Page 107 of Feed Your Fiends

“You’re right about Delphine and me,” he says quickly, desperate to stay on my good side. “We’re going through a rough patch. I was vulnerable, and I didn’t know who Elle was, not until she mentioned Beaulieu, and it all clicked that she must’ve been here with you. Before that, I thought she was one of Delphine’s ballet students. But once I realised, I stopped.”

“That’s when you gave her the money, to shut her up about the car accidentandthe finger fuck?”

He nods. “That girl doesn’t care about you, Gant. I told you that little bitch is just looking for a sugar daddy. Someone’s dick to rub on in exchange for cash. If you don’t believe me, call Sylo. He said she came onto him too, asking him for private dance classes.”

Shehadasked Sylo for private classes.

“I know,” I say calmly. “I strung him up from the rafters for accepting.”

“Then don’t you see the kind of girl she is? She won’t stop because no one is off-limits to her,” he says, trying to put some distance between us by crawling on his knees just like his pathetic brother. But I pull his hair, taut, gagging him. When I let up, his pleading eyes find mine in the mirror. “Look at all the chaos she’s already causing between us. Look at what she’s turning you into.”

“She calls me a fiend,” I say fondly.

He shakes his head. “No, that’s what she’s turning you into.”

Turning?Too late.

“But you can prove her wrong,” he tries to tug out of my grip to no avail. “She’s a no-one, Gant. We’re your family.”

“My family,” I whisper. “My family wouldn’t hurt me like that, right?”

Silas shakes his head as much as my noose will allow. “Of course not. We’re after bonding and love. She’s just after money.”

“And you gave it to her.”

“So she wouldn’t press old wounds. Marisol’s death is nothing but a tragedy, but at least there’s one positive. You and Delphine no longer have painful barriers between you. Don’t let this girl put up a new one.”

The girl. That’s what Bart calls her, too.

“So yes, I did pay. I’d pay her anything to not reopen the distance that’s finally closing between us.”

How touching.

“You paid her for my sake? To get rid of her.”

“It was nothing,” he tries to wave his hand dismissively, but it trembles feebly. “It didn’t take much to make her happy. It never takes much to make girls like that happy.”

“And you know a lot about women?” I ask, fingering his neck again as I try to realign my fingers with the angry marks peeking through the silvery strands. He shivers at my touch. “Did you know a lot about my mother, Marisol? She looks so much like Delphine; it’s uncanny.”

“I didn’t know her, given her estrangement, but they are sisters. The resemblances make sense.”

“Nearly clones,” I say. “A clone is never as good as the real thing. My friends tried to set me up with clones of Elle, but I could never let her go.”

But you did. You accepted a knockoff.

“Gant, Elle’s just a girl. There are millions of girls that’ll do right by you.”

“Girls like Delphine?”

He nods. “Like Delphine. Good girls who aren’t used up.”

Never mind that you had no problemusing them up,too.

“You make them sound like cars.”

“Cars are rarer than pussy.”

“Especially the vintage ones. What are the odds that two dark green nineteen forty-two Packards could be in two different car accidents, twenty minutes apart in a town as small as Èze?”

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