“That fucking woman,” I murmur, a small tickle of excitement in my belly at one day being able to ruin her. To tell Samuel Jade that his wife is a cheater, and his daughter isn’t really his daughter biologically. That’d be a big shock for anyone to handle, but a good man would just accept that Trinity was his daughter regardless of her DNA and move on. But not these blue-blooded aristocrat types. As Victor had mentioned to his mother, some of them really do think of their children like well-bred golden retrievers.
“Serious pain in the ass,” Vic agrees as I turn back around and take my seat at our table.
“I’ve been thinking about Maxwell and Ophelia,” Oscar begins, his voice distant and contemplative the way it is when he’s really digging into an idea. He even has his trusty iPad open on the tabletop, sparking just the slightest hint of jealousy in me. Fucking goddamn iPad. If I ever walk in and catch him tying that tablet up in rope patterns … “They’ve been spending nearly all of their time at Maxwell’s home in Springfield. Otherwise, they’re on a private helicopter and leaving the area. For us to launch any sort of attack on either of them, we’d have to break into the house, or we’d have to find a way to follow them via the air.”
“Neither of which sounds at all feasible to me,” Victor butts in, taking the cigarette back when I offer it to him. Callum continues picking at his food while Hael taps his phone against his lips and Aaron watches me like the maiden in the fairy tale he so desperately wants to rescue, just after he realizes she’s turned into a knight.
“It’s not,” Oscar says, the edge of his lip lifting up in a slight sneer. “I’m struggling to figure out a way to safely go after either of them without getting ourselves killed. Even the best scenario has too high of a risk.”
“What if we accepted one of those invitations to Ophelia’s fancy dinners or parties?” I query, thinking aloud. Victor gets them all the time, these pretty pieces of paper delivered by couriers, inviting him to some rich person’s house or some fancy club, some highbrow art gallery or prestigious yacht.
We decline each and every single one of them.
“Even with the Trinity deal in place,” Victor begins, shaking his head and putting two fingers up to his temple. “Those are just death traps disguised in lace and leather and fancy watches. No, we won’t be going to any of those.”
“Where else are we going to get access to Ophelia?” I ask, because for some reason, she feels like the more pressing of our two big bad bosses. It’s because of Victor. That much I know, but I’m not going to say it aloud, tell my husband that his abuser is my most hated person in the world right now.
There’s a long pause as Hael’s phone rings, and he makes a face as he glances at the screen. It’s obvious without him having to say a single word that it’s Brittany fucking Burr.
“Hey,” he says, answering on the second ring. We’re still doing our best to keep Brittany happy, to keep the information flowing. Her prophesied raid on the GMP has yet to happen, and we need to know when and where it’s taking place. If we can get that information, then maybe we can actually come up with a plan.
None of us really believes that we’ll all survive to collect Victor’s inheritance without issue. Trinity is too much of a wildcard. Ophelia is too careful of a monster. And no matter what, I still bashed James Barrasso’s head in with a Yellowstone National Park souvenir.
“Oh shit,” Hael breathes, leaning forward and balancing his elbow on his knee. He chews on his thumbnail as he flicks his attention over to Vic, locking eyes with our leader. “Uh-huh.” Another pause. “Fuck.” He sits back up and then sighs dramatically. “Yeah, I said I’d come over this weekend. I can’t just leave in the middle of class for another doctor’s appointment. Sure, okay, whatever.”
Only, he totally would leave if I were the one having the baby. The thought springs to my mind unbidden, and I smile, even as Hael bristles with irritation.
He hangs up and grinds his teeth for a brief moment before shoving his phone into his pocket.
“Well?” Victor asks, giving him a look. “Spill it.”
“She’s such a bitch,” Hael murmurs, rubbing his hands over his face briefly before exhaling. “Okay, so, Brittany says she thinks the VGTF are going to raid the school.”
Victor goes very, very still before glancing over at Oscar. He turns back to Hael, leaning forward and tabling an elbow on his knee.
“This school?” he queries, and Hael gives a curt nod.
