by Jade West
Still, I was sitting in my tailored suit behind my desk, living out my facade of corporate godliness. People wouldn’t ever dare challenge me. They may as well carve out their own gravestone if they tried.
Trenton Alto was my right-hand man on the underside of my existence, and had been for years, far more nefarious than even the most thuggish of criminals could ever know. Usually I’d be keen to hear what he had to say, but I was restless that day, itching for something I couldn’t scratch. Calls and meetings had felt strangely dull, nothing spiking my interest. The bustling city around me seemed plain and flat.
“How’d you feel about the delivery, then?” Alto asked, and I realized I’d been drifting.
“Sure, yeah, whatever. Just make sure the shipment of girls arrives on time. Don’t wanna keep Smithson waiting for the crossover.”
“What’s going on with you today?” he asked me and raised an eyebrow.
I raised one back. “In what sense?”
He shrugged. “Just seem a bit . . . distracted. Even for you.”
“I’m doing just fine,” I said with a glare. “Carry on.”
He carried on.
His words didn’t get any more engaging. I was frustrated, bristling with boredom, wishing he’d fuck off and be done with it. My concentration was weak, jaded, and faded until the very second he spoke her name.
“This Elaine Constantine stuff, you gonna use it to wipe her out, then?”
Elaine Constantine.
I snapped back to focus. Fast.
The woman’s name should’ve given me rage, not a prickle in my balls. It gave me both.
I answered his question with a scowl. “Of course I’ll use it to wipe her out.”
“You gonna tell the others about it? Shit’s really gonna hit the fan if you go near her, you know.”
My stare must have been evil. “You aren’t my personal security, Alto, and you sure as fuck aren’t my personal advisor. If I need a fixer, I’ll call Declan. Not you. Get on with your business and stop irritating the shit out of me.”
He held up his hands. “Sure thing, boss. Just saying. Shit’s really gonna hit the fan. She may be the cokehead embarrassment of the Constantine family, but it’s still gonna start a war if you hurt her.”
I leaned forward in my seat. “We’re already at war. We’ve been at war for decades.”
“Yeah, but not a war like that one would be. Your dad would blow his fuse.”
“Like I said. You aren’t my fucking advisor. Get back to your business.”
He shrugged again, looking at me like I was an idiot. “Sure. No prob. Whatever you want.”
And that’s where the problem was. Despite what every rational part of my head was screaming, I wanted Elaine Constantine.
I wanted her pretty wet slit around my fingers, and her sweet little bullet of a clit against my thumb. I wanted her eager wet tongue in my mouth, seeking more. I wanted her curious eyes pulling at mine.
I wanted to fuck her up. Hard.
I wanted to take her virginity and make her beg for more.
No. I couldn’t be that much of a damn fucking fool. I tossed the business card aside as soon as Alto was gone. Still, it sat on the desktop, tempting. Coaxing.
I shouldn’t. I really fucking shouldn’t.
I should have thought about my own calendar and my own social schedule, handshakes and glamor and illusions. Trade deals, and company takeovers and guffawing with the billionaire crew at Regent Country Club. Not about which NYC club events Elaine Constantine was going to be embarrassing herself at over the coming weeks. But then it occurred to me. Not even I was quite as insane as to think there could be anything more at play in my mind than what she could do for me. For the Morellis, and our hate.
There couldn’t be anything more at work. I couldn’t want a single scrap of that woman other than her pain. I could use her, then destroy her, and destroy a whole vein of her family line along with her.
I could be calculated and controlled, making my way in closer and closer. Learning about the woman and who she was, weaknesses on top of weaknesses. And then, when she was too fucked to fight me, I could use her and kill her in the aftermath.
Time to take the Morelli-Constantine feud to the next level. I was done with the simmering hatred underneath the fake social sheen we’d come to paste on it.
It was time to act.
She could be my road to the action.
She could be the naive little slut to give me my power.
