Heartless - Jade West Page 0,67
One I’ve created. You can thank me later.”
“An offer to bail me out of bailing out people downtown? I’m such a criminal, aren’t I?”
I found I was smiling, laughing to myself at the crazy disparity between my real crimes and their imagined ones. If only they knew the truth.
It seemed they’d heard fuck all about me fraternizing with the Morelli bloodline. Not yet.
“You’re right, you know,” I told him. “Yes, I have been saving people again. I enjoy the company of druggie downtown losers a lot more than the idiots at these kinds of shit shows. So many sick, selfish pricks.”
“Watch your fucking mouth,” he hissed under his breath, and even though my gut was twisting scared, I didn’t let myself back away from him. Not that day. Not anymore.
“You know something, Uncle,” I whispered. “Can you imagine what would happen if I shouted out your sins right here and now for all the idiots to hear?”
His breath caught, but he didn’t move, just stayed pressed tight to me.
“I can imagine,” he told me. “I can imagine just how everyone would condemn you as mad and laugh in your face for your vile fantasies, little girl.”
He ran his fingers down my spine, and I tensed as they reached my ass crack through the fabric of my dress. If only he knew who’d been inside me.
“I can teach you some more lessons about behavior whenever I choose, little girl,” he said. “Be very aware who you are speaking with. I still have a whole host of teachers ready to instruct you.”
“There is nothing you can teach me,” I hissed at him. “I’m long done with your lessons and your filth. You disgust me.”
“You are always so keen to lie,” he replied. “You were never long done with your lessons, darling. If that were so, you wouldn’t have kept being such a naughty girl for more. I still remember just how keen you were when your teachers came calling.”
I should’ve rushed away from him, but I didn’t. My whole body was rooted to the spot.
His mouth leaned right into my ear, and I shuddered but didn’t flinch.
“Can you remember how wet you were as a naughty little girl, Elaine?” he asked me. “I’ve told you before, good girls don’t get wet when they are trying to learn their lessons. I had plenty of men to teach you yours, but still you didn’t listen.”
“Stop,” I said, but he didn’t stop. He never did.
He tipped his head at the garden party around us, and I felt everything spinning, the world unsteady under my feet.
“Colonel Hardwick is joining us shortly,” he said. “So is Baron Rawlings. Shall I tell them how naughty you’ve been, cheapening our family, downtown with the fools who don’t know what prestige means in this world? Or maybe we could call up Reverend Lynch. I’m sure he has a whole load of new lessons for you. So many lessons.”
“Don’t,” I spat. “I hate them. I’d slit their throats one by one if I could.”
“There she is,” he tutted. “Lying again. Such a liar, Elaine. Always such a liar. You’ve always liked your lessons, even when you were a sweet little girl who should’ve known better.”
“No,” I said, but I could hear it in my voice. That confusion. Always such confusion, even down in the depths of pain and hurt and hate.
“As I told you, your mother wants to speak with you,” he said again, and his voice was nothing but flatline, bored. “If you have any sense in you, you’ll speak to her before you leave. The offer won’t be on the table forever.”
He walked away from me without a backwards glance, and I hated myself inside all over again. I hated everything about myself. I hated everything about them. I hated the stupid garden party I was a part of, and I hated everything in my life that was so fake and so filthy both at once.
I couldn’t catch my breath properly. I didn’t want to eat, and I didn’t want to drink, and I didn’t want to speak to anyone, let alone my bitch of a mother, so I did what I’d always done.
I retreated as gently as I could, brushing past the bathrooms in the hallway and slipping my way upstairs to my suite on the top floor of the compound.
Hide. Hide. Hide.
Hide and hurt.
It was my hiding room at the far corner of the landing that I retreated to. I opened the door to the storage room