“On graduation day,” he continues, and a shiver takes over me.
Holy fuck. How … appropriate.
“Here,” Victor repeats, grinding his jaw for a moment as Aaron stands up from his seat, like he just can’t take the excitement anymore, and Callum finally puts down his fork. He used to not like to eat at Prescott High, so that everyone would see him as a monster. Here, everybody already does, so he’s let the habit of a Pepsi and a cigarette for lunch slip a little.
“If it’s happening here then Sara Young must’ve gotten all the information she needs to bust the pedo ring,” Aaron guesses, and I just know in the pit of my stomach that he’s right. There is no way in fuck that I dropped that information to the uptight VGTF agent without seeing results. “Half the parents here are involved in it somehow, so it makes sense.”
“It also means that Maxwell Barrasso is likely to be at Oak Valley Prep on graduation day,” Oscar explains, tapping his long fingers against the side of the table. He exchanges yet another look with Vic as my mind spins through the information.
“Ophelia is planning on coming to my graduation,” Victor continues, and I blink in surprise because I hadn’t heard that yet. “She told me as much on the last phone call we had.”
“This is great,” I say, drawing all of their attention over to me. “If they’re coming here on graduation day, then that’s when we get them. We get them before the graduation ceremony. I don’t know how just yet, but we do.”
“If the raid is being planned for this school,” Oscar continues, pushing his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. “Then there is no way in hell we are going to be able to deal with Maxwell and Ophelia before somebody sees us. And the goal is to remain in front of, rather than behind, bars.”
I ignore his imperious tone. He has a good point, but I feel like this is our best chance.
“Contingency plan, remember? Like the one we used for Mason? If something goes wrong, we have the VGTF as our own, personal backup.” I stand up and start pacing, Cal’s blue eyes watching me as I do. Always watching. A shiver takes over me.
“If they end up in prison, then won’t they just rule from behind-the-scenes? That won’t help us out any at all.” Hael repeats something we’ve already talked about, a worry and a fear that niggle at me every day. “We’ll still have to be careful; we’ll still have to worry.”
And he’s right.
If the GMP maintains their leader—even from inside a prison cell—they might still come after us. After the girls. Motherfucker.
“There is no way in fuck that we are raiding Maxwell’s house.” Oscar spiders his fingers on his knee and taps them against the perfect crease in his suit. “We are not attending one of those awful parties. And we are certainly not performing a coup d'état on the day of a raid. Think up something else.” He snaps this out, but I know it’s not directed at me in particular. He’s just frustrated because Oscar Montauk can always think his way out of a tight spot.
Just … maybe not this time.
“This is good news,” Vic muses slowly, his king voice firmly fixed in place. This is the voice that brooks no argument, that says this conversation is coming to an interlude. Emotions are too high, and we all need more time to think. “Because this means that no matter what, after graduation day, the VGTF will be swarming into the GMP’s ranks. Even if Maxwell is captured, it’ll sow discord. Regardless, this is good for us, a near guarantee at a reprieve.”
He stands up from the table, but I can see in his face that he isn’t h
appy.
Because I know for a fucking fact that all of that anger he’s carrying inside of him, it has to be unleashed soon. And on someone. And that someone has to be Ophelia fucking Mars.
It just has to be.
Victor takes off for the apartment with his loyal lords—and his queen—following along behind him.
Vera and I hang out together on a weekend where neither of us is busy. We start at her auntie’s place, getting our nails done and gossiping about boys. I might be permanently sealed to five boys through blood, but Vera has many more boyfriends than I do. Sometimes at the same time, sometimes not. Just depends.
“The last two guys I dated were both too bossy,” she tells me as I examine my red nails with the little coffins painted on them. Each coffin has a tiny white letter on the front, spelling out Havoc on both hands. The same silver ring is pierced through the pointer finger on my left hand, and I decide that I like it better there than on my right. “I seriously don’t understand how you put up with it.” She flicks her pale eyes toward the window, her red hair buzzed into a slanted ‘A’ inside of a circle—the symbol for anarchy.