Yes, she could. My chest swelled with the thrill to match my dick. I could fuck them up. I could fuck them all up. She was just the kind of foolish pussycat I could exploit to help me.
I used the business card link to click in to the data, and there it was, just as Alto said it would be. Elaine Constantine’s calendar.
Parties, and magazine appearances, and family gatherings. Everything. She even had her damn periods mapped out on it. It gave me a strange thrill to think of her inputting her life into the thing, so private, and so out of bounds.
She was at three social events that week. One at Halcyon building – the Constantine’s main NYC business hub. One at Petra Constantine’s dumbass charity fundraiser gig on Thursday, and one listed as ‘Tristan, Blue Hawk show.’
I’d never heard of Tristan or Blue Hawk show, but given how casual her listing was, I imagined she knew them pretty well.
I put the search term into my browser and up came some pictures of a weird looking rocker guy with piercings right along his cheeks. He looked like a loser. Just the kind of prick a cokehead like her would be trying to hook up with, no doubt.
He’d be suicidal for going anywhere near a Constantine bitch without their approval, but even so, the thought of him trying gave me a bizarre territorial feeling right in my gut. I didn’t want him to go near that particular Constantine. I didn’t want anyone to.
I wanted to be the asshole to tear her apart.
I carried on scrolling through the Blue Hawk shit until I came to his show listings for the coming weekend.
Saturday night. Blue Hawk, live at Cyrus Bar. Downtown.
The times tallied up nicely with Elaine’s calendar entry. Yeah, that must be the venue.
Alto wasn’t far out of Morelli Holdings when I called him back up on his cell. I could hear the traffic outside his car window, barely a block away.
“What?” he asked. “You after some more crazy shit today?”
My request didn’t sound all that crazy, not on the surface.
“Terence Kingsley,” I said. “I want his possessions. I want his ID, and his laptop, and the other shit we took from his apartment.”
“From London?” he asked. “The shit we packed up from London?”
I turned the business card in my hand. “Yeah, from London.”
“I’ll get it,” he told me. “Might take a few days, but I’ll get it.”
“I’ll need it for Saturday,” I said. “Non-negotiable. Bust down the place yourself if you have to.”
I could almost hear his frustration. My targets were always fucking tight, but not usually this tight. Still, I paid well for them.
“Saturday afternoon, then,” he said. “I’ll head over myself if I have to.”
I called up Elaine’s social listing again. “Get it to me by four.”
“I’ll get it to you by four,” he said, and I ended the call.
I summoned up my finest British accent before I put my cell on anonymous caller and dialed the number. It was a bored young dumbass who answered with a grunt of Cyrus Bar.
“I want to book for Blue Hawk,” I told him. “Saturday night.”
“It’s fully booked,” he replied, and I let out a laugh.
“Nothing’s ever fully booked for me,” I said, then remembered who I was pretending to be. “What’s your name, boy? I’m sure I can pay you sufficiently.”
“That’ll be an extra twenty bucks,” he told me. “VIP entry. I’ll make sure you’re on the list. Cash at the
door.”
Twenty bucks was a joke. Just like he was.
“VIP entry. Perfect.”
I heard him click some keys. “What’s your name?”
I smiled at the business card still in my hand as I answered him.
“Terence Kingsley,” I said.
6
Elaine
The week had been a drag. I was sick when I woke up on Saturday morning, insides struggling against the drink and drugs from the social night before. I’d been on a party high, stretching out from Petra’s crappy charity gig on Thursday until I passed out late on Friday. One long round of intoxication that had slammed me into the weekend with vomit.
I looked a mess in the bathroom mirror. My eyes were sunken, even though they were still almost pastel in their blue. My skin was deathly sallow, crying out for a layer of concealer. My lips were dry and cracked, and I felt sick.
I stumbled through to the kitchen and made myself a coffee, but it hit my guts hard, making the nausea worse.
