by L V Chase
Not Your Pawn
Roman Academy Rules Book Two
L.V. Chase
Copyright © 2020 by L. V. Chase
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to names, characters, businesses, events, incidents, and locations are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
About the Author
1
Cin
Being in Damian’s Audi A8 shouldn’t remind me of the scrap metal he’d driven when he was arrested, but it does. As I sit in his passenger side, I recall the sirens, the high-pitched rise and fall of it. I recall the headlights of the police car blinding me as it pulled in front of us in the grocery store parking lot. I recall the cold, wet steel of the car hood after the policeman slammed me down against it.
“How are the stitches?” Damian asks. My hand slips under my shirt, brushing against the ribbed texture of the sutures.
“Perfect.” I settle my hands back on my lap. “They’re on a sturdy canvas. It’s my body of work.”
He peers over at me. “At least you still have your sense of humor. It sounded like that girl who stabbed you needed some serious help. I wish I could have gotten my application in earlier. I could have helped you.”
We turn onto the street Roman Academy is on. My chest constricts. Under most circumstances, I wouldn’t allow fear to trample over me, but I can’t even pinpoint where the fear is coming from. It should be a natural reaction to returning to the place I was stabbed three times, but Diana isn’t what I think about as we pull up to the campus gates and watch them swing open.
I think of Grayson. I think of the fury contorting his face as he shoved Diana. Worse, I think of a million other memories—his tilted smile, his apathetic voice among other people and the vehement one around me, the warmth in his eyes after we’d slept together, the sensation of his lips on the palm of my hand. They shatter against each other, the shards of both of them scattered in my head. I can’t look at a good memory without remembering how murderous he appeared that night.
“I bought you a small gift,” Damian says.
As he brakes in front of a stop sign, the street lights illuminate his face. Damian used to be cute in the same way that young boy band members are cute—the shaggy light brown hair and the dimples. But now with his hair buzzed close to the sides of his head and the longer hair in the front, he could turn heads in any airport or city street. His appearance is more reflective of someone in business than Grayson’s, but he lacks the cutthroat vibe that Grayson exudes.
The blood loss must have caused me brain damage. Otherwise, I don’t know why Grayson casts a shadow on every one of my thoughts.
Damian grabs a plastic bag from the backseat and tosses it on my lap. I open the bag wider. A bottle of vanilla lavender lotion is snuggled in the plastic.
I’d started wearing this lotion when I was fifteen. I’d grabbed it at the cash register—on a whim after my mother had spent months complaining that my hands looked like a laborer’s hands—but the scent calmed me, so I kept using it.
“I can’t believe you remembered this,” I say, squirting some of the lotion onto my hands. I rub it over my arms.
“I’m hoping you still use it.”
“I do. I have some in my dorm. But I just never expected you to remember something so minor about me.”
I close the lotion, setting it down between my feet. I try to let the fragrance soothe me, but anxiety ripples under my skin in constant waves. He drives a few feet but brakes again as several students jaywalk across the road.
Damian glances over at me. I run my fingers through my hair. It feels greasy. It already looked trashy before. My natural hair was gaining ground in the war against the dark gold shade caused by blonde hair dye, but after a few days in the hospital, I’m the emblem of trailer trash. At least these entitled assholes will be right about that.
Another crowd of girls, dressed in tank tops and miniskirts, meanders across the road. One of them is texting as she walks.
“Honestly,” I say, rubbing the back of my hand to pretend I’m massaging the lotion deeper into my skin. “After everything that happened between us, I wasn’t certain if you hated my guts.”
The texting girl is still crossing the road. How do these people manage to survive so long?
“I don’t feel any strong emotion toward your guts,” Damian says. “Except a bit of sympathy now that they’ve been stabbed.”
I touch my sutures. “I’d understand if you were angry, though. I knew my mother was angry that I hung out with you. I should have been more careful when we were together. I should—"
“Cin,” he interrupts. “It’s fine. It’s in the past. I forgive you.”
The girl finally reaches the sidewalk. Damian drives forward.
