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.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elaine
I didn’t think he could possibly be serious, but he was. Even with that raging scowl on his face, he grabbed the packet of pasta from the cupboard and threw it over at me.
I managed to catch it. “You want me to make dinner?”
He pulled a face. “No, I thought I’d throw you a packet of pasta for the hell of it.”
“No, I thought I’d throw you a packet of pasta for the hell of it.” I almost poked my tongue out, almost. I’m sure he almost gave me some punishment for my attitude, almost. He didn’t though. He pulled out a load of cheese and other stuff from the fridge and dropped it on the counter.
“Show me what you can do, little doll,” he said, his tone sarcastic.
I had an undeniable urge to show him just how capable I really was. I could make damn pasta. “Do you like spices?” I asked him.
“Is that what you do, is it? Spicy pasta?”
I grabbed the pan from the drawer. “Yeah, I like spices.”
“So do I,” he said.
I chalked it up as one other crazy little thing I had in common with the monster. I only hoped I remembered just what spices to use. I hadn’t cooked in a long time.
He opened one of the cupboard doors up high and pointed the spice rack out to me. I pulled out the paprika and the oregano and the chili pepper. And the cayenne powder.
“The Power brothers want my family to team up with theirs,” he said to me, and it hardly surprised me, even though it gave me a fresh surge of resentment.
“Yeah, well. Two sets of assholes together.”
His gaze was piercing from across the kitchen, his stance more casual than normal as he slouched back against the counter with folded arms. “Why do you hold on so tightly to the fact that your family are somehow the good guys? You must know they’re just as bad.”
I did know that, but I hadn’t seen it. Not really. I still held my dad up as some kind of idol in both the media spotlight and our personal life. He was always so steadfast and so strong and managed our empire so perfectly. Or so I believed.
“We’re definitely the good guys compared to you,” I said. “I’ve heard plenty of stories about your family and how bad you are.”
“Ditto,” he told me. “I’ve heard plenty of stories about yours, too.”
I put the pasta in the pan and began to stir. I knew we were both churning and festering with a whole mess of stuff between us. Shared secrets, and rage, and hate, and this weird new sense of casual somehow. It was fucked up, just like we were. We were two peas of fucked-up in a very fucked-up pod.