Page 106 of Deviant Illusions

“I’m fine, it’s late.”

She nods, swirling the deep red wine around her glass as she walks over to us, then takes the seat opposite me. Kane remains standing behind me and she has to tell him to sit for him to move away. When he does, his eyes briefly widen as he finally notices the taxidermied human.

I don’t know how he manages to blink it away, or if he’s accustomed to the freaks of his family, but he does.

“Meet your grandfather,” Helene says, gesturing to the dead man. “He’s a lot more interesting now than he was in life.” She elegantly sips her thick wine as she assesses her dead partner.

I hold the armrest of the chair as I look at him without moving my head. He doesn’t look as old as Helene, maybe in his early forties, and he doesn’t have any gray hairs. But I don’t know how to tell how long he’s been dead for when he’s been stuffed.

Kane doesn’t react or look at his grandfather. He stares at his freak of a grandmother, managing to keep his tone even as he asks, “Why are we here?”

46

KANE

Helene isn’t drinking wine.

I know that smell of iron. Delilah is sitting too far away to pick the scent up, so I keep Helene distracted before the old bitch can offer her a sip of blood. My mother always drank white wine, even when it didn’t pair with the meal. She refused to drink anything else. Considering the life that we lived, how everyone was so fucking snobby about what the correct etiquette was, even down to the color of their socks, it never made sense to me.

I understand it now though. My mother never drank red wine because to her it wasn’t wine. It was another twisted thing that she witnessed. There was no hope for her to be a good mother by my standards because I was basing my judgment on the life I’d lived. Whereas she was parenting from the perspective of her own.

All her fears make sense.

But the bitterness of a neglected child, a hated one, doesn’t understand logic, and my wish for one final conversation with her grows deeper. I want to hug her, tell her that I understandshe had a horrendous fucking life, a bitch of a mother who raised her around shit she had no business being associated with. I don’t want to hug my mother to comfort myself, I want to hugher. I want to comfort her and wrap my arms so tightly around her that she knows I don’t hate her anymore.

Maybe if I could, she’d be able to soothe that child, tell him that she didn’t really wish he never existed.

That’s not possible though, so I ask, “Why are we here?”

“Because your wife has made a mess of a business that ran smoothly for generations,” Helene says, crossing one leg over the other. “And now, it is on your shoulders to learn how to split your time to maintain the intricate façade I perfected.”

“I thought you wanted me to take over your business.”

That’s what Lennox and Rowan said I had to do. I’m not entirely sure what their business is. I’m assuming it’s a funeral service or something in that vein due to the décor. It seems sound for people trafficking too. No one would think to check caskets for what they need to transport and if they did, they’d find people.

Fuck, it’s too easy for me to be here.

But her explanation is far beyond anything I could fathom.

“The tale of two faces isn’t a caution or a myth to scare people. It is our business model. Out there, in your world of mundane jobs and mundane people, I’m sure you’ve read headlines about criminal organizations?”

I nod and keep her attention on me as Delilah stares between the two of us.

“And do you know what their biggest fault is?” she asks, taking another sip of blood. “Poor planning. They don’t have an alibi or the true wealth to succeed. Money is power. Information is power. But none of that is comparable to the power of being in two places at once.”

“So, you what? Sell drugs, weapons, alongside people?”

Niko’s family do the former. I can rationalize drugs or weapons and separate myself from what the buyers do with their product. I’d be a fucking hypocrite to judge them when I buy drugs myself and I’m not legally allowed to own a weapon. Niko’s ability to pull strings only went so far to get me off parole quicker than the court mandated and he’d falsify my drug tests too, so he can’t be as powerless as she thinks.

“No.” Helene tuts, offended like I’ve asked her if she sells fucking lemonade. “We hold the responsibility for the most lucrative product to exist.”

“A super drug? Military-grade weapons?” I guess.

Her cryptic shit is pissing me off. It must be where Lennox gets it from.

“Innocence.” She smiles. “Power. The facilitation of every dark desire that a person is capable of thinking.” She turns to Delilah and asks, “If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?”

Don’t fucking answer her.

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