I cut him off at that.
“It’s a fucking calendar. Nothing more.”
“Yeah, and a swipe at an inroad into the heart of the Constantine world. They’ll come after you with full fucking force.”
He was pointing out things I already knew. It was redundant speech but still he kept on telling me how raging mad my father would be, and just how attacked the Constantines would feel through something so concrete in its intentions.
I’d wanted to track her down and destroy her. They’d know it. They’d react to it. It was a big statement, and I’d known it. I’d known the risks.
It wasn’t anywhere near the severity of me sneaking into the Constantines’ private party, but that didn’t seem to matter shit to Hunter. There was more concern than that in his tone . . . he was too astute for his own good.
“You tracked her down already,” he said, and there was no question in it.
“Yeah, I tracked her down already. I was intending to wipe her out.”
He shook his head. “Nah, you weren’t. Tell yourself that all you like, but you were intending to do a shit ton more to her than wipe her out.”
“I did fuck all to her in actuality,” I told him. “I tracked her down to some shitty downtown bar and stalked her from the sidelines, enjoying every little sniff of her ignorance. Then it gets even better.” I paused to soak in his expression of crazy. “I followed her to some shitty apartment of some friend of hers. It seemed the perfect backdrop to take her out, slowly.”
“And to fuck her,” he said.
I finally admitted the obvious. “Yes, and to fuck her. I wanted to break her apart and use her for the thrill of it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I still wasn’t quite sure of the answer to that, so I shrugged, and carried on admitting my idiocy.
“I don’t know. Maybe because she wanted me to. Maybe because it would’ve been too easy. Maybe because I want to make it much closer to the heart of the Constantines when I take her and snuff out her world.”
“Don’t do it,” he said, and his voice was tighter with dread than I’d ever heard. “Seriously, Luke, for the life of you, please don’t do it. Don’t go anywhere near the Constantine bitch again. It’s not worth it. She’s not worth it.”
The fire in me said otherwise, burning bright with the need for her pain and destruction.
“I fucking mean it,” Hunter said. “Don’t go anywhere near that bitch again. Go after Tinsley if you have to. Or some of the Roosevelts. Why not Harriet? Or even Grace, or whoever, none of it matters. Just not Elaine Constantine. Please, to God, not Elaine Constantine.”
I sneered at him, because his words made no sense. His logic made no fucking sense.
“Why not Elaine Constantine?” I said. “Her mother would be crying harder about losing any of the others than that addict. Taking out any of them would be a much more dramatic swipe at their heritage than the bitch they want to disown. She’d be an easy starter.”
He was shaking his head, and I could read it in his eyes, something that made my blood freeze.
“This is nothing to do with the Constantines and who they’d cry hardest about,” he told me. “It’s about you.”
“Me?” I scoffed. “What the hell has it got to do with me? Why the fuck does it matter which of the Constantines I opt to wipe out next? I’ll be firing a nice fucking shot into the heart of them, regardless. It’s about damn time one of us did.”
“It’s got everything to do with you,” he said, and he meant it. He really fucking meant it. “It’s got everything to do with which of the Constantines you opt to go after next.”
“So tell me,” I snapped at him. “Tell me what catastrophe you think is gonna happen when I go after Elaine Constantine and wipe her the fuck out for good.”
Hunter Sparro looked at me like the best friend I’d known for decades, all summed up in that one short moment.
“I don’t think, I know what catastrophe is gonna happen,” he said. “You’re not gonna kill Elaine Constantine. You’re gonna fall in love with her.”12ElaineMonday lunchtime, and sitting with Harriet, Grace, and Vivian in the Regent Country Club bar room meant nothing to me. The girls were chatting and laughing, sipping away on coffees like a group of regular BFFs. We were four blondes, all made up to the nines, amongst a whole load of golfers and suited gentlemen and their high-styled wives around the edges. The other girls were glowing fresh from a morning gym session, but I was barely steady on my feet, still muggy-headed from my weekend on the rocks.
My thighs were itching under my dress, fresh with cuts from the night before, deep enough to remind me of my failings.