by J Bree
Party favors.
He’s asking me if I want him to buy me drugs. I give him what I hope is a bored look. His smile doesn’t falter.
“I don’t need anything. I’ll drink whatever, I’m not a rich dick with fussy taste,” I say in an airy tone.
Joey grabs one of my pens and twirls it in his fingers. I wonder how many girls he’s done this with, this casual dance to lure in a victim. He’s attractive, but all I see when I look at him is the evil in his eyes when he looks at his siblings. All I can see is the guy who talks down to everyone around him, the guy who calls girls he’s slept with sluts.
He’s waiting me out. He wants to see if I’ll tell him to leave or try to get him to talk to me. I choose to ignore him instead. I’ve spent years learning to study no matter where I am or who is around me. I focus on the Lit assignment in front of me, and I’m jolted out of my study by another voice.
“Chatting up the Mounty? I thought she was off limits.” I look up and see a familiar junior. It takes me a minute, and then I realize it's the dickhead I punched in the throat, the one who told me he would schedule me in for a fuck. Guys like this are the type to rape a woman and then tell his friends she was gagging for it. The type of guy who thinks he's a gift to the world and everyone should get on their knees for him.
I fucking hate him.
Joey is watching me with this sly look on his face, like he knows what I'm thinking. The other guy doesn’t notice at all. “I don't really think that's fair-”
“Fuck fair. If you don't leave now, I'll have to make an example of you, Devon.”
A single bead of sweat appears on Devon’s brow and rolls down his face. It's not that warm in the library. I can see the tremble on his lip. The tiny flick of the muscle in his cheek.
Joseph Beaumont Jr. doesn't have friends.
He has victims, plebs, and pawns.
Better to be a pleb, out of his eye line and safe, than to be a pawn in his game. I don’t think I have that option anymore. I think he’s toying with me, testing me, until he knows whether I will have any use to him.
I fucking hate him, too.
Devon leaves without another word, and I get back to my studying, intent on just blocking him out. I can study under any circumstances, so it’s nothing for me to shut him out and get back to work. “What if I want to buy you something? I’ve invited you there as my guest, it would be rude not to.”
I grit my teeth. I don’t want him to think I owe him anything. “I’m not interested, thanks. If there’s not going to be some sort of drinks table, I’ll just go and dance. Not a big deal.”
He blows out a breath like he’s frustrated. I don’t think he’s ever really known that emotion. “Suit yourself. You sure do make it hard to impress you, Mounty. I’ve had girls start Fight Clubs over who got to have me for the night. I’m a little put out.”
“No, you’re not. You’ll forget I exist the second you leave this room.”
He laughs, and then finally he does leave. I try to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach. I don’t like the way Joey speaks about me, like I’m a thing to possess. It takes me a minute to realize why it feels so wrong, but so familiar.
That’s exactly how Matteo talks about me.
One of the perks, or drawbacks depending on how you look at it, of sitting next to Harley, in the majority of my classes is that we are always paired up for assignments.
Hannaford is big on joint assignments, as they like to foster working relationships. I know this is because the other students all come from their own dynasties, and they’ll all be dealing with one another once they take over the family businesses. I’ll never have to worry about that shit. The best I can hope for is to be accepted into a pre-med college course.
Harley is an exemplary student, we are neck-and-neck for the top of every class but working with him can be a major pain in my ass. He likes things done his way, to the point that compromise is a dirty word to him. He will look at the syllabus and just cut the assessment down the middle, the exact middle, and in the same way every time. I'll be handed one half, and he will do the other half.
After my first experience with him, I'd made the decision to just roll with his shitty attitude, but that means that it is difficult to get ahead in my classes without knowing how he is going to split the assignment up. So I do what only an insane person would do.
I do the entire assignment, and then give him whichever half he deems to be mine.
This has become a truly joyful experience for me.
The highlight of my week, even.
