Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5)

by C. M. Stunich

  “Do you speak English?” Hael asks, cocking his head to one side. “Or do you need it in French: Tu peux parler avec notre femme. Au passage, va te faire foutre.” Hael smiles tightly and moves away as Trinity murmurs something in response, also in French. That gives him pause, and I see his hands curling into tight fists at his sides.

  I decide not to ask for a translation on that one.

  I cock a brow.

  “Grandpa know you’re not really Samuel’s kid?” I ask, and Trinity gives me a sharp look that very clearly says not too loud, not here. Luckily for her, it doesn’t suit us to give out this secret either. We intend to hold it nice and tight—until the time is right, of course. Obviously, at some point, we’re going to tell the whole motherfucking world.

  Just not quite yet.

  “Alright,” I continue, because we’re not really here to have any sort of normal conversation. Just extortion and threats today. “Well, the next thing you’re going to do is get Gramps to tell Ophelia that you and Victor are legally married. We know how to get ahold of a very convincing marriage certificate to help the ruse along.”

  She just keeps staring at me in that creepy way of hers, the wind rustling her skirt around her pale thighs.

  “And how am I supposed to convince him to do that?” she snaps, but I just laugh because that isn’t my fucking problem.

  “Look, this benefits you just as much as it does us. Ophelia will rat your ass out if you don’t comply, am I right? You must’ve figured out by now that she’s a vindictive psycho.” I start to turn away, but Trinity makes a hissing sound that stops me in my tracks. Her eyes dart to Oscar as he pauses beside me in a black-on-black-on-black suit, shirt, and tie, like he’s attending another funeral. Might as well be. This is basically the end of everything I’ve ever known. I’m trying to be positive here, but … just look at this place. Look at it. Pompous wealth built on the subjugation and abuse of others. That, and half the rich daddies that send their kids here participate in the GMP’s pedo ring.

  I almost gag but manage to keep my reaction schooled to one of mild annoyance.

  “I’m your student guide for the day,” Trinity bites out, like a rubber band snapping against my skin. “Follow me and I’ll show you to your … room.” She sneers at us, but I just grin. Leave it to Victor and Oscar to arrange for us to be housed in one of the vacant staff apartments.

  Apparently, having proof that two of the schoolboard member’s wives are pedophiles gets us a lot of extra goodies. Also, according to Vic, our contacts seemed relieved at being able to shove us into a forgotten corner away from the other students. So I guess this works for everyone involved.

  I wonder what Sara Young thinks about all this? Does she really believe that the six of us just happened to snag half of the twelve scholarship positions given to Prescott High? Nah. She must know my grades—and Hael’s and probably Cal’s—aren’t nearly good enough. But oh well. Not my problem either.

  “How long are we to keep up this charade?” Trinity asks as I watch my boys pile duffel bags onto their shoulders and boxes in their arms. I pick up and hold nothing. I’m not dating five muscular men to move shit around. I flip my hair and follow after Trinity, noticing that the few students out at this early hour keep their eyes averted and their chins down.

  Good for them. Smart choice. I light a cigarette even as Trinity seethes and her skin ripples with hatred.

  “Smoking is a filthy habit,” she tells me, as if she thinks I give a flying fuck.

  “Some people might say fucking your half-brother is a filthy habit, but I try not to judge.” I shrug my shoulders as her perfect jaw tenses with rage and she leads us down a narrow path between the student dorms and the staff apartments, taking a door on the left instead of the one on the right. Close enough though. The old buildings are practically within arm’s length of one another.

  It takes a keycard to get into the apartment which I appreciate. Also, it looks like said keycard system is newly installed—probably thanks to us and our breach of the student dorms after Donald Asher. My turn to shiver with hatred as I smoke my cigarette like I own this damn place, following Trinity through a posh lounge area that’s blissfully empty at this time. The smoking thing won’t work in front of the regular staff; they won’t know about Havoc’s little arrangement with the schoolboard.

  I’m going to have to, like, actually pretend to study and shit while I’m here.

