by Callie Rose
Broken Empire
Boys of Oak Park Prep #3
Callie Rose
Copyright © 2019 by Callie Rose
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or had, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Thank You For Reading
Chapter 1
Finn
“Okay. I’ll head out right now.”
“Good.” I grinned. “We miss you, Legs.”
There was a hiccup of silence on the other end of the line, then, “See you soon.”
There was something in Tal’s voice as she spoke—or, hell, maybe it was in the little pause before she spoke—that made a stupid sort of hope swell in my chest. Like there’d been more she’d wanted to say, but she hadn’t let herself.
That was fine. I could wait. I’d wait for fucking ever to win back her trust, and I wouldn’t push her to say anything before she was ready. If she ever decided to trust me again, I didn’t want it to be a halfway deal, something forced and incomplete, with a bunch of doubts clinging to the edges of that trust. I wanted her to feel sure of it from the tips of her gorgeous brown hair right down to the bottoms of her crazy ballerina feet.
I wouldn’t settle for anything less.
My grin widened for a second as I tapped the end call button with my thumb, staring down at the screen.
Considering what a shit-show the past couple days had been, I shouldn’t be feeling hopeful about much of anything right now. All of our parents were pissed as fuck, and out of the four of us guys, I’d had things the easiest. Elijah looked like hell, I wasn’t sure Mason had slept once in the past two days, and Cole? Well, he wasn’t talking about it at all. I honestly didn’t know what things were like at his house right now, but judging by his silence and the look on his face, they weren’t good.
After we’d left Oak Park on the last day of school, we’d all sort of split up to deal with our own private catastrophes. This was the first time we’d managed to get together since Adena had spread the contents of Talia’s little black book all over campus.
And that was the reason we were all together.
Adena.
She wasn’t done yet. All four of us agreed on that.
We just didn’t know what else was coming, what else she had planned—whether she’d be flying by the seat of her pants now, waiting to see what we did and reacting to that, or whether she had something else up her sleeve.
But we had a few weeks before school started back up, and I sure as fuck wanted to walk back through those doors prepared.
“She coming?” Mason asked, poking his head in from the balcony where we’d all gathered.
“Yup.” I slipped my phone back in my pocket and turned toward him.
“Good.” He jerked his head back toward the balcony, his face grim. “Come on.”
There was a lot of shit you could say about Mason, but one thing the guy could never be accused of was half-assing anything. Or of leaving anyone he cared about behind. We’d been friends since before I could walk, and I knew what his mom’s death had done to him—how bad it’d messed him up. That’s how he’d managed to talk us all into the fucked up shit we’d pulled on Talia.
But now that things were different, now that they were changing, I could already see his drive and determination, his single-minded focus, shifting to something else. This time, instead of tearing Tal down, it was about taking care of her.
Fuck yeah. I can get on board with that.
I stepped back out onto the second-floor balcony that overlooked the pool in the yard. My folks never used this balcony, or much of the second floor, really. And they never used the damn pool. So it was a spot that guaranteed some privacy.
While we waited, we bounced around ideas about what Adena’s endgame was, and how she planned to use that shit-for-brains, Preston West, to help her.
I was having a hard time focusing though. I kept pulling my phone out of my pocket and checking the time, anxious as hell for Tal to get here already.
For years, it’d been just the four of us. Me, Mason, Elijah, and Cole. But right now, I couldn’t help feeling like our gathering was incomplete, like we were missing an essential piece.
I hadn’t been lying to Talia—in fact, I’d made it my mission to never do that again. We did miss her. I missed her. And I wanted her here with us.
When my phone rang over an hour later, I perked up and glanced at it quickly, thinking maybe it was Legs wondering where to park or something. It had taken her longer to get here than I’d thought it would, and I’d been debating calling her again to make sure she hadn’t changed her mind about coming.
But it wasn’t her; it was a number I didn’t recognize. I swiped the screen and answered anyway, standing up from the patio chair as I did.
“Yeah?”
There was quiet, then a hiss of static on the other end, and then a deep voice said, “Finn Whittaker?”
I tugged the phone away from my ear for a second and checked the screen again, but the number on the caller ID didn’t mean any more to me than it had two seconds before.
“Yeah, I’m Finn. Who’s this?”