Every time he tells me what I need to do, I open my bag and hand him the half I am required to do. The first time, he had scoffed at me but took the papers anyway. After reading my work, he was incredulous and pissed off. After I've done this to him in five different classes, he is now used to lagging behind me, eating my academic dust.
“How far ahead are you, really?” He’s holding my half of our French Revolution assignment. I am particularly proud of this one and tempted to give Harley the other half. If I thought he would take it, I totally would, just to know how highly the teacher would mark it.
We're sitting in our history class, and we're supposed to be plotting out how we plan to do the assignment. Harley is reading through my half with raised eyebrows and a little frown on his face. I’m reveling in that look. I’m gloating. I’m feeling fan-fucking-tastic.
“I could catch a plague and be out for three months and still be the top of the class.” I'm so damn smug. I can't help but be.
He shakes his head at me, but he drops my work into his binder and snaps it shut. Avery is whispering furiously at the girl she's partnered with, and I feel sorry for the poor soul. Dealing with the devil is never pleasant.
“I heard you're going to Joey’s party tomorrow night.” A statement, not a question. I give him a look.
“I promised I would, so I am. If I say I'm going to do something, I always follow through.”
He blows out a breath, and then leans forward on his elbows toward me. I can see his brain working, the cogs moving and mice running on the wheel. He's not happy about something.
“Look, I get that I've been a dick to you. I get that Avery has been full-on, and you have no reason to trust me, but you should not go tomorrow night. Joey is up to something, and when he's scheming, it never turns out good. Things have gone really bad in the past before, like permanent-damage-and-death bad. You should just pretend you've gotten sick.”
How do I explain to this gorgeous, infuriating rich prick that there is no way Joey Beaumont could break me? That I'm friends with the Jackal and I survived becoming the Wolf? He wouldn’t even understand what any of that means, that I’d been put to the test by the most dangerous underground criminal organization, and I hadn’t just survived. I’d won.
There is no way to say it without risking more questions, so I shrug at him vaguely.
“Seriously. What do you hope to gain by going to the party with him? He’s not going to date you.”
I snort and give Harley an incredulous look. “You think I want to date anyone at this pompous school? None of you lot know a damn thing about real life. None of you will ever have to live in it! You’ll all graduate and then live in the perfect little worlds your parents have already carved out for you, and then you’ll go on to have kids and set them up into your billion-dollar empires, while I scrape to make sure I can afford to eat and keep the lights on each month. Fuck you and fuck your assumptions. I’m just here to graduate and get scholarships for college.”
He looks at me like I’m a piece of shit, which is so damn confusing.
“Yeah, well, fuck you and your assumptions about me.”
Because my week hasn’t been bad enough, I have to sit through another choir class watching Ms. Umber fawn over Blaise.
Choir and voice development is the only class I hate going to, and I sometimes fantasize about faking a recurring head cold to get out of it. I tell myself I hate it so much
because she’s a teacher and at least thirty years older than him, but I think I might be a little jealous that he smiles at her and jokes along with her. It’s fucking pathetic of me. We break up into our groups to run through our warm-ups, and Avery slips into the class. Her lips look pouty and bruised, like she’s been making out for hours and only just come up for breath, and she smirks at Blaise. He gives her a look in return, and if I had to guess, I’d say he was pissed off. Ugh, he is probably in love with her, and I’ll have to deal with them getting together and running off into the sunset and having beautiful, talented, rich babies.
I need a drink.
Maybe going to this party won’t be the worst idea I’ve ever had.
Lauren is nice enough to take the lead in the warm-up, and I can fake my way through. Dahlia is too busy watching Blaise to contribute much, but I don’t blame her. The second I hear his voice, my skin prickles with goose bumps and I mentally weep over my misfortune at going to school with him.
“Ash is going to murder Rory. Well, if Rory is lucky it’ll be Ash. Otherwise Harley will do it, and Rory will actually die,” Lauren whispers to Dahlia, and they giggle together.
