Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and mentally ran through everything I had on her so far. My family’s private investigator, David Burgin, had referred to it as ‘flimsy and circumstantial at best’. No point taking it anywhere until we had something solid.
I understood what he meant—that Laney would probably get off easily if we tried pinning anything on her right now—but I knew she was guilty as sin.
The first bit of evidence against her belonged to my sister.
After her death was ruled a suicide, I spent months trying to figure out why she did it. I blamed myself, I blamed others, and I even went through a brief angry stage where I blamed her. Then I finally realized why I was so twisted up and confused. It wasn’t because I couldn’t figure out why she did it. It was because it didn’t make any fucking sense. Lindsay had her issues, sure, but she wasn’t suicidal.
I was aware that a lot of family members said that after a loved one committed such an act, because it was such an unbelievable shock, but this was different. I felt it deep in my bones; that sudden, jolting awareness that something else happened to my sister that night. Something evil.
After that, I couldn’t rest until I knew the truth. I needed to find out what it was that led to Lindsay’s death. Who it was.
I started by going through her old phone in search of anything that could point me to her killer—any threats in messages, conversations with friends about people she was feuding with, photos of guys she was seeing, text and call logs which showed who she spoke to in the days leading up to her death.
There was a lot to get through. She was a popular girl with just as many enemies as friends.
After a whole week of going through the phone with a fine-tooth comb, I learned that a few hours before her death, she used one of the phone’s web browsers to log into a chat site, where she spoke to a user she seemed to be friendly with. Laney01. She asked Laney01 if she wanted to meet up in person, seeing as she only lived half an hour away in Silvercreek, and she put her cell number at the end of the message.
About an hour after that, a call from an unsaved number registered in my sister’s extensive phone log—one that lasted forty-seven seconds. I had the investigator trace the number, and guess who it belonged to?
Laney Collins of 15 Forester Road, Silvercreek. Date of birth: August 28th, 2001. Our maid Ava’s teenaged daughter.
The investigator was also able to get a copy of her phone’s location data, and it showed that she was in Royal Falls on the night of my sister’s death.
Based on that, it seemed like she was probably one of the last people to see or speak to Lindsay.
That wasn’t particularly suspicious in itself. They could’ve just been friends who met through Ava, and they might’ve hung out for a couple of hours that night before someone else killed Lindsay.
For a while after I discovered their chat log, I thought about going over to Silvercreek to find Laney. Ask her what she knew. How Lindsay seemed that night. If anyone else was there. If she even saw her, or if she actually called her to decline her invitation to hang out.
But then I saw the necklace.
That was the second piece of evidence.
For Lindsay and Adam’s birthday two years ago, Mom and Dad were both away—no surprises there—so I sorted out some stellar gifts to make up for the lack of parental attention on their special day. For Adam, I arranged a private tour of the brand new SpaceX buildings down in New York, seeing as he’d always been a total tech nerd. For Lindsay, I contacted the jeweler who did a lot of my mom’s pieces and made them design a necklace with an L pendant for her.
To an untrained eye, it looked like a normal little diamond and emerald pendant that anyone could pick up from an average jewelry store for five hundred bucks or less. What they didn’t know was that the emeralds came from our family’s private collection of rare jewels, and the particular stones I gave to the jeweler were worth an absolute fortune.
All up, the necklace was worth around eighty grand… and it went missing after Lindsay’s death. I knew because we wanted to put it on her for her burial, but we couldn’t find it in any of her jewelry cases.
My parents didn’t think much of it at the time, figuring she just left it at a friend’s place or lost it somewhere before she died. I wondered if something else had happened to it, though.
Then, by complete coincidence, I met Laney waitressing at my dad’s RFA alumni party a few months ago. She was wearing Lindsay’s pendant around her neck.
I recognized it immediately, and I knew it wasn’t just a coincidental copy. There was no way a penniless teenaged waitress from Silvercreek could afford a custom-designed necklace like that, or even a cheaper knock-off version. It had to have been stolen.
Evil bitch.
The third piece of evidence I had against her was the newest and most tenuous. It was more of a hunch, really.
It was the perpetually-haunted look in her eyes, and the way her face contorted with shock when I called her a murderer earlier. That wasn’t the expression of an innocent person who had no idea what I was talking about. It was the expression of a guilty person being called out for the very first time.
That cemented it for me. I was fucking right about her all along. She came to my house a year ago and pushed my sister off the roof, sending her plummeting to her death.
If she’d ever spoken up about it, I could’ve believed it was a terrible accident. Maybe they were messing around, and Lindsay simply slipped over the edge. Unlikely yet still possible.
But she never said a word.
It was that silence that gave it away, and the fact that she had the necklace. She obviously took it from my sister’s body like it was some sort of trophy, and now she was right here, smugly parading it around our town. Our house.
I honestly couldn’t believe the fucking balls on her. It was bad enough that she hurt my sister, but to come to our place a few months later and wear her fucking necklace while she worked one of our parties… that was a real low.
