I smirk. “Maybe it’s you who should watch yourself, grandmother.” Her eye twitches. She doesn’t like that name. Not one bit. “You have no idea what I am capable of. Remember that.”
Silence.
Then she chuckles darkly, and with a grand gesture, takes her seat at the end of the table.
“I have no doubt,” she admits. “Now sit. I was told you haven’t been taking advantage of my hospitality and eating the food supplied to you.”
This woman is bipolar.
Or psycho.
Maybe both.
Yep. She is both. There is no way a normal person can easily switch their mood like that. Certifiable, this one. Looney as a tune.
“I’m not in the habit of eating food that’s been drugged,” I bite out, recalling the first few meals that had me feeling woozy and sick for several hours. Drugs and my body never meld well.
The bitch smirks.
“And I’m not in the habit of abiding by anything other than docility in my property.” The smile she gives me is all Stepfordand plastic. Or it is all Botox? Can’t be sure. No matter. If her intention is to warn me, it doesn’t work. It does, however, creep me out.
“It’s cute you think I’m your property,” I sneer. “I didn’t realize a bag of bones could own property.”
Sheila’s smile falls flat.
“You’re a pathetic little bitch.” Her hands tighten on the arms of her chair hard enough to turn her knuckles white. “Just like your mother.”
I take a threatening step toward her, eyes hard and teeth bared. “Don’t talk about my mother, you fucking?—”
“I see we’re all getting along then,” a deep rumbling voice interrupts. It is tinged with an Irish accent that melts seamlessly with his Boston drawl. “Sit down, Avaleigh. Stop being dramatic.”
The ease of familiarity with which he commands me leaves me uneasy. We have never met, but here he is, acting as if he has known me my entire life.
Scoffing, I do as he says, but only so I don’t hit a bitch like a Whack-a-Mole at the county fair. Sheila smirks triumphantly, as if she has won something. The only thing she won is me not shoving a fork into her carotid and watching her bleed out on her ridiculously priced rug.
“And you are?” My gaze follows the man as he makes his way to his seat across the table from me on my grandmother’s right side.
He gives me a disarming smile. “I’m your grandfather, of course.”
“Yeah,” I snort. How stupid does this man think I am? “If you’re Seamus McDonough, then I’m Hilary Clinton. You’re either a twin or a really close doppelgänger.”
His eyes shift to Sheila. “I told you she is perceptive.”
Sheila huffs a mirthless laugh. “But easily conned.”
What the fuck are these two nutcases on about?
“I admit, though,” my evil grandmother keeps on, “I was truly touched when word reached me that you were concerned about my safety. Those small fear responses are always so helpful in gaining access to one’s emotions and using it against them.”
Well, suck a duck.
Karma really is a bitch.
“You played me.” I scoff in disbelief. “You knew I was going to be at the gala, didn’t you?”
“And you played your part so spectacularly well, little Ava.”
“What part?” I ask. “You didn’t gain anything that night.”