Page 36 of Feed Your Fiends

“Why would I?”

“Stassi did. Elle did.”

“I already know the answer. I know you wouldn’t have sabotaged Elle.”

“You do?” she asks, and even in the dim lighting, I can see her nose reddening like she wants to cry. I don’t think Aria’s ever let anyone see her cry besides Etienne.

And me.

I look deep into her eyes. “I never had a single doubt.”

The smallest of smiles tugs at her full lips as silence settles over us again. Then Aria’s leaning forward and making a puzzle of the pieces I’d shredded on the coffee table. I just watch her, that numbness I’d been craving creeping over me again. Finally.

“Hungary,” Aria says finally, handing me a sliver of the paper she’d picked up earlier.

Holyking’s hand.

I pitch forward. “What?”

“They saw the holy hand of the king. Hungary’s first king was Stephen I. Etienne and I saw it last Christmas when our parents took us to Budapest. Remember, my mother had that fashion show.”

Aria’s mother was a famous luxury handbag designer. She’d been to almost every country in Europe at least three times over by age nine.

I think back to Etienne’s feed where he posted that macabre mummified hand. The literal hand of a king.

Hungary…

Did Hungary regulate baby names?

I shake my head slowly, remembering something else. “Hungary is landlocked. They went to the beach. All the time.”

“They still call them beaches, even if technically they’re massive lakes. They have lots of thermal springs too, though there’s no way she took a baby into one, whether she was still pregnant or had just delivered. She must’ve just observed from the sidelines. They’re beautiful after all.”

“Did you and Etienne go in?”

“Of course.” She nods.

“Some of those baths are nude,” I say, an intrusive image prodding at me.

“If you know where to go,” Aria says matter-of-factly. “Seriously, how didn’t Bart piece this together?”

Because he always undermined her. Because he never thought she had anything important to say. Had he taken a second, even after her death, to just listen, he could have seen the clues. Ones I don’t have any intention of sharing with him. Yet.

“He didn’t care to read the ramblings of a cunt,” I murmur as Aria’s eyes shoot down the dark theatre’s ramp in horror and I gaze over at the city landscape below.

Hungary.

This bastard could be in Hungary. Did my mother, our mother, leave him there?

My father’s paranoid over portions of the Auclair estate that could go to a stranger, and yet, this man could potentially be clueless about his heritage. Seeking him out could be the trigger for him to claim everything.

‘Whatever’s in the dark always comes to light, Gant. Always. Cheaper we drag it into the light than let the light find us first,’my father’s words echo in my mind as my phone buzzes in my pocket. For the one-hundredth time.

I ignore it because I know it isn’t Elle, and how can I give a fuck about anything else until she’s back in my arms?

Aria pulls out her phone and shows me a text from Beaussip. A party flyer.

Did you miss me?

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