I’d missed a call from Tristan so I called him back as soon as I’d forced myself to kick back the caffeine, hoping I wouldn’t retch with him on the line.
His tone was fresh enough to hurt my ears when he answered.
“Hey, baby. You still on for tonight? Please say you’re still coming.”
If I had any sense I’d call it off and say I was busy with Constantine crap, but I didn’t want to. Our bond of friendship was way too deep, and I was way too curious. Curious to meet the weird piece of cock who had blatantly worked Tristan up into a lather.
“Yeah, I’m still on for tonight,” I told him.
He let out a whoop, and I managed a smile, even through my shitty hangover. I was still smiling when I spoke again, ignoring the pulse of my headache.
“I’d better pick out a good outfit for the place. Don’t want to stand out like a Constantine beacon, do I?”
“No diamonds,” he laughed.
“No diamonds.”
“Shit, I gotta go,” he said. “I’m meeting up with Kayleigh-Jane for a park run. Almost there.”
My heart dropped a little at the thought. His life was so light against my darkness. He had so many people who cared about him. So many people who welcomed him with arms wide open. But that figured. He was a careable-about kind of guy.
Part of me wished I could ditch being a Constantine forever and start again. Somewhere I could be free, where people had no idea who I was, or who I was surrounded by. Where the world wasn’t governed by what I should be doing, and what I was failing at.
Failure should’ve been my middle name. I was the queen of failure. Still, it hurt when people pointed it out constantly.
I guessed Cyrus Bar was as close to freedom as I was likely to get anytime this century.
I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. I’d ditched one of my regular charity events with little more than a too busy, and nobody had really pushed me for explanations, thank fuck. I didn’t want security buzzing about the place, or a chauffeur waiting outside, or scowls from my family members if they realized I was heading to some lowlife venue to see some lowlife performer without a billion-dollar record deal.
No. This could be my one night off. The one night I could mingle without anyone even looking my way.
Or so I hoped.
I didn’t have any clothes in my wardrobe that weren’t designer, so I improvised. I took a tight little black dress and tore some tights up for underneath, then checked myself out in the mirror. Yeah, that could do it. I would usually style my hair to perfection before I went anywhere, but I paused as I reached for my hairbrush. No. Messy suited me fine.
It was strange calling a cab to my apartment later that night instead of pressing the buzzer for a chauffeur. It was stranger still to meet them at the rear of the complex, not risking security catching me on my way out and alerting my mom to my disappearance.
I settled down into the backseat and tugged my gloves up higher on my arms. My eyeliner was a sweeping black, giving me an emo goth look at total odds to the woman I was. I liked it.
“Cyrus Bar,” the cab driver said as we pulled up outside.
The line of people on the sidewalk by the main doors was about as opposite to events in Bishop’s Landing as you could possibly get. Rocker types in messy, torn t-shirts, black lace, and boots. I guess this Blue Hawk guy attracted quite a weirdo fan base.
I tottered down the line on stilettos, and Tristan was waiting for me there, right by the main doors. He looked seriously damn good. Tight black jeans with a leather jacket over a fitted black tee, and his mahogany hair swept back from his forehead like a guy from the 70s. If Blue Hawk was in any way still wobbling over his sexuality status, then seeing Tristan Fields tonight would surely seal the deal.
He whistled when he saw me. “Hell, baby. You sure look fucking good.”
I gave him a twirl and grinned, because I felt it to match. I felt really fucking good. It was a sensation I wasn’t all that used to.
I stayed quiet as Tristan waved us through security and past the entrance desk. Hell knows what he’d listed me as, but it sure wasn’t Elaine Constantine. They barely even looked my way as I stepped on by.
I could already hear the warm up band’s bass as we climbed the stairs, thumping right through the floor. Loud. It was loud. Loud and wild.
Wild and free.