Now things were even worse, because she’d latched onto my brother. I kept telling him to stay the fuck away from her, in case she ever tried to hurt him too, but he refused to listen to me unless I told him why.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. Not yet. He’d just think I was crazy and grasping at straws, like my father and David Burgin already thought.
When I made the mistake of telling Dad that I thought Lindsay’s death was suspicious several months ago, he shut me down right away. Refused to listen to anything and told me I needed therapy to get over my supposed ‘obsession’ with her death.
As for Burgin, his response was basically this: the so-called evidence I had didn’t actually prove anything. Lindsay was wild, flighty and irresponsible when she was still alive. Clumsy, too. Everyone knew that, so it could easily be argued that she misplaced the necklace somewhere, and then someone else came along, found it, and decided to keep it. Someone like Laney.
It could even be argued that someone else found it and gave it to Laney, and that she honestly had no idea where it came from.
Burgin thought the chat log and phone record was a no-go too. All it showed was that Laney spoke to my sister that night. For all we knew, she could’ve called to say ‘Hey, sorry, I have other plans. Maybe next time,’ instead of ‘Hey, sure, I’d love to hang, just tell me your address and I’ll head over now’.
As for the GPS data which placed her in Royal Falls that evening, that could be explained away easily. Her mother Ava worked two jobs in Royal Falls—three days a week at our mansion as a maid, and another three days as a cleaner at an office downtown. So Laney could’ve just driven over that night to pick her up from the cleaning job.
I hated that Burgin was right about all of that shit, but it didn’t change the fact that he was. So before I told anyone else what I suspected about Laney, I needed to gather real evidence.
That was where my plan came in.
Once I knew who Laney was, I spent months
gathering information on her. Her patterns, her habits, her whole life… I knew it from top to bottom. I planned on using that information to take her when the time was right and force a confession out of her. I wanted to hurt her, too. Torture her until she felt even a sliver of the horrific pain she caused me and my family.
Crazy and totally fucking illegal? Yeah, obviously. But it was also necessary as far as I was concerned. Otherwise I’d never be able to turn her in, make others believe me, and get justice for my sister.
Unfortunately, when she showed up at my school a month ago, it threw a huge spanner in the works. I couldn’t move to the next stage of my plan with her there, because a missing girl from an exclusive prep school would attract much more public attention than a missing girl from Silvercreek. That meant I had to get rid of her, and fast.
I thought the blacklist would run her off campus within a week, but the bitch hung in there, stubbornly refusing to leave. Now I was running out of patience. I was running out of time, too, because after today’s confrontation, she might already be packing her shit and preparing to get the hell out of here so that she’d never have to face the music.
If I didn’t step things up right now, I could lose my chance forever.
I turned and stormed out of Royal Hall, heading toward my car with clenched fists. I couldn’t let Laney get away with what she did. Not now. Not ever.
It wasn’t just her fault that my sister was dead. It was also her fault that I had to spend my days riddled with guilt, replaying my last conversation with Lindsay on a torturous loop in my head.
I could’ve gone home that night a year ago and told her how sorry I was for all the terrible shit I said and did to her. Instead I went home and found her on the ground with her head smashed in and every bone in her body broken.
In that moment, a black cloud descended upon me. It hung over my head every single minute of every single day, sucking all the light out of my life, and I knew it would never go away or let me forgive myself for the things I said.
Now I had to live with a different kind of guilt as well. The kind that seeped in every time I looked at Laney and felt those dark stirrings.
I kept picturing my sister’s ghost hovering over me everywhere I went, arms folded and eyes glittering with malice. How could you? she constantly whispered to me. How could you touch that girl after what she did to me? How could you want her?
A lump appeared in my throat as I got into my car, and I gritted my teeth and smashed a hand against the steering wheel until my palm turned purple and red. I didn’t wince at the pain. I deserved to feel every bit of it, because I was a fucking disgusting person. An utterly shameful piece of shit.
I was the kind of guy who wanted to fuck his sister’s killer.
Last week, I convinced myself that it was simply part of my new plan—make Laney fall for me by sweet-talking and seducing her so that she might eventually feel the urge to confess her sins to me out of guilt. But of course things didn’t go that way.
For one, she was playing me all along; something I should’ve known but was too blinded by lust to figure out before it was too late.
Secondly, my feelings toward her that night weren’t just part of a calculated plan. I hated the little bitch, truly fucking wished for her to spend her days rotting in a prison cell for what she did… but somewhere beneath that, a small part of me wanted her.
Okay, that was a lie.
It wasn’t a small part of me. It was huge, with dark, sticky strands of desire weaving their way through my system, wrapping themselves around my insides and growing thicker and deadlier with every day that passed. Especially when I remembered Laney straddling my lap last Friday night, murmuring in my ear about how she’d never touched a guy before me. How she was still so innocent in that way. So terrified of going any further yet so desperate to let me be the one to guide her.
I’d never wanted anyone so fucking much.
Earlier this morning, it reached a point where I dared to consider having this exact thought: what did I want more? Revenge, or her?
