Becker’s jaw clenches, his eyes locked on mine, unwavering. ‘Say it,’ he whispers demandingly, face straight. ‘Say it, princess.’
I’m transfixed by his depraved beauty. Someone so shady shouldn’t be this good-looking. It’s like a fucked-up kind of bait. A dangerous temptation. I’m getting mad just thinking about how damn alluring Becker Hunt is as my brain is trying to piece together what I’m about to ask and how I should position it. There’s no right way. However I ask, it won’t change the answer.
So I dive in feet first and ask my question. My ridiculous, outlandish question. ‘How good are you at sculpting?’ I immediately drag in air and store it, bracing myself.
He smiles, amused by my approach. ‘A fucking master,’ he replies clearly, no holding back, as plain and simple as that.
The fucked-up, corrupt world I’m in stops spinning.Chapter 9‘Oh my God.’ I reach for the bookcase, drinking in air, my heart going from nought to sixty in a second. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’ My world might have stopped spinning, but my head is making up for it. I’m dizzy. I can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t form a coherent sentence. I feel like I’m suffocating. My hand grapples at my neck and my body rolls with waves of panic.
‘Eleanor?’
I blink, trying to gain focus, trying to see him, as a tidal wave of information pours into me, making everything clear. ‘You’re a forger,’ I hiss. ‘You forged the fake Head of a Faun and made sure Brent bought it!’
‘Shhhh.’ Becker moves in close, taking my arm, but I doggedly brush him off. That wasn’t his usual sexy shush. That was a short, sharp gust of breath. He’s mad with me. The nerve!
‘Don’t shush me,’ I wail, but then I slap my own hand over my mouth before Becker does, because I’ve just realised that his granddad is in the kitchen down the hall and he won’t know this. He can’t know this. It’ll finish him off. God, I remember him asking Becker if there was any clue to who crafted the fake that he was supposed to call out as a forgery. Little did Mr H know, his grandson fucking sculpted it. Oh . . . my . . . God. Of course Becker wasn’t going to declare it a fake. He made it. He plotted the whole damn thing from beginning to end.
‘Eleanor, calm down.’ Becker practically shakes me from my meltdown and my morals suddenly appear from nowhere and bite me on my sore arse. I don’t know where they’ve been all this time, leaving me to get wrapped up in all of this . . . this . . . this . . .
‘Oh my God.’ Tricking someone doesn’t seem so bad now. Even ripping someone off for a whopping fifty million seems quite tame. But forging a long-lost treasure? What else has he forged? I’m a criminal if I stay here. Already am if I escape. Just being here, working here, implicates me. I’m Becker’s Bonnie. He’s my Clyde. Okay, so we don’t shoot people, but some people in the antiquing world might see this as equally immoral. Because it is. Another crime. They’re building by the day. What else is there?
Fucking hell, pull yourself together, Eleanor.
‘How many priceless treasures have you forged?’ I ask.
‘Just the sculpture,’ he answers easily and willingly, shutting me up. He shrugs a little, shyly. ‘I sculpt as a hobby. It relaxes me. And I’m quite good at it.’
I’m speechless. Nearly. ‘I need air.’ I turn, but he catches my wrist, holding me in place.
‘Eleanor, you’re not leaving,’ he says with a determination that snaps me from my spiralling thoughts.
‘You’d better tell me everything,’ I whisper-hiss in his face. ‘Everything, Becker Hunt. I want to know it all – your mum, your dad, your vendetta against the Wilsons. I’m not leaving until I have every scrap of information in that fucked-up, corrupt mind of yours.’ I rap on his temple, like a copper knocking on a door. Good Lord, the police.
‘What do you mean, you’re not leaving until you know everything?’ He hones straight in on that part of my rant, which should probably ease me a little. ‘You’re not leaving full stop.’ He’s worried about me running away again. Good! I’m a gangster’s moll. Sculpting a fake, paying someone to authenticate it? Planting it in a house so it’s found, the auction, the act . . .
‘Talk, Hunt. Talk now.’
He matches my determined stare, his chest puffed out, his jaw tight. It’s a standoff. He better be prepared to lose. ‘Fine.’ I pass him and get precisely nowhere.
‘Eleanor,’ he breathes, catching me around the waist and lifting me from my feet.
‘You’d better start talking,’ I hiss, wrestling with his hands around my waist. ‘I didn’t come back so you could carry on with the lies, Hunt.’