”
After my money? I think of the panties Elle refused to wear until now. A lofty, gold-digging goal indeed.
But my blood crackles and pops at the word love . No one can tell me that Elle doesn’t love me. Not even Elle herself. I refuse to believe it because I refuse to hurt. I refuse to torture myself the way Elle tortures herself. Bart had tortured me enough. He was the champion of hurt, and he’d beaten me with it so badly, dulled me to the pain so bluntly that no tactic works.
Not the death portrait.
Not insulting the cunty canal I slid out of.
Not his plans to murder my bastard brother.
Not his threats to excise the only love I have left.
Nothing.
But Silas doesn’t know that.
He doesn’t know that talking about my dove, telling me what she’s done or hasn’t done will never hurt me because it doesn’t matter. Elle is the constant. Everyone and everything else are pieces, obstacles that can be moved and burned and never thought of again.
That hurt he thinks he’s stabbing through my heart only pisses me off.
He has the nerve to touch my shoulder. “I'm sorry you had to find out about this. I thought she’d take the money like she promised and disappear.”
And you really thought a hundred grand would do that? Beaulieu’s tuition is more.
“I appreciate your pity,” I say evenly. “I can’t believe she was so comfortable to ask you for such a large sum upon your first meeting.”
“She’s an opportunist who took her one chance before you inevitably got bored and dumped her. I doubt she would’ve made it to Christmas dinner, and she knows that too.”
“Was it just money that you offered her?’
He nods.
“I’m a little confused then…you didn’t offer her any jewellery? Maybe something of Delphine’s before you gave her the money for her silence?”
He wrinkles his brow. “Why would I give her something of Delphine’s?”
“Because you offered her a necklace, remember? If it’s not Delphine’s, do you often wear chokers yourself?”
“A necklace?” he asks, perplexed. “I didn’t give her a necklace.”
“Yes, you did. I can show you what it looked like,” I say.
One second, I’m beside him, and the next, I’m on top of him, my knees digging into his elbow joints to pin his arms. I dig my thumbs into the hollow of his throat, pressing so deeply I’m sure the soft tissues inside are touching. His flesh, once pale, is now a pretentious shade of purple that oozes between my fingers. His eyes, focused on mine in horror, bulge from the sockets.