Page 25 of Feed Your Fiends

I can’t break. Not yet. Not when I still have so much to do. Find this missing heir and appease Bart. Get on my deathbed. Win Elle back.

Elle.

El.

L.

Ll.

Elle.

My eyeballs are on fire. The red blood vessels creeping across them feel like tiny cracks threatening to rupture.

Blink left. Blink right,I tell my eyelids that cooperate a half-second too late.

“I’ll hunt her down,” I say, feeling the uncontrollable twitch at my temple quicken its pace. “She’ll be with me. In the penthouse. Tucked in my bed by week’s end.”

A slurp to my left alerts me to Jarett drinking sloppily from a glass and not his bowl. The sound grates on my ears and rips up my spine with its already frazzled nerve endings.

Bae looks unconvinced as he shakes his head slowly. “The only thing she cared about before you was ballet, and she thinks you’ve potentially taken that away from her. Nothing will convince her to run back into your arms. Not in a week.”

“You have no faith in me?” My fingers pick at my trousers, pinching the fabric so hard that I can feel the hairs on my leg ripping out from the root.

“I have more faith in Hale’s grand opening. Have you seen his progress?”

“What progress? He sent me a text two mornings ago. A final call to lend him more money for the repairs. Which means he hasn’t started them yet.”

Bae lets out a low whistle. “He says he wants to get away from Pierrot’s trashy reputation, but if he’s passing the club’s torch to Beaulieu’s next king after graduation, what does it matter if it’s just a cash grab? Who’s he trying to impress?”

“We both know the answer to that.”

A wicked smile cracks Bae’s lips. “It’s not Stassi. More like Zaddy Zedd and their father.”

“Good luck. Alistair Beaumont has their diamond dynasty, their family tree printed onto wallpaper in their fucking dining room. There’s Marquises, Vicomtes and Comtes. Princes and a Duc. There’s no space to incorporate the son of a second-generation, immigrant strip club owner. I don’t know why he’s even bothering.”

Bae looks surprised. “So you’d just give up?”

Like fucking hell I would. “On Alistair Beaumont. Not Stassi.”

“Easy for you to say. You have no respect for your own father, much less someone else’s.” He gazes pointedly at Jarett, who is chewing on the wing bones. “Hale comes from a fragmented home. He won’t fracture Stassi’s. He doesn’t want to be the reason for the discourse.”

“I’d fracture it,” I say without a hint of hesitation. “I’d shatter it, pulverise it if it meant getting what I want.”

“I don’t think anyone’s confused about that. Least of all, Elle.”

Jarrett’s eyes fly to Bae at the last word. Those fucking eyes….Eyes of spring.He’s finally becoming more cognizant of what’s happening around him.Good.

“We all have our methods. You have yours after all,” I say, gazing around the empty flat. “Too bad you’re a step too late.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She doesn’t live in the tower any more. You won’taccidentallyrun into her.”

The tower Bae clearly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about, but then again, why he cares about her is beyond me.

He doesn’t even ask who. “I already knew that.”

I arch a brow. “Then?”

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