by Blake, Remy
DEBAUCHERY
KING UNIVERSITY
REMY BLAKE
Contents
Prologue
1. Connor
2. Harper
3. Connor
4. Harper
5. Connor
6. Harper
7. Connor
8. Harper
9. Connor
10. Harper
11. Connor
12. Harper
13. Connor
14. Harper
15. Harper
16. Connor
17. Harper
18. Connor
19. Harper
20. Connor
21. Harper
22. Harper
23. Connor
24. Harper
25. Harper
26. Connor
27. Harper
28. Connor
29. Harper
Epilogue
Depravity
Prologue
Devilry
Prologue
About the Author
Also By Marley Valentine
Also by Jacob Chance
Acknowledgments
Copyright © 2019 by Remy Blake
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This novel is a work of fiction. While reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to people either living or deceased, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are only used for reference. There is no implied endorsement if any of these terms are used.
Cover design by PopKitty Designs
Edited by Shauna Stevenson at Ink Machine Editing
Proofreading by Hawkeyes Proofing
This book contains mature content.
Age ain't nothing but a number
Throwing down ain't nothing but a thing
This something I have for you it'll never change
Age ain't nothing but a number
Throwing down ain't nothing but a thing
This something I have for you it'll never change
Aaliyah
Prologue
Harper
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
The doorbell rings. Over and over the annoying melody sings, announcing someone’s arrival. I know it’s my brothers, or at least one of them. I called, and just like I needed them to, they came running.
It’s always those moments of absolute desolation and desperation, where you realize who it is that’s truly there for you. Who are the ones who would slay dragons and walk over hot coals for you. Who it is that will put you before anyone or anything else. Always.
I thought I had that. Found that forever feeling.
But as I sit on my bed, slouched shoulders, and my head in my hands, I realize my mama was right all along. The only men I could trust were my brothers.
My older, bigger, over protective, and so often annoying brothers.
Growing up we were thick as thieves, and we still are, to a certain extent. But as I grew into a woman, the little girl who used to roughhouse with her brothers changed. I didn’t want to be seen as the tomboy or only as the Martínez brothers’ little tagalong.
I wanted to be Harper. Harper the girl. Harper the woman. Harper her own girl. Harper her own woman. Harper separate from her brothers.
When Anthony and I started getting serious, they eventually, reluctantly gave me the space I’d requested; finally understanding what it was I was actually seeking..
Regret makes the knots in my stomach tighten, the feeling bordering on painful.
I didn’t want them overstepping or interrupting my time with the guy who was supposed to be the love of my life. If I had let them be the meddling men they loved to be, maybe I wouldn’t be here, alone, feeling so hopeless.
The sound of the doorbell ringing is now replaced with a combination of thumps on the door and the sound of my cell.
I need my family, but my brain can’t seem to send the right signals to make my body move. “Come on, Harper,” I murmur to myself. “Open the door before he breaks it.”
I drag myself from my bedroom, one step at a time, trying to rearrange my facial expression from distraught, to slightly distressed. With bare feet, and my skirt and blouse still perfectly in place, I open the door and come face to face with a furious Cruz.
My oldest brother has never been one to mince words, and when he’s angry, he’s a force to be reckoned with. “Where the fuck is he?” he roars.
Just the sight of him makes me want to crumble into his arms and cry my heart out. But I don’t, because if I lose it, So will Cruz.
Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose to try and stop the imminent breakdown. Instead, I focus on Cruz’s rage and do my best to simmer it down. “What makes you think I would call you if he were here?” I ask.
“What do you mean he’s not here?” He starts pacing through the house, looking in rooms, slamming doors, muttering to himself.
He turns back to me. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“And that’s exactly why you’re here and he’s not. I don’t need my brother to go to jail over some imbécil.”
“Where the fuck is he, Harper?” His voice is low, his anger palpable.
I ignore Cruz because Anthony walking out on me, while it hurts and has my bones actually aching, it’s the least of our worries right now.
I want to be sitting down when he finds out the real reason I called. I need to be sitting down. Finally following me, I take him up the stairs to the main bedroom. His breathing is labored, his pace quick. I pick up the creased papers splayed across my bed and thrust them into his chest. The familiar writing, written by an unfamiliar man, stabbing me in the chest one more time.
“What’s this?” Taking them out of my grasp, I watch his eyes scan the paper, his face contorting into an undeniable expression of fury with every single word he reads. “Are you fucking kidding me, Harper?”
