I tighten my grip on my phone as I flip through the security feeds in the house, paranoid. “Who is he?”
“He’s a fashion model.”
I shut my phone off, trying to control my protective tendencies. Models are theworst, especially the ones in Fleur’s circle. There’s something ironic about men who paint their fingernails and still manage to be the biggest misogynists on the planet. He’s probably using her as a publicity stunt. “Is he here? Upstairs?”
They all fall silent, obviously sworn to secrecy. Even Mia stares at her feet, the tips of her ears reddening. My mood sours. I head back into the foyer and up the left-hand staircase, stomping as loud as I can so they have time to stop … whatever it is they’re doing. “Fleur?”
“What?”
“Can I come in?”
“Nope.”
I put my forehead against the door. “Are you coming down for dinner?”
“Nope.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Freddie,” comes a male voice. He sounds like a wanker, as Ophelia would say. “Hey, bro.”
“How old are you?” I ask, and I hear Fleur mutter an insult under her breath.
“Eighteen.”
I can hear Harwood’s voice in my ear, reminding me for the four millionth time that my sisters are theirownpeople with theirownlives, allowed to make theirownmistakes. Through gritted teeth, I try to make the bastard feel welcome. “Be good to see you both down at dinner, man.”
And get your slimy hands off my sister.
“Let her live, Alex,” comes a soft voice. My mother steps out of her bedroom at the end of the hall, dressed in cream cashmere loungewear. Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders, glossy, but thinner than it used to be. She looks okay, though, tightrope walking the equilibrium between a manic high and the impending low.
The events of the past month have not been kind to her. If I thought she couldn’t get thinner, she’s managed to. Every hospital visit, they tell me her heart is weak, atrophying like the life behind her eyes. The paranoia seems worse, the anxiety that everyone is plotting against her. Her bipolar diagnosis went untreated for so long with my father it’s hard to catch up with the effects on her health. These days, these level days where it’s easy to recognize the woman beneath the exhaustion, are becoming more and more uncommon.
It sounds morbid, but it’s always a relief to see her alive when I get home. She probably says the same about me.
“I’m trying. But fuck knows what he could do to her in there. We don’t know him at all.”
She hooks her arm around mine as I walk her bony frame down the stairs. “Your first girlfriend was a nasty piece of work. Do you think I couldn’t see that the second she walked through the door? She used you for your fame and your wealth. But I let you figure it out for yourself.”
I smile. “And now I know to avoid the ones who livestream our first date.”
Her laugh is quiet, but it’s there. “Exactly. How is Ophelia?”
A twinge of pain spears my chest. “She’s okay.”
She gives me a knowing look. “You’re still having someone watch her, aren’t you?”
“Ophelia was as much involved in this whole mess as we were. It’d be foolish of me not to ask Vincenzo’s men to keep half an eye on her. It’s smart business.” And the thought of someone hurting her keeps me up at night, but yeah,smart business.
“Have you spoken with her?” she asks, as I tug her into my father’s—my—enormous home office and sit her down on the desk chair.
“No.”
“Alex.”
“She used our homelife, your illness, Dad’s … whatever the fuck is wrong with Dad, against us.”
“Against yourfather,” she corrects. “Not us. I don’t believe she wanted to hurt us.”