I immediately hated myself for thinking it. How could I entertain the notion of being with Laney after what she did? How could I betray my little sister in such an appalling way?
Yet here I was, doing exactly that.
I gritted my teeth and curled my sore hand into a fist, hoping the pain from the movement would ease the aching desire inside me.
It didn’t help.
My stomach clenched as tendrils of need coiled in me, sending white-hot heat straight to my cock. I let out a groan. No matter what I did, no matter how much guilt I felt… I couldn’t stop wanting Laney. I needed to feel this right now. Needed her.
It was ironic because when I first saw her, I was convinced I could break her. Easily. Now it was starting to look like she might break me first.
Fuck, maybe she already had…
She was like a goddamned succubus with those mesmerizing eyes, stunning features, and perfect curves. She’d probably cream her panties if she knew how much I was suffering because of her right now.
My sister’s ghostly-white face suddenly appeared in the forefront of my mind, and I heard her voice, ringing out as clear as day.
She killed me, but you’re choosing her anyway. You’re a sick, twisted cunt.
Guilt and shame sank black talons into my chest again, deeper than ever before. I drew in a shaky breath and pulled my hand away from my zipper, mind spinning like crazy.
I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to get my head back in the game and stick to my plan, even though I’d thrown a huge fucking wrench in it ten minutes ago.
I had to take Laney, and I had to do it tonight.
Before it was too late.
22
Laney
He knows. He knows. He knows.
The chant inside my head went on and on, tormenting me with its relentless dread and darkness. This whole time, I’d been walking around about to step on a landmine, and I had no idea.
Clutching my phone in a white-knuckled grip, I dialed my mom’s number. “Please pick up,” I muttered as it rang on the other end.
It went to voicemail.
Sucking down a shaky breath, I left a quick message and slipped my phone back in my pocket. Then I grabbed a bag and packed a few essentials—clothes, toiletries, laptop, chargers. Once it was stuffed full, zipper barely making it to the other end, I dashed outside.
I had to get the hell out of here. Go back to Silvercreek.
When Hunter revealed the truth to me earlier, I ran away from him like a firecracker had been lit under me, blood draining from my face and heart hammering so hard in my chest I thought it might explode.
Then the shock finally set in. It felt like I’d fallen off a cliff and landed flat on my back, and the jarring impact had knocked every puff of air from my lungs. I went numb. Silent. Completely stunned.
After Adam and Trina caught up to me and asked me how it went with Hunter, I managed to squawk out a lie about him refusing to speak to me. They weren’t stupid—they knew something was wrong. So I lied again and told them I suddenly had awful period cramps.
It wasn’t like I could tell them the truth. No way. They loved me now, but if they knew who I really was and what I was capable of, that love would turn to horrified disgust and hatred in the blink of an eye.
I would deserve it, too.
I spent the rest of the school day in a daze, mind floating somewhere else and body rigid as a board. After classes were finally over, I begged off my afternoon plans with my friends by mumbling the lie about cramps again. Then I went back to my dorm and crawled into bed, still reeling from the terrible shock.
I wanted to hide under the covers until everything went away. Wanted to disappear.
Time rushed by in a blink, and when I finally dragged myself out of bed, it was after eight and dark outside.
The numbness had faded by then, and I realized I couldn’t hide forever. Hunter might have waited this long with the
ticking time bomb of information he had on me, but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. He might blow my life up next month, next week, or tomorrow. Hell, he might even do it tonight.
That was when I decided to pack up and make a run for it.
As I headed across the Blair Hall parking lot, I grabbed my phone and tried to reach my mom again to let her know that I was on my way home. She needed to know that her life might blow up at any minute, because she was just as involved in the situation as me.
The call went to voicemail again. I let out a frustrated groan and walked faster, gulping down harsh, frantic breaths as a hundred different questions flooded my mind.
How did Hunter find out what I did?
How long had he known, and how much did he know? Did he know my mom was there that night, helping me out, or did he think I was the only one involved? Did he know every single detail of what I did, or did he only know the basics?
More importantly… what was he planning to do with his knowledge?
Surely he had something huge and terrible in mind to put me in my place, like the ruling god he thought he was. Otherwise he would’ve just gone to the police and had me arrested.
I shivered at the thought and whipped my head around to make sure the parking lot was empty. I didn’t want anyone to see me leaving RFA in a hurry, because that information could make its way back to Hunter.
If he knew I was trying to flee, he might reveal my awful secret to the world right away, to ensure that I didn’t make it more than a few miles before everything and everyone caught up with me, coming for my neck like villagers with pitchforks and torches.
Swallowing thickly, I sped up again, feet flying over the asphalt as I hurried toward my car at the far end of the parking lot.
It was cold out here, with thick fog hanging in the air. The wrought iron lampposts lining either side of the lot gave off a yellow glow that looked sickly against the gray haze, and in the distance, the Blair Hall dorm windows looked fuzzy, light dissipating in the cold mist lingering beyond them. It made me feel like I was stepping through a big, eerie cloud. I couldn’t wait to reach the safety of my car.
Savage Prince: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 1) Page 26