Chapter Three

Eli

My hands shook so hard I missed the keyhole twice before finally unlocking my apartment door. I told myself it was excitement from getting a break in my hunt for the leader of the Freaks. I told myself that it was residual nerves and adrenaline from seeing JP again after all these years. But it was more than that.

I shrugged off my jacket and shoved into my dark room, where I dumped everything and started developing the images from tonight.

Freak Mikey and JP.

JP and the two men in the bookstore.

And the girl in the pearl necklace. Nina. The photographs were still dim and colorless, but her eyes swam with the color of the ocean anyway. Even as her beautiful face sharpened into a clear image on the paper, it still wasn’t all the hair or those pouty lips or even that low-cut sweater.

It was the helpless way her hands shook when I said that JP had been married to another woman. It was how broken her blue eyes were. It was all the terror she poured into defending her piece-of-shit father.

A small but strong part of me wanted to fold around her and stop the shaking. I was sorry that I ruined whatever illusion JP had her believing. I wished I could use my warm, solid body to comfort her.

To hold her close and hug her.

Like a stepbrother would.

And press my lips to hers. No, strike that. Bad idea. Not appropriate.

I got out of the dark room. The fumes must have been getting to me.

I steadied myself against the kitchenette counter and poured myself two fingers of gin. I downed them quickly.

Don’t think about Nina. Don’t get distracted. Everything that happened is her problem. You caught JP with a Freak. That’s your problem. Don’t get it twisted.

Jon-Pierre Gusteau mingling with a Freak down in Montclair was the actual important part. That man didn’t even live on this side of town. It was in the clothes he wore and the car he drove. He was uptown Hinton from his crown to his soles. What could he have been dabbling in down here? Nothing good. Nothing honest.

I peeled off my T-shirt and jeans, then collapsed into bed, too hot to pull the sheets above my hips.

No lead better to follow than that daughter of his. They seemed close.

No. I can’t start following Nina. She’s not a criminal. She owns a bookstore.

But she’s still the surest path to JP.

His sad daughter. The girl I wanted to hate… but I couldn’t.

I knew by the way they interacted that he had never hit her. I could see it in her eyes. She loved JP in a way I never had and never could, even though my mom was the one he married. Even though I was the kid he lived with for ten years. My stepfather. Not blood, but that wasn’t any excuse.

It was more of a curse than a blessing, Nina.

I imagined her sitting on that bookstore counter again, the two of us now. Her cardigan was partially unbuttoned this time, and I could see the slopes of her ripe tits.

I’m the stepbrother you never knew you had, my dream-self whispered into dream-Nina’s ear. My fingers brushed over her pink cardigan, popping its little buttons until they all fell open. My fingers slid into her lace bra, finding that pebbled nipple so easily. She hissed with desire.

Her nipples were so hard the entire time we talked at that bookstore.

My cock pulsated up at me, commanding to be stroked. Think about Nina, it whispered.

“Don’t worry,” I whispered into Nina’s ear. Her hair smelled like coconuts, and I wanted to shatter her and fill her. “I won’t tell your dad.”

Dirty and relieved at the same time, I gave up and pumped my fist over my cock. I had to come to her one time, so I could get over this fantasy. I wouldn’t be able to think clearly until I unleashed the twisted thing out of my head. A hot flush moved through my entire body and splattered into my fist. I gritted my teeth until my veins bulged.

I thought it would get rid of her, but Nina’s shadow kept circling.

So, I committed the easiest form of stalking.

I looked her up: Nina Gusteau.

All her social media profiles popped up, and I sifted through some of the public pictures. A birthday with her mother, who looked like an older version of her. Ballet when she was eleven. Graduation from college this year. According to her Facebook profile, still single.

I told myself that I didn’t give a shit if my stepdad’s secret princess daughter was still single.

She was my stepsister. And I had every reason to hate her. She was the one who didn’t have to live with him. She was the one who probably got elaborate guilt-gifts and free money. She didn’t get cigar burns. She didn’t get shoved onto the street when she was fifteen. She might’ve been neglected, but that was lucky for her and her little bookstore and her string of pearls. I bet JP bought her all those things with his dirty money.

Dirty princess stepsister…

I fell asleep hard as a rock, throbbing into the wet sheets, not wanting Nina at all.