  “As for your previous question, we’ll keep up this ‘charade’ until Victor and I have been married a full year and he gets his inheritance. You’ve only got nine months left to wait, lucky you.”

  “And how am I supposed to find assurance in that? Once you’ve gotten what you want, what stops you from spilling my secret?” Trinity glances over her shoulder as we pause in front of an elevator. Wow. A building with an elevator. Most definitely not something you find in south Prescott or, if you do, you wouldn’t get on it if you were smart. “What stops Ophelia? If she finds out that I’m … helping you …” Trinity pauses for a moment to let out a sharp, angry exhale. “Then she could very well talk to my father. What then?”

  “God, you’re annoying,” I murmur as the elevator doors ding open and we squeeze inside together, the boys forming a wall of muscle and ink across the front. Trinity instructs Cal to hit the button for the eleventh floor and up we go. “Look, we have plans for Ophelia. Does that help? I wouldn’t worry about her.”

  “It’s you that I’m worried about,” Trinity tells me as I glance over and find her creepy pale brown eyes studying me. They’re the color of a brown recluse or a puddle of mud diluted with water. At least, that’s how I perceive them. Maybe when James Barrasso gazed into his sister/fuckbuddy’s brown eyes, he saw something entirely different. Too bad I had to gouge his eyes out with my thumbs. Does Trinity know exactly how he met his end? I’m guessing not.

  “Once we have our money, we won’t give a fuck what happens to you, princess,” I drawl, stabbing my cigarette out on the front of her book bag and watching as her teeth grind together in a rare show of frustration. Trinity schools her expression again with a monumental amount of effort.

  “Why don’t you keep asking prying questions?” Oscar suggests, and then I notice in the mirrored walls as he puts his revolver up against the side of Trinity’s skull. She returns his stare in the very same mirror, body going completely still. There are cameras all over this fucking school but, incidentally, there are none inside the elevator.

  A dark zone.

  Good to know.

  Trinity says nothing and Oscar puts his weapon away just in time for the doors to slide open with a pleasant ding. We file out into the posh hallway and my skin crawls with the wrongness of it. The marble floors, the textured wallpaper, the light fixtures with the stained glass. This isn’t where I belong, where any of us belongs.

  But, if anything, Prescott kids are masters of adaptation.

  That’s what we have to do now, adapt.

  I keep my inuring social commentary to myself for the time being as Trinity shoulders her way between the boys and leads us down the hall to the first door on the right. She unlocks the door with a keycard that Oscar immediately whips out of her fingers.

  “How do we know you don’t have other copies of this?” he inquires, hitting the corner of the plastic card against the door of the apartment as Trinity pushes it open, her brown eyes blazing. Looks like there really is a limit to what she’ll take.

  “You don’t know, and there’s no way for me to make that assurance—in the same manner that you can’t convince me you won’t turn like rabid dogs after collecting on the inheritance.” Trinity walks into the middle of the apartment and pauses, turning to face us with a frown etched onto what she probably hopes people think are nude lips. But I know better. I know all about Oak Valley Prep girls and their obsession with caking makeup on their faces in just such a way that it looks like they’re wearing nothing at all.

  Oscar flicks the card onto a st
one countertop as the boys dump boxes and bags in the middle of the room and Hael, Cal, and Aaron move into adjoining bedrooms for a quick sweep. This is a ‘family apartment’ meant for on-site staff who have children or spouses or other relatives living with them. It’s about size of Aaron’s house except it’s all on one level and furnished with beige and gray and linen and leather. A wall of windows opposite the door looks out onto the Oak Valley campus. To my left, there’s a kitchenette with appliances that look too fancy to be used. Beside that, a short hallway that Aaron’s currently disappeared down, and two doors—one of which looks to be a bathroom, the other a bedroom.

  “You have an hour to get accommodated and changed into your uniforms.” Trinity points a slender finger at a pile of garment bags on the smaller of the two sofas. “If anything needs to be adjusted, the on-campus tailor—”

  I let out a snort and her wicked eyes trail over to mine as Vic leans a muscular shoulder against the panes of floor-to-ceiling glass.