I sink to the bed; the enormity of it all is just too much. Everything I have worked so hard for. Everything my family has worked so hard for. Gone in an instant.
Just. Like. That.
“Are we going to lose the shop?” he asks, worry replacing his anger.
I whip my head up. “No,” I say firmly. “I’m going to let the bank take this house before I let that happen.”
“Harper, this is your house,” he says wistfully.
My voice cracks, the pain unmissable. “It was our house.” I don’t add on the part where I don’t need a forever house if forever isn’t an option, but the unsaid can still be heard between us. Instead, I try to reign it all in, push down the imminent downward spiral. I focus on the real problem and how we’re going to fix this.
“He is the least of our worries,” I say truthfully. “I just need to make sure this stuff doesn’t touch the business.”
“Where are you going to live? With Mom and Julius? You can live with me,” he offers.
At the mention of my stepdad, my stomach clenches, bile rising up from my throat. “I’d rather die than live there with him.” I lower my head and pick at my cuticles, figuring out the perfect way to drop this bomb. “I got a new job offer,�
�� I tell Cruz. “I wasn’t going to take it, but now, I’d be stupid to pass it up.”
“What is it?”
“Head of Languages at King University.”
He gives me a low and loud whistle, his face beaming, because everybody in the country knows how prestigious King is.
“Hold up. Hold up. Isn’t that in—“
“Washington,” I finish for him.
His face falls and my heart is a flurry of emotions; all the reasons I didn’t want to take the job in the first place rising to the surface. I might have wanted some distance from my family, but that didn’t mean I wanted to live in Washington while they were all here.
“You’re going to leave?”
“I don’t have a choice, Cruz. Not until I get us out of this fucking mess. The paycheck is too big to pass up.”
It kills me that the biggest thing to ever happen to my career has been reduced to nothing more than how much money it will give me, and not the actual importance of the job and position itself. We’ve never been those people. Coming from nothing, my mother raised us on the mantra that God will always provide for us. And he did.
It might’ve been in the form of long hours and hard work, but the life my mother has built for her five children is nothing short of amazing, and there’s no way I’m going to be the one to responsible for it falling apart. She’s the heart and soul of our family, and I just have to ask myself what she would do in this situation to know I’m making the right decision.
Anything important is worth fighting for. Worth hurting for. Worth struggling for.
And there’s nothing more important than my family.
“How big?” he asks, referring to the pay
“Big enough to cover that shit if I take up their cheap housing and send all my money back here.” I point at the paper, knowing, just like me he’s memorized the number of zeros the bank says the Martínez family now owes them.
He sits down beside me. “You gave him access to everything?”
“Of course I did,” I spit out angrily. “He was going to be my husband.” My voice cracks and the anger begins to fade. “How was I to know he would run off, putting me in this much debt? Better yet, how the fuck didn’t I know he had a gambling problem?”
Cruz doesn’t say anything while I rant. Cruz always says something.
“You knew?”
His silence is deafening.
“Cruz,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Ceaser may have mentioned he saw him at few pawn shops near Mama Martínez’s.”
“And for the first time in your lives you never said anything?”
“While that’s not true, you said to stay out of your business, so forgive me if we were only trying to adhere to your wishes.” Cruz corrects. “Ceaser confronted him. Asked him what he was doing and if he needed help.”
“And?”
“He said he was helping a friend look for some stuff that went missing. Seeing if it turned up anywhere.”
“Can you hear how shitty that lie sounds, Cruz?” His loud exhale fills the room and he wraps an arm around my shoulders.
“It didn’t feel like it was any of our business.”
Burying my head in my hands and letting myself fall into my brother’s arms, I let the tears flow as my shoulders begin to shake. “How did I not see this?”
“They say love is blind.” I laugh through my tears at his not so comforting words.
“More like love makes you stupid.”
“He’s always had a mask on, Harps. We were all surprised you managed to get him to take it off in the first place.”
“I feel so stupid.”
“If you feel stupid, then we all should feel stupid.” The simple statement a reminder why my family is my world; because when something happens to one of us, it happens to all of us. Good or bad. “None of us saw this coming,” he adds. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
Looking at my hand, I focus on my engagement ring. Remembering how happy I was when he proposed. How happy I’ve actually been with him. Every single one of our five years together had been bliss.
How did I miss this?