“Who the hell is Rory?” I ask. Ms. Umber is busy teaching one of Avery’s flunkies proper breathing techniques, so I’m not worried about my class marks.
“He’s Avery’s new boyfriend. He’s in our grade, but he’s—well, not as bright as you, so you wouldn’t have any classes with him. He plays football.”
A jock. Of course, she would date a football player. I glance over at Avery and find Blaise frowning at her and talking in quiet tones. I can clearly read the disapproval in the tense lines of his shoulders.
“Why will they kill her boyfriend? That’s pretty misogynistic; they all date too.”
Dahlia and Lauren share a look, and then lean in toward me.
“First of all, the guys don’t date, they sleep around. And Avery is the center of her brother’s life. He does not cope with any sort of sharing unless it’s Harley and Blaise. Last year she kissed one of the upperclassmen at the end-of-year party, and Ash broke the poor fool’s jaw. Broke it.”
He did not seem like the type to rule over his sister. It was jarring to think of him like that. My face must give my thoughts away, because Lauren gives me a half-smile. “Cillian is a dickhead. He told his friends he would bag her and her fortune, and it got back to Ash. He was already pissed about the kiss, and when he heard that, he took Cillian out. When Cillian came back to school this year, Harley had a… chat with him, and then Cillian changed schools.”
Fucking rich people.
I shake my head at them in disbelief. Imagine the arrogance, to be able to affect another kid’s whole life just because they hurt your sister’s feelings. The things that had happened to me without any sort of justice were staggering. My mom’s neglect. Her death, beatings in foster care, seeing the Game as the only way out. I look over at the perfect princess Avery, and I’ve never hated the girl more.
“Don’t look at her like that unless you want to die, Lips!” Lauren whispers urgently. I school my features into something more placid, and we start taking notes from Ms. Umber again.
When the class finally wraps up and I’m packing up, I hear a gasp behind me right as another body slams into my own.
My bag spills out onto the floor. I glance behind me to see who the hell knocked me and find Harlow, the girl who stood up to Ash.
“Get out of the way, Mounty trash! Bottom-feeding scum like you should bow at the feet of the elite students who actually matter.”
It takes every ounce of willpower, but I don’t react to her at all. After a full minute of me just staring at her, like she’s the piece of shit she is, Harlow makes a noise low in her throat and flounces off. The room empties out while I pick up my books and move on to my next class.
Nothing seems amiss, right up until I get back to my room to change out for dinner.
My stomach hollows out when I see my keys sitting in the lock on my door. I know I didn’t leave them there. Someone has once again had access to my room.
It takes until the early hours of the morning before I’m confident nothing has been taken or left in my room.
I hate this fucking school.
Chapter Eight
Picking an outfit for a party I don’t want to go to with rich kids I hate to be around is its own special form of torture. I’m not going to wear a dress on a cold night in the woods, though I’m sure I’ll be the only girl who doesn’t, and my selection of jeans is tiny. Finally, I go with a dark, distressed denim, and I pair them with a lacy top, Doc Martens, and I throw my hair into a high ponytail. I do a smokey eye and nude lip color because despite my Mounty status at the school, I can make myself look great if I need to. I give myself a once-over in my mirror and try not to let the dread creep in. Going to Joey’s party is a dangerous idea. I have no real friends, or even allies. I don’t have Matteo there to keep an eye on me, which is a first. I’ve never gone out drinking without him. He’d bought me my first-ever bottle of vodka when I’d moved into the group home, and then he’d held my hair while I’d puked my guts up for hours after finishing it. One thing was certain—I would not be getting drunk tonight. As a final precaution, I slip my Matriarch serrated knife into my pocket. It’s easily the most expensive thing I own, and it’s gotten me out of trouble more than once.
Joey arrives at my door a little after our 10 p.m. curfew, dressed in a crisp white shirt and pressed black slacks. I try not to flinch away from his eyes as he slowly inspects every inch of my body, like I belong to him.
