Ruined: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 1)

by Vanessa Winters

  The look Michael gave me made me feel as though my heart was being pulled through the small spaces of my ribcage. He looked shocked,…and hurt.

  But then his look changed to anger, and he met me where I stood.

  “This isn’t just your circus anymore,” Michael said. “We all have a right to be here. Thanks to you, we’re all on the opposing side of Lineage now, and they’re not going to just let us stroll back in as if nothing had happened. What do you think they’ll do to Julian? Or do you not care about him anymore either?”

  Ouch. I deserved that.

  “You can’t stay here,” I said. “The entire success of this plan depends on it going off unnoticed. There’s no way they won’t see all four of us here. You guys need to leave.”

  “Not unless you’re coming with us,” Julian called from the other side of the roof.

  “I’m not leaving,” I said.

  Michael shrugged his shoulders as he pushed past me. “Well, then neither are we,”

  The three guys stood at the edge of the rooftop staring at me, and I knew that there was no way that I was going to be able to talk them out of staying. There was also no way that I was going to let them stay, so I had to think of something else.

  “Looks like you’re stuck with us,” Julian said as he sat back down on the roof. The other two followed suit, and I walked over to join them.

  At least I’ll have company for tonight.

  Since Adam had all the keys (which I still wasn’t sure how he had managed to get), he was able to get into all the cabinets in the aquarium’s catering office and brought up a bunch of food and drinks for us to have. Julian spread out a layer of coats onto the floor of the roof to use as a picnic blanket, and we all sat around eating, drinking, and talking as if we were still in our apartment. It was ridiculous to think about.

  We were having such a good time together on the eve of a dangerous assassination plan. I suppose it’s what would have been considered the “calm before the storm” in the movies. I listened to the boys’ recount some of the details from their fight against the Lineage guys and laughed when they described several of the things that shouldn’t have been funny but were. Like Julian telling us how he almost fell into the giant hole he was digging for all the bodies when a squirrel jumped into a tree behind him and scared him shitless.

  Somehow, murder and criminal drug activity had bonded us all together.

  I watched their faces as they talked, and as the alcohol loosened everyone’s nerves up a bit. My mom would have liked these guys, every single one of them. I wondered what she would tell me now if she was sitting here beside me. I wondered if she would tell me to give up on trying to be some sort of vigilante and just try to be happy with these guys. Most moms would probably do that; they would steer their daughters away from danger and toward happiness.

  But my mom was not like most mothers.

  Yes, she wanted me to be happy; she always wanted me to be happy. But she also wanted me to be strong. I had always wondered what had happened to her in her own life that made her so strong. People didn't get strength like she had from having an easy life. It wasn’t just my dad’s leaving us or even his death that she got her strength from. That was just where she got most of her anger. Her strength must have come from someplace else, and it made me sad to know that I would never be able to have the chance to ask her about it.

  In my heart, though, I knew what my mom would want me to do. She would want me to be strong, strong enough to look in the face of whoever they were seating into a position of power tomorrow night and take him out. She wouldn’t have cared about me avenging her death, but she would have cared about making sure that I never had to live in fear of anyone. She would have loved these three men for how much they wanted to watch out for me, but she would have also told me that I needed to watch out for myself first. It was my mom who picked me back up and sent me back out to school when the other kids teased me and tormented me about my father. It was my mom who sat with me at night and changed the ending to every fairytale that she read to me so that the princess was the one who ended up slaying all the dragons.

  And it was my mom who would be there with me tomorrow, whispering in my ear that I could do it, no matter what it was that needed to be done.

  “Hey,” Michael said as he nudged my shoulder.

  His temperament seemed to be a bit more relaxed now since we all seemed to be in the mode of ignoring everything that had happened and everything that was going to happen tomorrow. “I want to show you something.”

  He stood up and reached for my hand. Julian and Adam were deep in the middle of a conversation about fighting skills and whether or not a steak knife to the throat was a feasible way to murder someone. I got up with him and followed Michael over to the greenhouse. I noticed Julian glance over at us when he saw the greenhouse door open, but he seemed much less upset about Michael than he had been back at the apartment.

  We sat down in the middle of the greenhouse on the coats that were still clumped into a pile on the ground. The memory of our bodies intertwined came rushing back over me like a pummeling wave that knocked the breath from my chest. I wasn’t sure that I could stay in here very long with him, without wanting to pull him down over me again.

  “I have something for you,” he said.

  He didn’t look mad anymore, but he also didn’t look like his usual self. He was still hurt and was trying to pretend like he wasn’t. Michael pulled something out of his pocket and handed it to me.

  “My mother’s letter!” I said as I unfolded the worn corners. “How did you get it?”

  “I went back to Lineage yesterday to try to talk some sense into my mother,” he said.

  I peeked over at him. “Did it work?”

  He scoffed. “No, not even a little bit. She is every bit the callous bitch that I always thought she was.”

  I giggled a little when I heard him call Marta a bitch. I had always thought that she was too.

