Page 138 of Feed Your Fiends

“Gant.” I struggle to sit, stars exploding before my eyes as the blood rushes around my head. I feel helplessly around the ground, desperate to grab onto the towel, but then a streak of white zips past me as Bart uses his foot to toss the towel into the air before catching it.

“It’s nothing we both haven’t seen already,” Bart says, and I rip at the fluffy white towel in his arms like a damn dog playing tug-o-war.

He relents, and I fall back a second time as he lets go, but I don’t care as I frantically cover myself and watch the opened duffel bag slip off the bed and topple to the floor. Stacks of money spill out as the papers from the green folder rain down on me as Bart pours them over my head.

I peer up at Gant, up into those dark, murderous eyes that flit from Bart to me to the papers and finally back to me again as he picks up one of the photos of the Packard.

“Why are you naked in Bart’s room?” he asks quietly. Calmly.

“I was looking for—” How could I tell them that I came into Bart’s room looking for Rin? Then again, I don’t owe him an explanation at all. He’d offered me to his father like a lamb for slaughter. An old doll for a new puppet master.

“For me,” Bart says. “She’s bought me a ton of treats, including herself.” He gestures to the floor.

Stupidly, I have a brain glitch because for one second, I forget what he’d just said downstairs, and I stare, waiting, mentally pleading for him to say something. Anything.But he isn’t going to defend me, not to Bart his sire. His master.

Rin’s words of Gant never allowing Bart to do to me as he pleases resurfaces in my mind. She’d been so wrong. Gant wouldn’t just let his father do something to me. He’d stand by and watch, just like he’s doing now. An even starker reality washes over me. He said he wanted Bart to break me, but offering me to him in the first place already accomplished that.

“What does it look like?” I ask, getting to my feet. “You have eyes, don’t you? See the folder? See the money? See me naked? In Bart’s room.” With my back to Bart, I flash him to prove it.

Those eyes bore into me like never before. I can barely withstand it, but I can’t look away as I grip the towel so close to my thundering chest that my nails dig into my flesh.

“Isn’t that what you wanted? Your father to fuck me over?”

Silence. More silence as those pits bore into my skull, his expression unreadable.

Until Gant's phone pings. Then mine. Then Bart’s.

I squeeze my burning eyes shut for a nanosecond, and when I open them again, I peer down at my glowing phone screen just a few centimetres away.

I know who it is before I even pick it up and open the article.

Beaussip

From Cum Rags to Riches.

It turns out Raggedy Anne isn’t so raggedy any more.

In fact, Elle Ginhart is six figures richer thanks to solving the mystery Beaulieu’s former king has set his murderous gaze on: finding his mother’s killer.

But this mystery driver didn’t just hit-and-run once, not twice, but three times.

In no particular order:

Hit and ran into Marisol Auclair’s vehicle, killing her.

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