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.
Yeah. 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.
I couldn’t let them die for it. I couldn’t let the Power brothers destroy people I’d come to care about along the way, even if just in passing. Again, just as well I didn’t really care about my own sorry fate. Not about how much I owed and not about how much I’d suffer for it. The Power brothers could take what they liked; I’d be almost glad to say my final goodbyes.
There was another line to wait in before I got into the bathroom stall. The place was filling up, bustling with laughter and chatter and people having a good time. Good for them.
I was desperate for release as I dropped myself down at the side of the toilet, pulling out my bank card and bills along with my stash of white powder.
Thank holy fuck for cocaine.
7
Lucian
“Terence Kingsley,” I said to the girl on the entrance desk.
“ID, please.”
I handed over Terence Kingsley’s passport and pushed my fake glasses up on my nose. My hair was styled in his usual swept-back wave, and I felt like a total imbecile in jeans and boots with a button-up shirt. She gestured me through with a smile, and I forced one back, determined to make this disguise work as well as possible. Terence Kingsley would definitely smile at her. He’d even smiled at me when I arrived at his doorstep last fall. More the fool him.
Cyrus Bar was quite lively for a shitty little downtown dive. People stepped aside to let me climb the main stairwell, and I was up and amongst it, into the main bar area. The music was garish and loud, hardly my usual taste. The singer on stage looked like a dull brute with a roar of a voice, and his band members had brightly-colored hair, glowing like trash under the spotlights.
I scanned the room, weaving my way through the crowd toward getting served a drink in this hovel, but my pretty blonde prey was nowhere to be seen.
I ordered a mineral water and shunted my way back to the side of the dancefloor in order to cast my eyes around me all over again. People were jumping up at the stage, trashed, or tapping their foot to the beat all around the edges, letting out squeals. Bullshit. The whole place was cheap, lousy bullshit.