  Then, he continued. “On my way off campus, I stopped into the apartment and got it for you.

  “I’m surprised no one else had taken it already,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Well, you had it pretty well-hidden. Not everyone would think to look inside a storybook.”

  “Then, why did you?” I asked.

  “Just luck, I guess.’

  I read through the letter again and ran my fingers over the words that had been spoken by my mother and written by Michael. I had memorized each word. She talked about how much she loved me and how much she would miss me. She apologized for having to leave me and reminded me to be strong and kind, and all the things that she had taught me to be. There was nothing in the letter that stood out as being unusual; nothing that seemed like any sort of message.

  I frowned. I had hoped that if I’d had a chance to look at it again, that maybe I would see something that I’d missed before. But it was all the same cherished words that I had read over and over again in my mind a thousand times.

  “What’s wrong?” Michael asked. “I thought you’d be happy to have your mother’s letter back.”

  “I am,” I said. “But I just can’t figure out what message she was trying to leave me with.”

  “I don’t think you’re looking close enough,” he said as he touched my hand and moved my finger across the paper. “Hold it up.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just do it.”

  I held the letter up and could barely make out the watermark under the dim light of the night sky. I still don’t see anything aside from the words, the Lineage monogram, and the watermark.

  “Oh my god,” I said in a whisper. “The watermark.”

  Michael smiled at me as if he were pleased that I’d just solved a riddle. The letterhead belonged to Lineage, the monogramming was from Lineage, but the watermark was the Goldshire crest.

  “How can that be?” I asked breathlessly. “The letterhead and the watermark should match. How can Lineage stationery have a Goldshire wat
ermark on it?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “But, I’m pretty sure that’s what your mother wanted you to see.”

  I was disappointed that he didn’t know. I thought that maybe my mother would have told him. But then again, my mother always seemed to have an issue with trusting men, so it didn’t surprise me that she would keep it a secret and hope that I could figure it out on my own. I wouldn’t have figured this part out without Michael’s help, though. Even though I had found an anomaly, I still wasn’t sure what it meant or how it was supposed to help me.

  “It’s weird, though, right?” he asked. “As crazy as my mother’s ideas are.”

  “What crazy ideas?” I asked.

  “Take your pick,” Michael huffed. “She’s got plenty of them. Her newest one seems to be her delusional scheme to put me in charge of Goldshire Academy.”

  My face fell. “What?”

  “Crazy, right?”

  “That’s too crazy to be just a delusional idea,” I said, “even for Marta. What could she possibly have to gain from having her own son be Dean of the rival school?”

  Especially since it sounded like Lineage was getting ready to force Goldshire to shut its doors anyway.

  I groaned. “None of it makes any sense, Michael. Ugh.”

  My brain hurt from trying to figure stuff out on hardly any sleep.

  He scooted closer to me. “Agreed. It doesn’t.”

  I sighed. “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing. I just left. By the time I got back to the apartment, Adam was texting about how he found you and so Julian and I started to head this way.”

  It was getting close to the wee hours of the morning, and I was running out of time to do something that would prevent the guys from being here when all of this went down. I didn’t know what was going on with Marta, but from the sounds of it, she wouldn’t hesitate to throw her son to the wolves. Which meant it was even more dangerous for Adam and Julian to be here. I had to get them all to leave and not come back until it was over.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I said as I stood up and tucked the letter into my pocket. “Adam, can I use those keys?” I called to him as I walked out of the greenhouse. “The office bathroom is the cleanest, but it’s always locked.”

  He tossed me his keys, and I told them I’d be right back.

  As I walked down the stairwell toward the bathroom, I tried to think of a way to get the guys out of here. Then an idea occurred to me when I saw the fire alarm at the bottom of the stairs and the keyed entry into the stairwell from the street. This place might not have the best security, but it was sure to at least have an alarm system. I headed straight for the front doors. Sure enough, right there by the entrance was a security alarm to pull. Without giving myself the chance to change my mind, I unlocked the door, pulled the alarm, and ran out into the street.

  The entire place lit up with flashing lights, and a siren that sounded like a bank robbery was taking place. I hid across the street in the park and watched as I waited for the cops to show up. I wondered what the guys were doing inside, probably searching for me again.

  When two cop cars arrived and went inside the building, it was only a few minutes before they came out again with all three guys in handcuffs. They were struggling and shouting at the cops, which just made the police pull their cuffs tighter and read them their rights. Then the cops tried to shove the guys into the backseat of their police cruisers. I watched as Michael tried to resist being arrested up until the point that the cop pushed his head down in order to get him into the car. Even then, Michael kept straining his neck around to try to look up to the roof of the aquarium.

  I could only guess that he was looking for me.

  It was another horrible act of betrayal that I had done to them. But it would keep the guys safe in custody for hopefully long enough to get past the charity event tonight. I had a feeling that Marta would let Michael sit in jail for a couple of days as a punishment and reminder not to cross her again.

  And before I knew it, it was almost morning, which meant I had to get ready for what I was about to do.