“Philip… Hildebrand.” His voice was low and halting, but my eyebrows shot up as soon as he said the words. “I know your family. And I… I remember you from the hospital, I think. You came… with my granddaughter a few times after my stroke, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. That was me.” I shot a glance over my shoulder at the others from where I stood near the balcony railing. “Uh, sorry, Mr. Hildebrand, but what—?”
“It’s about Talia.”
Those words came out in a rush, and something in his voice shifted—broke—so fast, I felt it in my stomach like a gunshot wound.
Fuck.
No.
“What about her?” I croaked, my grip on the phone tightening so hard my fingers hurt.
“She’s…” His voice broke again. “There’s… been an accident.”
Chapter 2
I sat in a high-backed chair in front of an ornately carved vanity, staring into the large mirror.
The face in front of me was familiar, with haunted hazel eyes, high cheekbones, and dark brown hair spilling over pale shoulders. The image tilted her head when I did, her gaze ser
ious and intense… but the woman in the mirror wasn’t me.
It was my mother.
Charlotte Hildebrand, a woman I barely knew. A woman whose actions had affected me in ways I was sure she never could’ve anticipated. A woman who, even though she was ten years dead, was still shaping my life as if she held a guiding hand on my shoulder.
But where was she leading me?
Toward salvation or ruin?
“Why did you do it, Mom?” I whispered, and the image in the mirror mouthed the words along with me. “Why did you do any of it? Who were you?”
The woman in the mirror didn’t answer. She didn’t even move. But something in her expression shifted, skin seeming to stretch tighter over bones as her hazel eyes hardened like gemstones. The line of her lips changed, becoming almost cruel, and it altered everything about the way she looked.
I didn’t know this woman.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
I reached for the mirror, as if I could wipe away the image like one might wipe away condensation on foggy glass, but instead of meeting a cool, smooth surface, my hand met flesh and bone. The woman’s palm pressed against mine, and with the same harsh, pained, furious look on her face, she laced our fingers together and pulled.
My body flew through the empty frame of the mirror, and then I was falling.
Falling.
Hurtling through so much empty space it felt like it would never end.
I was tossed about like a piece of driftwood in a choppy sea, jerked one way and then another as the world around me spun.
A harsh, grating screech filled my ears—filled my entire being, eating me up from the inside out, devouring me alive until I was nothing but deafening sound and pain.
Then blackness swallowed me up.
The first thing I became conscious of was the noise around me. Unlike the scream of metal that had invaded my dreams, this was low and muffled. Gentle, like the sound of the ocean as I walked along the beach, soft waves that rose and fell in a hypnotic rhythm. It was soothing and comforting, and it made me want to stay in this quiet place a little longer, where there was only the soft sound and darkness.
But I couldn’t, could I?
I had somewhere to go, somewhere I was supposed to be.
That thought jabbed at my brain like a pinprick, and I stirred slightly, an inarticulate sound falling from my lips.
The noises around me stopped, and it was the utter silence that finally compelled me to pry my heavy eyelids open.
Bright light swam in my vision, and I blinked it away, each rise and fall of my lids seeming to take several seconds. I was staring up at a pristine white ceiling, and faces hovered over me.
Five of them.
I knew them all, knew them so well I could picture every detail of their features even though my eyes were having a hard time staying focused.
“…Grandpa…?” I asked, the word slurring out of my mouth like thick molasses.
My gaze settled on the figure standing near the foot of the bed. His blue eyes were bloodshot, and he looked… haggard. Worse than he’d looked since he’d had his stroke. A spike of worry tried to penetrate the fog in my mind.
He shouldn’t be pushing himself. He shouldn’t be letting stress get to him. It isn’t good for him.
“Talia.”
He breathed my name with both relief and pain in his voice, and I tried to shake my head, to tell him not to worry, but I wasn’t sure if I actually did it or not. I felt disconnected from my body, as if I were on another plane of existence and merely peering through my own eyes like they were portals into this room.
“I tried…” My half-formed thoughts came out as half-formed words. “Tried… to stop.”
My grandfather’s face pinched, and he drew in a deep breath. “It’s all right, Talia. You’re all right. I’ll go get the doctor.”
He stepped away from the end of the bed, and the four faces that had hovered at the edges of my vision moved closer. Two on each side of me, gazing down with intense, dark stares. Their expressions were set in grim lines, and I thought maybe they were each touching me, but I couldn’t be sure.
I couldn’t be sure I still had a body at all.