Stacey’s girls were all about that, a wild tumble of femininity and violence and fun. They’re still that way, it seems, as they pass in and out of the apartment like it’s their official meeting place. Guess it kind of is.
“Anyway,” Vera continues, her gaze still on the window. She can’t see the five boys waiting for me downstairs, but she knows they’re there. I don’t tell her that at this point, our obsession is strong enough to kill us all. She just assumes that they’re following me around for the most pertinent reason: we are still under threat from the GMP. At all times, in all places. The nerve of it is rubbing me raw, making me feel like I’m on a race to the finish line.
Somehow, someway, I can guess how it’s going to end, and my stomach does a strange somersault, turning on a sudden font of nausea. If I hadn’t just taken another pregnancy test and saw that it came up negative, I might think I was pregnant. Again. A shiver takes over me as I blow on my nails—even though they’re already dry. Force of habit, I guess.
“Anyway?” I query, sitting back in the swivel chair and turning to face Vera. She’s dressed in a fuzzy pink sweater, cropped at the navel and decorated with a BlackCraft Cult label. Very cute, very Prescott. She probably stole it. “What?”
“I just wanted to say that getting paid to work for y’all is helping a lot of the girls out.” Vera shrugs her shoulders like it’s nothing, but it’s not. It’s what Stacey would’ve wanted and that’s important to me.
“You guys do good work,” I admit, and they really do. They tell us exactly where the GMP is at all times, via their sex work and through the grapevine of gossip that travels down from Portland. We have a pretty clear idea of where the bulk of the Grand Murder Party is at all times, where Ophelia is, where Maxwell is. If they remain in the state of Oregon, we have eyes on them.
Outside of it, well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?
“You’ve got a good thing going on,” Vera tells me, flicking her attention back to the window again. “I mean, besides having to deal with those hulking beasts on your ass all the time.”
Only, she doesn’t know that I just love the idea of those hulking beasts on my ass—like, quite literally on or in my ass. If we could just be together, eating pizza or fucking or talking at all times, I would be happy. The Havoc Boys are all that I need. Them, and Heather, Ashley and Kara. We don’t get to spend a lot of time with the girls since each interaction we have presents a risk, but I can at least see them every day—even if it’s from afar.
I leave Vera’s aunt a huge tip and we make our way downstairs, sweeping past the boys and down the sidewalk. Vera keeps hold of my elbow as we go and then leads me to her favorite lunch place, this scary ass hole-in-the-wall that serves barbecue sandwiches wrapped in newspaper.
It’s legit one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my life.
I suck a bit of sauce from the tip of one finger, noticing that the boys are watching me like they’re on a hunt. Ignoring them, I turn in my seat until I’m facing Vera completely.
“I stopped by Stacey’s grave the other day,” she tells me casually, but the melancholy in her voice is impossible to miss. My heart gives a sharp and violent seize as I think about Stacey’s last moments, how she mouthed off to that GMP motherfucker right before she died. It was how she’d want to go out, I think, if she’d had to choose a way to go in that moment. “It was covered in flowers and tubes of lipstick and shoes and dresses …” Vera trails off with a sigh and then runs her hand over the top of her shaved head. There’s still a big ‘S’ shaved into the side opposite the anarchy symbol, and I can’t imagine that she’ll be getting rid of it anytime soon. Or, maybe like, ever.
“I really need to take a moment to visit my sister’s grave,” I say, shoving my fingers through my hair. Nobody ever contacted me about Pamela’s body. I’m not sure if that matters or not. Even if they had, I would’ve told the county to bury her. She doesn’t have any power over me anymore. Not a single person whose name was on that goddamn list can ever control me or hurt me or make me feel powerless again. “My little sister keeps asking and asking, but it isn’t safe right now. Shit, we can barely spend any time together as it is. When we do, it has to be in a private place where nobody else can see.”
The last thing I need is for the GMP to figure out where Heather is, who Heather is, and how much she means to me. Kara and Ashley, too, of course. That’d be my biggest fucking nightmare.