  I waited for a bit longer to make sure that the cops had cleared the area and then walked to the back of the aquarium and used the key to unlock the stairwell entrance. Then I climbed up to the rooftop and started to get ready for tonight’s event.

  The aquarium was bustling with activity the entire day. In addition to their regular attendance, the staff was preparing for the Lineage charity event, which was supposedly the largest event that the aquarium hosted all year. I spent the day trying to stay hidden and out of the way and listened in on any of the chatter that I heard about the event tonight. One of the employees had mentioned that they may even need to use the overflow parking for the expected size of the crowd. I also heard some of the staff talking about the break-in last night, and about how the three “criminals” that the cops caught were students of the very same elite college that was hosting the event tonight.

  Obviously, they got some of the details wrong since Julian wasn’t a student there at all. But they said enough for me to know that the police were waiting to hear back from the college administrators before letting the guys out of custody. That was all I needed to hear to know that they would be safe and out of the way tonight. I pitied whoever had to deal with them at the police station, though. I’m sure Michael’s full wrath was upon them, and somebody would probably end up losing their job at the precinct tomorrow.

  During the downtime, when the staff was taking a late lunch break, I used the reflection in the side of the greenhouse walls to get changed into the dress and try to run my fingers through my hair. I pulled my hair around my face and put on a pair of glasses that I had snatched from the lost and found. They made my vision a bit blurry when I tried to look out of them for too long, but I was trying to disguise my appearance as much as possible. Aside from Marta, and maybe a few of the security guards, I don’t think anyone else at Lineage could really recognize me.

  As evening approached and I sat in the back of the greenhouse waiting for things to begin, the staff started to bring up the food and drinks that they would serve at the event. It sounded like other parts of the aquarium would be open for the guests to peruse, but that the main gathering would be held mostly be here on the rooftop. Marta and the new Headmaster would be here on the roof. The general admission to the public closed, and the aquarium made its final preparations before the big event would begin.

  I even overheard one of the girls at the rooftop bar say something about there being an hour before the guests started to arrive.

  One hour, I thought to myself as I sat crouched down in this tight dress, balancing on the heels of someone else’s shoes, with the steak knife clenched in my hand. One hour until they get here. The adrenaline that rushed through me was making me nauseous, as was the thought of slicing someone’s throat open with this knife. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself, but it didn’t seem to work. When I thought of my mother, all I could see was her lying face down on the storage room floor in a pool of her own blood. When I thought of Michael, all I could think of was the frenzied feeling of his body inside me. Everything I tried to imagine to help me calm my nerves did just the opposite. I resigned to embracing the chaos and hoped that it would fuel me with enough reckless bravery to do what I had been waiting to accomplish. I was going to kill the new Headmaster, and possibly even Michael’s mother too.

  One by one, I started to hear the guests arrived. At first, there was only the slight sound of conversation and the occasional laugh or cough. Then it sounded like the entire rooftop was filling up with people. I didn’t dare to look out yet; I was waiting until the place was full and crowded enough for me to casually walk out of the greenhouse without being noticed. I had jammed the latch shut from the inside so that no one would open the greenhouse door until I was ready. One person tried the door to see if the greenhouse was open, but when it didn’t budge, she made some casual comment
about it being locked and moved on.

  I heard Marta’s voice above the others. She had that kind of high-pitched, grating voice that stood out in a crowd for all the wrong reasons. It sounded like she was walking around greeting guests and trying to stir up excitement for their “big reveal.”

  “Oh yes, just wait,” Marta said as she spoke to someone who was standing close to the greenhouse doors. “This is going to change everything.”

  I snickered silently to myself. If only she knew how much things were about to change tonight. Then, maybe she wouldn’t be quite so cocky and sure of herself.

  It sounded like the crowd had grown to a sizeable amount, enough for me to start making my way out into the sea of people. I stood up and opened the greenhouse door and walked out as if I had been there the entire time and was supposed to be.

  “I didn’t realize the greenhouse was open,” a woman said next to me. “I tried the lock a few minutes ago, and it didn’t budge.”

  “Really?” I feigned ignorance. “It worked perfectly for me. You should definitely look inside. The flowers are stunning.”

  The woman smiled, and I held the door open for her as she went inside. I looked out at the sea of people with drinks in their hands.

  This was going to be harder than I thought.

  22

  I grabbed a cocktail off one of the trays of a waiter passing by and took a sip both to calm my nerves, and it helped me to look as though I was enjoying myself. The rooftop was set with tables and chairs and also enough space for people to mingle and walk around. There were two bar stations and at least a dozen servers weaving through the crowd with appetizers and drinks.

  Along the edge of the rooftop, just in front of the railing that Michael had nearly dropped me over was a long table set with place cards. I casually walked past the table to take a look since no one was sitting there yet. I saw Marta’s name written on a card near the center, and next to hers was a card labeled “Headmaster.” The other names I didn’t recognize but assumed they were board members of one sort or another. I tried to stay to the corners of the roof, behind the crowds of gathered people, as I watched and waited.