Page 17 of Feed Your Fiends

“There’s no time to dick around overseas,” she says, not meeting my gaze. “My mission is here, and now that you’re sane again, it’s the perfect time to discuss the details.Afterwe get out of here.”

She crosses the room to where Gant had kicked the wheelchair and brings it to the bedside.

“We?” I ask incredulously.

Rin may be scheming with me now, but it doesn’t mean I like her any more than I did four days ago.

She’d dumped food on me. Poured scalding hot tea over my heart, where a red mark still scars my skin as a reminder. She’d destroyed a four-figure computer in the lab and pinned it on me.

No, her helping isn’t for my sake. She’s just helping herself to a cut of the earnings, which is fair, I suppose. But I don’t need to spend any more time than what’s necessary with her.

“We may be in this plan together mentally, but physically, there is no we. I don’t know why you stayed with me here but out there,” I nod at the window. “You’re on your own. We both are.”

She arches a brow, her expression darkening as she watches me slide into the wheelchair with a grunt.

“Oh yeah?” she snorts. “And who’s going to check you out? You had Jaime banned from the visitor list, too. Not that she ever came.”

I flinch. I’d purposefully kept any thought of Jaime at bay.

“Plus, you can’t drive. It’s not like the staff will let you roll out of their front doors alone. Not when Gant’s on speed dial. That aside, where are you going with no money?”

“You’re right. I can’t do this all alone,” I say. “I need someone for the next stage of my plan, just not you. As you said, we need a few days to temper, then I’ll…make something work with Gant.” Just saying those words makes bile rise in my throat. “Once I do, I’ll find a way to meet his family, the killer. I’ll get the licence plate number, then you’ll confirm the records and bring me the paperwork to confront the Auclairs. Until then, we don’t have anything to discuss.”

“You know,” Rin drawls. “If I have the documents, it’s you I don’t need.”

“True. But I don’t think you want Beaussip to know that you’re homeless and I have the footage to prove it, like you sleeping on that futon for three days. Besides, you want your winnings anonymously, don’t you?” I arch a brow. “I doubt blue-blooded Oppa Jung would be happy if the public found out his daughter was collecting reward money from the Auclairs out of desperation. Even if he’s unwilling to give you his funds for whatever reason.”

She swallows.

I know Rin’s reputation is everything to her.

“I learn from the best. What? You thought I was too loopy to think of that? I’ve thought of everything.”

I haven’t. But at least I’m two steps ahead.

Before another word can leave her parted lips, high-heels sound down the hallway. Not the hollow, cheap kind like the ones I wore for special occasions, but the kind with blood-red soles.

Rin’s clearly used to the sound of the make and model because she hisses quietly. “They’re Gant’s friends first.”

True.

“And you’re my friend last.”

As the steps draw closer, she slips into the bathroom, her expression suspended between disbelief and sheer seething.

The doorknob turns, and two breaths of fresh air with brand-new platinum highlights and caramel low lights slip into the stale room, respectively. Stassi and Aria.

Elle

“I’m so sorry,” Stassi says upon entering the room. Her wide, sympathetic gaze flies to my freshly bandaged feet. “Elle… If I’d known what he was planning…”

If she’d known, would she have told me?

Over the past month, Stassi, Aria and I have been growing closer. We’d shared secrets like Stassi getting a mini gastric sleeve last summer, and that, according to her mother, it’d failed because she only lost a few kilos before coming to a standstill. She’s still insanely curvy and so beautiful it’s hard to understand why her mother can’t see it.

Then there’s Aria, who confessed her romantic feelings about her soon-to-be stepbrother to me. The very same stepbrother Rin’s been whispering to on the phone in the bathroom.

I’d spilled a secret to them too, that I had fallen in love with my bully, their childhood best friend. Rin thinks their split alliance is lost on me, but it isn’t. It’s the reason I won’t tell them about Rin and my plan to win because I won’t be a complete idiot twice, blindly believing anyone’s sweet words and sympathies.

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