Vera reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze and a pat, her mouth pursed into that sympathetic so sorry, girl face she gets when she’s acknowledging other people’s tragedies. Every time we hang out, I see other girls come up to her with some problem or another, and it’s always this face that she gives them, one that recognizes pain and validates it.
“Graves are for the living, not the dead. So take your time getting over there. I doubt your big sister would want you to risk your own life to visit her corpse.” Vera shrugs, having put her wisdom out there in the most ineloquent way possible. I smile anyway and take another bite of my sandwich. “As far as your little sister goes, trust me: better safe than sorry.” Those blue-gray eyes of hers stare into her soda, watching bubbles pop. After a moment, she reaches out and gives it a stir with her straw. I bet she’s thinking about Stacey again, or about the other girl they lost after the robbery went bad. I don’t let myself think about what might’ve happened to that girl …
“So.” I set my sandwich down again, looking around the rachet fucking shithole we’re sitting in with its portable air conditioning unit dripping across the floor and the abandoned buffet in the corner, stacked with unused chairs. Ahh, Prescott. Classiest place on earth. “You called me here. What did you want to talk about?” I look at Vera expectantly, and she stares right back at me like I’m a crazy person.
“You just assumed I only called you here because I had business?” she clarifies, and it takes me a moment to think about it, but then I shrug.
“Yeah, I mean, I guess I did. It isn’t?” My stomach flutters strangely, and I realize I’m getting a friend crush. Like, maybe for the first time in years, I could be making a platonic friend. Oh, the boys are going to be so jealous … I take another bite of sandwich to disguise my total ineptitude for friendship. Let’s just say, it’s been a while. From sophomore year to the beginning of senior year, I was basically alone. Not even just that, but actively despised and hated, too.
“Girl, seriously?” Vera asks, and then she laughs, leaning back in her chair and giving me a long sigh as she looks me over. “Stacey liked you, you know.” I just keep eating my sandwich because I’m not entirely sure how to respond to that. It’s too sad in so many ways, to think that maybe Stacey felt a connection to me the way I did to her.
“Thanks.” That’s all I manage to get out, but then, we’re both Prescott bitches so we speak the same language. Vera can read
all of the myriad things I’m trying to say with that one word. Thank you for telling me that. I liked her, too. I also thought we might become good friends.
“After this, come over,” she tells me with a small nod of her chin. “Hang out with the girls, drink a little. Relax. We’re just having a small casual birthday party thing for Tiff.”
Ah, Tiff, the one with the braids who hates me.
“She despises me,” I say, and Vera shrugs again, sipping her soda with a sharp grin building on her heavily painted lips.
“Maybe a little, but she never turns a Prescott girl down at the door. Come on, say yes.”
I think for a minute and then pause when Victor’s heavy hand rests on my shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. When I glance up at him, I can tell that he’s been listening in on the conversation.
“Go,” he tells me as Vera makes a scoffing noise. Like, I’m sure she thinks this is ridiculous, me needing permission from my harem of men to attend a Prescott party. But that’s not what this is about at all. Victor isn’t ordering me around or pissing testosterone in an alpha male show of dominance the way he does sometimes. Instead, he’s trying to be supportive. He wants me to go, to make friends. I can tell all of that in his one-word response, just the way Vera could with mine. “We’ll make sure you stay safe.”
Victor lets go of me and heads back to the table with the boys as I glance back over at Vera to find her giving me a long, studying sort of look.
“You are cock-whipped,” she tells me, and I scoff.
“I am fucking not,” I growl back because I’ve totally kicked bitch’s asses for less. But then Vera just laughs, and I shake my head. “I am not cock-whipped. If anything, they are the ones that are pussy-whipped.”
“Ah, right,” she says, standing up from her chair as I clean my fingers off with the napkin and then pick up my garbage to chuck in the bin on the way past. “Victor motherfucking Channing is pussy-whipped as he orders your ass around.”
Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys Book 5) Page 37