Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

Lucian

Iwas getting used to the bizarre sensation known as feelings.

But even so, refusing to fuck a vulnerable Elaine Constantine was something I’d never have expected in this lifetime. I didn’t want to touch her, and I definitely didn’t want to hurt her. It was something I was unaccustomed to, not wanting another person’s pain at my hands.

Fucking hell, what the fuck was wrong with me?

She looked bizarrely annoyed, shifting around on the spot like I’d just insulted her, even though it was the kindest thing I’d ever done. “Are you for real? You don’t want to touch me now?”

“I don’t want to touch you now.”

She laughed a snooty laugh. “I didn’t put you down as that much of a saint, Lucian.”

“A saint? Hardly.” I pulled another mug down and made her a fucking coffee. Her eyes were still burning as she took it from me with a thanks.

The strange, perverted fellowship should mean nothing to me. They were just a depraved group of rich pricks. Evil? Yes. But there was plenty of evil in the world.

Elaine Constantine would have been a particularly attractive prospect to men like them. Lionel had been risking his life beyond any kind of rationale to even entertain her involvement with Reverend Lynch and his hellhole.

I hadn’t come across that sick fucker, but I was already thinking about who in our extended circle played his game. I knew some of the aristocrats and their secret handshakes. Their names were on the tip of my tongue, but she let out a sigh before I spoke.

“I ran away from home once, when I didn’t think I could handle it anymore. I ended up running through this trailer park. I met a boy who was running away too.”

“Both of you having picture perfect childhoods, I’m sure.”

“He had a black eye. His stepdad was belting him every time his mom wasn’t there. Not that she’d have stopped him if she was.”

“Very different sides of the spectrum from each other. One rich, one poor. You came from different stratospheres but still ended up in the same situation.”

“Rich people like to hurt kids, too. We didn’t actually talk about our families much, just walked together, finding some kind of weird friendship in our hell.”

I could imagine it as she told me. Two fucked-up teenagers finding solace in each other’s company. “You went home, though? You must have.”

“Sun came up, and we were freezing cold. I couldn’t imagine life outside Bishop’s Landing. He went back to his trailer, to the belt and his stepdad. I went back to the Constantine compound, where the cops had been called. My feet were bloody, but all my parents could do was yell at me. They called a child psychiatrist who told them I was a lost cause.”

“And that’s how you met Tristan.”

“We tried to blank out our misery, you know? Tried to find something different from all the shit we were used to, even if we didn’t share the details.”

“Weren’t you tempted to move away?”

She let out a sigh. “Yeah, but Tristan’s mom was sick, and I had everyone around me, and we didn’t know where the fuck we would go. We always meant to. We always planned it. When I was almost nineteen Reverend Lynch’s school stopped for me, though, and I managed to get Tristan some money for a place of his own.”

Nineteen years old. I finished my coffee and put the mug down. “When did you get involved with the Power brothers?”

She sipped her coffee. “A couple years ago. I needed coke.”

“When did you get into debt with them?”

“When I ran into them and there was a kid like Tristan there, begging them to give him more time for his debts. I didn’t hold off for a second, just said I would pay them for him and got them to let him leave.”

Elaine really was naive. I knew exactly what the Powers would have been doing after that point. They’d have made sure she knew about every fuck-up coming to them, knowing full well she’d bail them out with Constantine cash—even when that Constantine cash stopped coming. Her mother would have dried it up like a fucking desert when she’d seen what was happening.

“You kept on doing it, didn’t you? Giving cash for the addicts, even when you didn’t have any. You racked up debt. It was like suicide by cop, except you wanted suicide by loanshark.”

She shrugged. “Not that it matters now. At least then a whole load of people go free.”

“They’re going to war, you know,” I told her. “Your family and the Power brothers are edging up closer on the battlefield.”

She scowled at me. “Yeah, well more fool me for giving your family a shot at coming out on top of the whole thing. Not that they will. Your family has nothing on mine.”

“Fuck off,” I said. “My family has everything on yours.”

“Better than being a bunch of assholes.”

“Your own fucking uncle sold you out to the sickos.”

That shut her up, and she wasn’t happy about it. She put her drink down on the counter and tore her gaze away from me, finding the impudence in her gritted jaw all over again.

Even after the secret sharing we still hated each other.

You could never deny it, just how ingrained our loathing for each other really was. My family hated hers and hers hated mine. There was so much crossfire and so much instinct brewing over such a long time that it wasn’t even obvious anymore just why or how I hated the woman in front of me as much as I did. I just did. I hated her.

She hated me just as much. I could see it in her folded arms and her scowl.

Fuck it. She could have a fucking night of peace for once in her pathetic excuse for a life.

“You can put the pasta on tonight,” I told her. “Let’s see just how competent you Constantines are at basic life skills, shall we? Let’s see if you can boil water.”