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Elaine made the most ridiculous casual conversation with me as we ate. I should have told her to shut her mouth and ignored her completely, but I didn’t. She was filled with dumb questions about my life in Bishop’s Landing and what my life was like as a boy, through to what damn TV shows I liked.
“None,” I said. “I don’t have time for TV. Never have.”
“Is that all you do?” she asked me. “Work constantly?”
“Work and fuck people up for my thrill.”
“Great stuff. Clearly that relaxes you.”
It was the sass in her cheeky smile that I found so damn impossible to raise my hackles to. I was becoming used to her impudence, seeing it for the shield it truly was. I couldn’t help but wonder what woman she would have become if it wasn’t for the pieces of shit who’d spent years using her for their sick thrills. If she’d managed to take all that and still made it to this much of a vibrant version of Elaine, then who the fuck would she have been if she’d been allowed to grow in her own sunny garden without the sick fuck gardeners?
Still, that wasn’t my consideration and should never even enter my brain space. Elaine was my enemy. My ENEMY. She’d always be my enemy.
I cut through her bullshit small talk with a fresh question.
“Who else did that shit to you?”
She was visibly shocked by my outburst.
“Why does it matter?”
My scowl was instant. “Who gives a shit about why it matters? Just open your mouth and give me an answer.”
It seems she was becoming used to my ways too. She didn’t scowl or frown at my tone.
“You must know who it was, Lucian. You know who’s in the fellowship. You said so.”
“Tell me then,” I hissed at her. “Just fucking say it.”
She picked at the last of her pasta then put her fork down.
“Baron Rawlings,” she said. “He was one of them.”
I pictured the old cunt, parading his status to everyone looking.
“Who else?”
She started picking at her pasta again.
“Lord Eddington.”
I knew it. Eddington was a snide piece of shit.
“Keep going.”
It took her a minute, and I let her have one, chewing over her answer until she was ready to spit it out.
“Colonel Hardwick,” she whispered, and I knew why it had taken her a while. Colonel Hardwick was particularly close to her family.
I knew those socialite pricks were regular attendees at social engagements throughout the year. Lord Eddington and Baron Rawlings were from across the Atlantic, but visited often. I imagined they would use Reverend Lynch’s place as a stop-off point along with their bullshit social stays. Cunts.
I also knew that Colonel Hardwick lived out on a rural estate past Bishop’s Landing.
Elaine laughed one of her sassy laughs at me as I pondered.
“What are you going to do, Lucian?” she asked. “Wipe them out for me?”
I should have laughed right back at her. I tried. I managed a pathetic smirk and little else. I should in no way be stupid enough to wipe out those fellowship freaks for a Constantine retribution. The very idea was insanity itself.
Fuck knows why I headed to the bathroom once I’d finished my pasta and called up the Bishop’s Landing social event scene on my cell. Fuck knows why I looked up the charity presence of those cunts over the next few fundraising events. I checked out the attendee list.
Lord Eddington was at the next one, in just a few days’ time.
I was still brewing on it as I stepped back into the living room and found Elaine curled up on the sofa like she was right at home. Fuck knows why I hovered without cursing her for her ease, then sat down opposite her in the battered old armchair. I didn’t have the energy to do anything else. For once in my life my legs were tired, and my brain was tired to match. I had a whole load of spinning thoughts and deadlines and sensibilities I should be focused on – not on who started fucking Elaine Constantine in the ass when she was legal enough to technically invite them to. That’s what they’d been doing, of course. Coercing her to the point it would have been consensual, and she’d believe it so.
“Are you not heading back into the city, then?” she asked me, and her voice was as tired as I felt.
“I will be.”
She shrugged. “It’s quite a way, back and forth every day. Aren’t you at least going to take some thrill out of being here? I’ll bare my ass for you, if you like.”
I shook my head at her. “Is that some kind of sad little offer?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Of course it’s not an offer. You’re Lucian Morelli. Lucian Morelli doesn’t need offers. Lucian Morelli takes whatever the fuck he wants. And you want my ass again, right?”