Tristan took my hand and we stepped through to the main stage area, and it was intimate, just like he’d said it would be. There was a huddle of people on the dancefloor moving along to the music, and another huddle gathering at the bar, ordering drinks. We pushed our way through to join them, holding back in the crowd. That in itself was a novelty.
The Constantines never had to wait for anything, ever. I walked straight through a line wherever I saw one. Again, I weirdly liked having to be patient without people nudging and staring at me wherever I went.
“What do you want to drink?” Tristan asked, right into my ear over the bass.
“Champagne,” I said, and he pulled a face at me.
“Champagne doesn’t really work in this place. How about a beer?”
I shrugged at him. “Sure, yeah. A beer. Whatever. Just make sure it’s got alcohol in it. I want to get trashed.”
I heard his sigh, even over the music. “You always want to get trashed, Lainey. Maybe one day you’ll break the mould and try having fun sober.”
Even amongst the weirdness, I never believed life would ever get that weird. Sober and I didn’t really work well together. Even the thought made me churn inside.
The music had swept me up in its grip by the time we made it to the front of the bar. The guitar was thrashing loud, and I could feel it, right the way through me. The guy’s vocals were savage, but filled with so much passion I couldn’t ignore it. I stared at him as Tristan ordered the drinks, and my heart did a strange flip as I saw how dark his features were – especially under the spotlights. He was tall, and broad, and his eyes were fierce. Deep, like burning ashes. His jaw was firm, and even though he looked like some kind of heavy metal pinup, there was something about him that excited me.
I took the beer from Tristan with a thanks, but still I couldn’t stop looking at the singer for the warm-up act. Tristan noticed my interest as we made it to the edge of the dancefloor and gave me a nudge.
“Blue knows him, the singer. He told me.”
“Yeah? He’s got quite a voice.”
“Quite a body, too.” He paused. “His name is Stephen. He’s from the UK. London.”
I could imagine his accent, and it gave me shivers and chills. That’s when it hit me – just where the fixation was coming from.
It was coming from Lucian Morelli. He reminded me of Lucian Morelli.
His darkness. His strength. His fierce eyes.
The rawness of Stephen’s voice reminded me of the malice in Lucian’s, just enough to make my tummy flutter, and the thought of his British accent was enough to make me tremble.
Yea
h. This was about Lucian Morelli.
Tristan nudged me again. “You could talk to hot-guy-Stephen after the gig, maybe? I mean, you can’t touch him, but you can have a good time imagining it.”
I flashed him a scowl. “Yeah, don’t need to keep rubbing it in. I can’t touch him. Fuck life, and fuck my fucking family.”
He looked around us, and I saw the fear in his eyes. “Just as well there’s none of your crowd in here to hear you say that shit.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes I wouldn’t care if they were. I could give them the middle finger before they made me pay for my sins.”
Hot-guy-Stephen started up another track, and I felt a wave of tears pricking. I choked them down, because I hated them. I hated ever having to cry.
If only people knew . . . if only people knew just how much I was suffering like a bad girl, just by trying to be good.
But nobody knew that. Nobody but my mother. My mother and the Power brothers, who were chasing me down for my black-market debts – most of them not even mine.
Luckily, coke and alcohol were friends enough to blank the whole sorry mess from my mind. Speaking of. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I told Tristan and gestured towards the signs overhead.
He rolled his eyes, and there was disapproval in them again as I handed him my beer. He knew damn well I wasn’t headed there for a pee.
I was already in my clutch before I reached the women’s, fingers sifting through my cosmetics to the bottom. There it was. Just what I needed, buried deep inside the satin lining.
My head was already spinning before I could snort back a fresh line. Hell, I needed it. The Power brothers were nasty, and they were coming for me. Anytime now, they were coming for me. My debts were getting too damn big for them to accept my smiles and promises.
It wouldn’t have been quite so bad if they were coming after my own debts, but they weren’t. They were coming for everyone else’s along with them. A whole sea of gambling and addict debts owned by people I’d met along my own desperate road.