Page 2 of Feed Your Fiends

Bart could’ve eased my pain sooner had he shared the prey he’d trapped two years ago and clued me in on Elle’s whereabouts, but he hadn’t. Now he thinks I’ll help him for the sole purpose of helping myself. For finding my mother’s crowned prince and ensuring he never sees a dime of her ballet empire, I was meant to rule.

He’d hoped…no, heknewthat my raging betrayal at discovering my status as my mother’s spare would drive me straight into his spindling arms, ready to ally his convoluted web. A transaction. That’s all our relationship is, after all. I’m too emotional for his tastes.

My eyes flicker from his face, a mirror of my own, just a few decades older, to his latest transaction resting by his knee.

What the fuck is that?A ‘sorry for betraying you’ present?My father would never utter that word after all.

“I wanted a puppy when I was seven,” I say, my tongue thick and heavy as my father shoves the dog crate into the foyer with his boot. It sails across the glossy tile, the wheels spinning manically. “It’s a little too late for a pet.”

“You’ll love this one.”

I swallow the last drops of dark liquor in the crystal decanter and set it on the end table with a bang that makes a canine cry escape from the cage. “No one’s at the penthouse when I’m at Beaulieu. I don’t have time for it.”

I think of Zoi, Bae’s wolf-like dog he’s trained to near perfection.

“Don’t worry,” Bart drawls dismissively. “This breed doesn’t need much training.”

Gant

The lift’s doors shut behind Bart, and he pauses, scanning the fancy parchments scattered across the coffee table and floor.

“You found your mother’s letters.”

“After you opened and raided the vault before my eighteenth birthday, of course.”

“If it’s privacy you’re concerned about, I never bothered to read them.”

I try to arch my brow, but it’s too heavy. Everything’s too heavy right now. My heart’s sunken into my ass that’s embedded into the fucking couch. A pity. It’d just started beating again mere nights ago when I finally had her.

“You haven’t?”

My father always glossed over the mundane, certain that my mother was incapable of saying anything worth listening to.

“The mind-numbing musings of a cunt never interested me.” His black eyes flicker down to the theatre, and he snarls as he coos loudly, “Isn’t that right, darling?”

His taunts don’t work on me. I’m numb to him now.

“Why did you marry her?” I ask, a genuine curiosity overtaking me.

“She was just crowned a prima ballerina. The world was watching. She made me look good until she didn’t,” he says matter-of-factly.

She was always disposable.

“But I couldn’t see the future, not like you can already envision the dead end with that ginger girl. She won’t ever make you look good, Gant. She can never come close to being your equal.”

That girl.After all these years, he still doesn’t know her name. The only woman I’ve ever wanted.

My eyeball ticks…and ticks along with a nerve in my brain that feels like it explodes, releasing a wet warmth behind the socket that I’m surprised doesn’t drip out.

Or maybe it’s all in my mind.

Nothing feels real, not even the massive, dark living room. I know the walls are there, and yet, I don’t. I rub the textured wallpaper beside the armrest faster, as if it can somehow ground and reassure me that this is all tangible. That I’m really here. But it doesn’t.

“But she doesn’t know that yet. Bring her to the penthouse when she’s discharged from the hospital. Introduce her to your new friend. Let them play and get reacquainted.”

I peer into the dark recesses of the cage, my heart, my spirit, rising a fraction at the last word.

Bart smiles a shit-eating grin. “You haven’t gone to the theatre yet, have you?”

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