  “On-campus tailor,” I repeat with a harsh, mocking laugh as Oscar moves over to the pile of uniforms and checks the sizes on each bag before separating them into piles. “Of course. Do go on.”

  “You’re crass and uncultured,” Trinity spits back at me, flipping her golden hair over her shoulder and closing her eyes like she desperately needs a moment to gather herself together. “You will never fit in here.”

  I touch a hand to my chest and make a sweet moue of feigned disappointment.

  “Aw, you think so?” I query back, resisting the violent and unyielding urge to grab that fine, gold hair of hers in a fist and throw her against the wall until it’s streaked with blood. “That’s so sweet of you.”

  With another huff of frustration, Trinity spins and heads for the door of the apartment.

  “I’ll meet you in the downstairs lobby in an hour,” she sneers, wrenching the door open and disappearing into the hallway. It slams shut on its own behind her and Oscar moves over to examine the locks.

  “Keycards are too easily manipulated,” he says, testing the deadbolt. “We’ll get our own locks, ones that can’t be hacked. A combination that can’t be picked.”

  Hael and Callum reappear from the direction of another hallway, directly opposite the one where Aaron’s reemerging from.

  “All good on our side,” Hael confirms and Aaron nods in agreement.

  “Same.”

  And then Oscar turns around and we’re all just sort of standing there in a loose circle looking at each other.

  “Oh come on,” Vic says, pushing up from his position against the window with a grin. He throws an arm around my shoulders in a way that should be entirely companionable but comes across as possessive and needy instead. Fantasies of being fucked against the glass of these windows, butt naked and looking over the campus as the boys take turns on me, fills my head and makes it suddenly hard to breathe.

  Oh, even better if I were dressed in my uniform, my pleated skirt bunched up around my hips …

  “Don’t act like somebody fucking died,” Vic continues, pressing a scalding kiss to the side of my head that does nothing to dry the sudden rush of hot heat between my thighs. “We’re living in a luxury apartment on the eleventh floor. We’ve got round the clock security; the girls are safe. Mason is dead.” Victor pauses at the sound of his phone buzzing, glancing down at the screen with a wry smile on his lips.

  “Ophelia?” Oscar guesses, crossing his arms over his chest. Seeing him in the Oak Valley Prep uniform won’t be much different than seeing him in his usual suits but for the color. Seeing any of the others in a jacket and tie … that’s going to rock my world. At first, I’ll probably hate it, then I’ll probably get off on it, and then … who knows?

  “Ophelia,” Vic confirms, answering the call and putting it on speaker at the same moment. “Mother.”

  “You wicked little monster,” she hisses and while I would normally say something like that and mean it as a compliment, I’m fairly certain Ophelia Mars intends for it to be an insult. “Mason Miller? Inside the club of all places? Now, how on earth did you manage to pull that one off?”

  Vic sits down on the larger sofa, putting his phone on the coffee table in a strange déjà vu moment where I think of him sitting in Aaron’s living room, talking to Mitch Charter in this same manner. Full circle, baby. But trying to compare Ophelia and Mitch is laughable—they’re not even in the same league.

  “Mason Miller?” Vic queries, and then he laughs as his mother huffs an exasperated sigh. Meanwhile, Hael wanders over to the fridge—carefully disguised as one of the cabinets—and opens it, searching for something to eat. It’s empty, obviously, and he shuts it with a pained sigh. “Oh, that’s right. That pervert we killed on Friday. Tell me: at anytime while you were riding Maxwell Barrasso’s dick, did you not consider that we were going to retaliate for what happened at our school?”

  “Your message was received loud and clear.” Ophelia pauses here, and I swear, I can hear the sound of her pacing in high heels. “Tom is dead.”

  “Not by our hand,” Victor says, leaning back in his seat as I drop down next to him, Cal perches on the arm, and Hael and Aaron accept piles of garment bags that Oscar hands over to them. “That was Mason’s doing. Are you terribly upset? Oh, wait, you have no heart. That’s a virtual impossibility.”

