Page 63 of The Fortune Games
“What else do you know? How do you know it? For God’s sake, Bastian, I swear if you don’t…”
“Hey, hey, hey…” he interrupted. He grabbed both my arms and forced me to stand still. “You know how I like questions. One at a time.”
“Okay,” I panted. “What else do you know?”
And then he dropped the bomb.
“Vera, it wasn’t Dubois who hired Julian Garros. It was Antonia Hawtrey-Moore herself, a few months before she died.”
I grabbed Bastian’s arm and pulled him close, ignoring Gina’s message. My glare cut through him like a blade. I’d mastered the art of making people squirm, of making anyone—no matter how powerful—feel small. That’s how I managed to survive at Cutnam.
“How do you know?” I demanded.
I learned this technique from my mother. Under that kind of pressure, no one could lie. I knew Bastian wouldn’t be able to hold up under it.
He tightened his jaw, his defiance melting as the truth spilt out.
“Eloïse.”
Of course. Bastian tried to pull away, to look elsewhere. I didn’t let him.
“What did she tell you?”
“Nothing else. Maybe Eloïse knows what her mother forged, or maybe she doesn’t; either way, she didn’t tell me.”
I released his arm, restraining the urge to scream.
“Why the hell didn’t you ask her?”
To my surprise, he didn’t let me go, grabbing my wrist. There was no frustration or anger on his face, only a still calm.
“I have an image to maintain, remember?”
An image. A facade, a lie.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. While I was just pretending to live the high life for a few hours, Bastian had been playing his own game for months—the arm candy, the charming facade. Eloïse had to have seen through it. It was inconceivable that she hadn’t. Eloïse was scheming too, though I had no idea what her angle was.
A car drifted near the entrance, Gina cruising at the passenger seat of the Mercedes, music blasting and a wicked grin plastered on her face. Honestly, I should have been more surprised by Gina’s sudden appearance, but after everything that had transpired in just a few hours, nothing could really shock me. The car came to a screeching halt right in front of us.
I couldn’t recall if Bastian let go of my arm or if I pulled away first. My roommate’s red-framed sunglasses were so oversized they obscured half her face, and her hair was piled high in a bun. She pushed the sunglasses up as she leaned out of the passenger seat, looking at us with a mix of amusement and impatience.
“Bonsoir, as you guys say around here,” she said to Bastian, then turned to me: “V, this is Bob.” Bob the driver (who I later found out is named Beauvais, something Gina can’tpronounce or spell) nodded in a way that could only be described as condescending. “Get in, come on! I’m dying to get there!”
I opened the back door and got in, although I didn’t know where the hell we were supposed to be going. I leaned forward, accidentally catching some loose strands of my friend’s hair, and said something like “One: what are you doing here? And two: where are you taking me?” with a few curse words thrown in.
Gina ignored me. Still leaning out of the window, she snapped her fingers at Bastian.
“Are you coming?”
He declined the offer with a shake of his head.
“Oh, come on,” Gina said, her pout making it impossible to keep a straight face. “We have to sort this out, you and me. How else are we going to make this work?”
Bastian wrinkled his nose. “I’ll get there myself,” he said firmly.
Gina wasn’t backing down. “She told me to pick you up on the way. That you’d be with my friend. I’m not arguing about it.”
“I don’t care what Eloïse says,” Bastian replied.