Staring at it, nothing but undiluted hate flows through me. Like a heavy weight on my hand, like a dirty stain around my finger, I need to get rid of it.
Dragging it up my finger, I let myself feel the finality of the action. In a fit of rage, I unleash the heartbroken scream from my chest and throw it across the room.
Never again. Never again would I let myself be misguided by the smoke screen that is love, happiness, and a happily ever after.
I was a woman on a mission to right her wrongs and protect her family; and nothing was going to get in my way.
1
Connor
“The end of this semester is so fucking close, I can smell it,” Grady says. “Then we’ll be one step closer to graduation.”
“And then we’ll finally be free. No more classes. No more of these bullshit midterms. I can’t fucking wait.” Reid adds.
“Speak for yourselves,” I chime in. “Law school is calling my name.”
“Calling your name? Connor, bro, that bitch is holding your future hostage,” Reid says.
“Right?” Grady concurs. “Go to Law School if you want to live.” His shitty Terminator impersonation has the three of us laughing, but the truth of his statement grates on my nerves.
Growing up together, we’ve been in each other’s pockets for as long as I can remember. There’s nothing about me or my life that they don’t know, my struggle with going to law school included. But it doesn’t mean they really understand what it means to live under the shadow of Connor McAdam Senior.
The man is a tyrant, and even that word feels a little too nice to describe him.
Here in Georgetown, he’s royalty. In fact, all our parents are. Owning some of the biggest businesses in the country, our worlds have been entwined with money and notoriety since before we were born.
Attending the most elite high school in Washington, naturally we transitioned on to the most prestigious college in the country.
Most kids would kill to be here, but for me this place lost its shine a long time ago. Probably when my father decided to turn my college experience into his own personal game. I usually imagine him sitting at his desk, the makings of a board game in front of him, all the pieces akin to things in my life. And he just moves them around. Pushing me in any direction whenever he wants. Wherever he wants.
Grady and Reid tell me to stand up to him all the time, but they don’t have a father like him, they don’t seem to understand it’s a battle I won’t win.
Instead, I spend my days like this, lazily lying on the campus lawn with my friends, while we soak up the fresh bout of fall and do our best to conquer the always present self-inflicted hangover.
It’s not ideal, but nothing grates on my father's nerves more than me half-assing life. I never strive for anything more than average because the way it riles him up is priceless. It gives me enough satisfaction to push on through.
It’s the little victories that count. The small wins that help me see the bigger picture. My bigger picture and not his.
“Hey boys.” A familiar voice cuts through the quiet time, a familiar body sitting in between us.
“Chrissy, baby, what’s up?” Reid has been crushing on Christina Saunders since high school. The only problem is she’s been crushing on everybody else.
“A few friends and I want to go to this new club in the city tonight, I told them I knew a few hot guys I could hook them up with. Are you guys in?”
“A few hot guys,” I scoff. “You only know one hot guy, Chrissy, and that’s me.”
“That’s not true.” She looks over to Reid and gives him her sexiest smile while Grady and I roll our eyes at one another. She’s been yanking his chain for far too long, and one day it’s going to blow up in both their faces. Her hand rests on Reid’s bicep, giving it a squeeze. “Are you in?”
“Of co
urse. We wouldn’t miss it. Would we?” He tears his gaze away from her and looks at us.
“All for one and one for all,” I say sarcastically. “We’ll see you tonight, Chrissy.” Standing up, I sling my bag over my shoulder and tip my chin up at Reid. “Just send your homeboy the details, but for now I’ve got to get to my Spanish class.”
“Is that your class with that fucking wet dream of a teacher?” Grady asks.
“The one and only.” I smirk.
“Man, I don’t know how you manage to concentrate with her in front of you for a solid hour and a half.” My mind flitters through the catalogue of images I’ve managed to store since starting the class and I give him a wry smile.
“I bet you’ve been jerking off to her after class this whole time.”
“Fuck off,” I jest. “Just because your hand is the only action your dick sees doesn’t mean it’s the case for the rest of us.” He’s not far off with his comment, though. She’s starred in more than one of my late night fantasies.
“Whatever, man, I get plenty of action.”
“You keep telling yourself that,” I call out, walking backward. “I’ll see you after class. Chrissy, I’ll see you and your friends tonight.”
I turn and head to the languages block. Grady wasn’t wrong in his observations about my professor.
Ms. Martínez’s class is my absolute favorite. It’s just not my fault it’s for all the wrong reasons.