  “Son, do not test me right now.” Ophelia stops her pacing. I can almost see her in my mind’s eye, torn between being pleased at the development of the annulment and furious over Mason’s and Tom’s deaths—both of which she’s going to blame us for, regardless of what actually happened. “How is your new school? You know, I have a lot of regrets in my life and not sending you through the Oak Private School System is one of them. You belong there, Victor. Your blood is as blue as any other student there.”

  “Mm, it’s almost like you think I give a shit about any of that. I’m not a golden retriever, Ophelia, a dog that you bred for its curly coat and pretty eyes. I’m your son, a son that you paraded in front of perverted men when Ruby stopped giving you money.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic, Victor,” Ophelia says, and that’s when I see it. For the very first time. A real and true and genuine crack in Vic’s self-control. He grabs the phone from the table, his knuckles turning white as he squeezes it too hard, hard enough to crack the screen.

  “Dramatic?” he whispers back, his voice so low and dark that I actually shiver in response. Oscar pauses in his sorting of the uniforms to look back at Vic, exchanging a brief look with Callum as he does. “You’re calling me dramatic because I didn’t like grown men touching me when I was a child? You think this is funny?”

  “Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been living outside of your father’s place,” Ophelia continues, throwing the rules of the trust into her son’s face. “And what’s this I hear about an apartment on campus? Do you want to lose this thing so easily, Vic?”

  “You filthy bitch,” Victor snarls back, rising to his feet, still clutching the phone. His left hand clenches and unclenches at his side as he grinds his teeth together. “Do you really think you can peg me on a technicality? You know as well as I do that Ruby’s trust allows me to live on the campus of an educational facility. I’m going to win this game, and I’m going to win it with my hands wrapped around your motherfucking throat.”

  Vic throws his phone as hard as he can against the far wall, shattering it to pieces as he storms away from the couch and I scramble to take off after him.

  “Vic,” I start as he yanks open the front door like he’s going to leave the apartment.

  I move up behind him, unsure if I should actually touch him or not. He’s bristling now. He’s on fire. He’s … coming apart in a way that’s probably healthy but also a little bit scary. Wield it like a weapon. It’s like, all these years of holding back that temper, of saving it, of collecting those flames into an inferno, and Victor is getting ready to unleash it.

  “I need to take a walk,” he says, his dark e
yes sliding briefly over to me. His expression softens enough that I know today isn’t the day he breaks. Not today. Not yet. But soon.

  “Do you need me?” I ask, and Victor gives a visible shudder at the words, swiping a hand down his face. I want nothing more right now than to help him through this, the way he’s helped me time and again deal with my own over-the-top temper.

  His obsidian gaze starts at my feet and rakes up my body, making me shiver and crackle like my skin is made of coals and his eyes are the flame that finally ignites the blaze. I didn’t know about the exceptions in his trust, the ones that allowed him to withdraw money for education, the ones that allow him to live here without breaking the stipulation that he lives with his father until graduation.

  That means … all along … Victor could’ve left Prescott High and his drunk father and all of that bullshit behind. He has the grades to get in here, the connections. Even Ophelia claimed she always wanted him to go to school here (not totally sure I believe that, but I guess it might’ve helped her maintain the failing image of an aristocrat).

  Anyway, I don’t have to ask why Vic didn’t leave.

  It’s pretty goddamn obvious: me.

  His love is far from selfish. Or, if it is, then it’s much more than that, too.

  Victor very carefully closes the front door and turns around to look at me, dark gaze blazing in such a way that I can’t seem to help the soft gasp that falls from my lips. I’m not such a badass now, am I? Faced with the unrelenting magnanimity of his stare.

  “Get your uniform on,” he tells me, and I can’t help the shudder that takes over me, making my skin ripple and ache from my head down to the very tips of my toes. Victor stalks off down the short hallway toward the bathroom before disappearing inside, and I let out a long breath that I didn’t even mean to hold.

  “Jesus,” Aaron murmurs as I glance his way, studying the sharp masculinity of a face that was once boyish and sweet and now can only just barely teeter on that edge in the right lighting.