“Wow. I thought after seeing your nudes I’d seen everything you had on offer, but you clean up good, Mounty.”
“Gee, thanks.” I make sure my tone is dry as fuck, and he laughs.
“Come on now, I didn’t mean anything by it! I’m just giving you a compliment, jeez. Let’s head down, the underclassmen should have it all set up by now.”
He holds out his arm, and I reluctantly slip my own into it. He smells like something expensive and sinful, but it does nothing for me. I can’t be in his presence without seeing him slapping that kid’s tray and covering him in scalding soup.
We walk out of the girls’ dorms and even though I know he practically owns the school; it still shocks me that the teachers we bump into just turn on their heels and walk away without a word. It should be an instant expulsion for him setting foot up here, but he’s untouchable.
There’s a crowd already forming, flowing down and out of the building, a mass exodus into the woodlands and toward the free booze. I’m sure I’m the only one who really cares about the free part. It’s colder than I thought it would be, and I curse myself for not throwing on a jacket. I don’t recognize any of the faces around me because there aren’t a whole lot of freshmen here. I do see quite a few of the junior boys that have approached me for sex, and my face sets like concrete into an icy look.
“Don’t worry about them, Mounty, let’s get you a drink to loosen you up a bit. You can’t dance if you’re that pissed off.” Joey’s tone is thick and smooth, and I’m sure it did wonders on that bitch Harlow. He tugs me over to the small clearing and begins to pour drinks from a loaded table. He does a pathetic job at it. Truly terrible. I could have wiped the floor with him at any bar in the state. I glance around and see a sound system pumping out shitty pop music that makes me grit my teeth, but there’s already drunk girls dancing in tiny skirts. I was right about the dress code. Joey hands me a cocktail that’s some godforsaken mashup of a daiquiri and a mojito, and I down the whole thing in two gulps.
“Atta’ girl! Another?”
“Fuck no. You may be rich, but you’re shit at this.” I push him out of the way as he roars with laughter. I swipe a bottle of whiskey and drink it straight. I hear the tinkling of laughter that says Joey’s friends have arrived and they’re enjoying watching the poor girl drink. He steps away to greet them, and the sinking sensation of unease pools in my stomach, but I drown i
t with another swig straight from the bottle. I need to have enough of a buzz to survive this, but I’ll have to ride the line carefully. I can’t lose my head, or I might lose something else.
Joey walks back over to me and says, “Dance with me.” It’s not a request. He holds out his hand expectantly.
I’d rather choke, but I take it anyway and let him lead me to where the other students are grinding on each other in time with the beat. I take the whiskey with me, and Joey grabs the bottle to have a swig of his own. I don’t want to drink from the same bottle as him, but when he lifts the rim to my lips, I have no choice but to take it. His arms drop to my waist and he pulls me in tight against him. I hate every single thing about this, but I go along with it.
I can feel the haze of alcohol start to dig in and my limbs grow warm and loose. Joey twirls me in his arms, and as I turn, I see the girls around us staring, glaring at me. They all want to be where I am. They all want Joseph Beaumont.
Rich kids have nothing on the parties at Mounts Bay.
There’s music and dancing, I’ve seen two blowjobs and one girl bent over a fallen tree with a guy pumping away behind her, but overall, it’s pretty tame. I’m enjoying my buzz, and I’m surprised to find I’m enjoying the eyes that follow me around the party. Being here with Joey means no other guys approach me, but that doesn’t mean they don’t watch me dance. I’ve always loved jumping around and swaying and gyrating to music, and it’s even better with whiskey coursing through my veins.
When the bottle has been passed between us and is finally empty, Joey pulls away and whispers in my ear, “I need something a bit stronger.”
I hate the feeling of his breath on my neck, but I smile and nod like a good guest. He leaves, bumping shoulders with his friends, and they take off into the denser section of the woods. I twirl and spin until the song finishes, and then I stumble over to a lawn chair set up near the drinks table.