“What. Happened?” the boy with emerald green eyes asked. Fury radiated from him like it might rip through his skin and destroy the whole world at any moment.
“Dude, Mason. Calm down.” That was Finn, and although his broad shoulders were stiff with tension too, he shot his friend a quelling look. “She just woke up. Give her a minute to just fucking breathe.”
Mason’s nostrils flared, and the muscles in his jaw popped as he clenched his teeth. I could hear his harsh breaths, and I wished I could find my hand to put it on his. To touch him. To release some of that anger and tension before it tore him apart.
But now that he’d posed the question, my brain latched onto it, spinning it around in my head like a puzzle.
What had happened?
Adena had made copies of every page in the little black book I’d spent the semester writing in as I gathered damaging information about the Princes.
She’d taken the videos and pictures and posted them online before flinging the photocopied pages out of the windows of Craydon Hall, sticking them on trees and streetlamps across campus.
I’d told the Princes I hadn’t done it. And they had believed me.
And then…
I was driving. And the brakes went soft. The pedal was all the way to the floor and nothing happened, nothing changed.
“The brakes…” I slurred again, struggling to keep my eyes open. I felt tired, and the panic creeping in at the edges of my brain made me want to sleep again. To block it all out. To deny the reality that kept trying to intrude on the peaceful place my mind had settled in. “They wouldn’t… work.”
“Fuck!” Mason snarled as his grip on my hand tightened.
“Motherfucker.” Cole’s voice was a low rumble, rage simmering underneath it like scalding water about to boil over. His ice-blue eyes narrowed, and he shifted the hand that rested on my hip.
They were all touching me, I realized. I could finally feel it. Mason and Finn held my hands in theirs, Cole’s large hand was splayed across my hip, and Elijah’s palm was pressed to my thigh.
There was something grounding in those touches, in the contact between me and them. Something that kept me from flying apart, as if they were physically holding me together.
Even their anger was comforting, in a way. It meant they would look out for me, watch over me, protect me.
It meant I could sleep, and they would keep me safe.
So I did.
Noises woke me again.
They were quiet, just like they had been last time I’d woken. But these weren’t gentle or soothing.
The room was dark. No violent white light beat against my eyelids like it had before, and there was a stillness in the air, as if the whole world was asleep.
“It’s unacceptable.” Mason’s voice was a harsh whisper.
“I know,” Cole answered.
“She could’ve fucking died!”
“I know.”
“And you heard what she said. She tried to stop. She fucking tried to stop and couldn’t. This wasn’t an accident.”
There was a beat of silence, and Cole’s voice was heavy as a hammer falling when he finally said, “I know.”
“We did this, you know.” Some of the harshness had bled out of Mason’s tone, replaced with a dull blankness. “I did it.”
No response from Cole. No attempt to either support or deny that statement.
“We told people to go after her. We opened the fucking door.” Mason was still whispering, the sound so soft I had to strain my ears to hear it. But he might as well have been screaming, for all the emotion contained in his words. “We. Did. That. And I’ll never fucking forgive myself. Not even after we find whoever did this and burn them to the ground.”
“We know who though. Don’t we?”
&
nbsp; Now it was Mason’s turn to lapse into silence, and the heaviness of the quiet room settled over me like a weighted blanket.
I blinked, stirring slightly as my eyes opened, and I felt more than saw the two boys straighten in their seats next to my bed.
Across the room, my grandfather’s chin was dropped to his chest as he slumped in a large padded chair, snoring softly. Elijah and Finn were asleep on my other side, and ambient light from streetlamps outside drifted through the window, bathing the room in cool yellow light.
Chairs scraped across the tiled floor as they were dragged closer to my bed, and a second later, Mason’s hand slipped into mine. His fingers were warm… or maybe mine were just cold.
“You all right, Princess? Do you need anything?”
I shook my head, the motion so small it was barely there. But when Cole’s knuckles brushed over the side of my face, I forced my head to turn, leaning into his touch.
“No. I…”
I wished I could say more. Wished I could think straight. Wished I knew which parts of this were real and which were just a dream.
“It’s okay, Tal,” Cole rumbled. “Sleep. We’ve got you.”
His fingers were gentler than I’d ever felt them be as he traced the line of my cheekbone, brushing over the edge of the large bandage that covered part of my face.
Like he was afraid he’d break me if he didn’t hold himself in check.
Like maybe I was already broken.
Chapter 3