“I just wanted you to know,” I say. “I’m sorry. There isn’t a day that hasn’t gone by that I haven’t regretted the whole thing.”
“It was just a possession arrest, Cin,” he says. “I paid a fine.”
“Why did you leave school, then?”
“Because our school was utter shit,” he says. He points to my right. “Check it out. That’s where I’m living for the rest of the year.”
It’s one of the dozen or so campus villas. Clusters of students hang out on the front lawn, barely concealing their plastic cups. Strobe lights from inside the villas cause dancing lights on the lawn. The bass pulses loudly enough that everyone outside of the house sways subconsciously to the beat. The only one that isn’t influenced by the music is a boy leaning against a tall oak tree with three girls surrounding him. As one of the girls moves, I see the boy—neat dark hair and a smile that could easily be a sneer.
Eric.
If Eric lives here, Grayson must have a room here, too.
And if Grayson killed Diana, evidence must be in his room. You can’t kill somebody without a weapon. You can’t stab somebody three times without guilt creeping out of you.
Diana’s face flickers in my mind, her blank expression as she talked to Grayson on the phone, trying to convince him to help her ‘clean up’ after she stabbed me. She didn’t feel anything. But she was insane. Grayson is vicious, but his brain isn’t broken. If he wouldn’t feel guilt over killing someone, he’d at least feel pride.
“I’d hea
rd that the villas have secret rooms inside the bedrooms,” I say. “Can we check yours out?”
“My room?” he asks. “It’s not that interesting. I’ve barely moved in. I haven’t even met two of my housemates.”
“Come on, I’m just inventing an excuse to drink,” I say. “I’d pledged sobriety before this, but all that happened is that I got stabbed. So maybe I’d like to take up the habit again.”
He shakes his head at me but pulls into a parking spot near the villas. As we step out of his car, everything feels like a threat—the huddles of students with their hostile or wary eyes, the strobe lights searching for me, the loud music vibrating under my skin. I take a slow breath. I take deliberate steps with Damian towards the door.
“Cinnamon!” Aurora’s voice cuts through the music. I turn despite knowing better. “Did you come here to increase your kill count? You going to make me your next victim?”
“You’ve been a victim your whole life, Aurora!” I call back. “I’m not going to change that.”
“Fuck you, bitch,” she spits out.
Damian grasps my shoulders, pushing me toward the house. “Get yourself a drink,” he says. “I’ll talk to her.”
He turns away, walking toward Aurora. Under the passing strobe lights, she looks paler and more delicate as he strides up to her. I’m too close to the music to hear him, but she cowers under his words.
I glance toward the door. Damian is saving my honor. After being Roman Academy’s favorite punching bag and Grayson treating me like a palate cleanser to his usual gourmet girls, I should be overcome with gratitude. I should take Damian’s hand, take him to his bedroom, and give all of myself over to him.
The door bursts open, scraping against my arm as a drunk girl and boy stumble down the stairs. I slip inside, leaving Damian to deal with Aurora.
The first floor is crowded with people, but I know from being inside Aurora’s villa that the bedrooms are on the second floor. The stairs are covered by sprawling girls and the boys who are trying to coax them out of their tights and thongs. It reminds me of all of the paintings of women lounging like Manet’s Olympia—they’re self-possessed and in control.
On the second floor, more crowds of people swarm, searching for a queen bee or nectar in the form of attention. While everyone moves around, dancing with each other and greeting each other with their shit-eating grins, there’s one area of the hall everyone scurries around. It’s in front of a door.
They’re afraid of whoever sleeps there. Grayson is the only person who would incite such a strong reaction.
I navigate through the crowds, ignoring someone who tries to trip me. I open the door as soon as I reach it, slipping in before too many people can notice me.
The room doesn’t feel like a high school boy’s room.
A woodsy fragrance lingers in the room. Everything is a metallic gray or steel blue. His bed, king-size, takes up half the room. A closed laptop rests on a large steel desk. I step in front of the closet doors, formed out of massive mirrors that reflect back my disheveled appearance.
I take in a deep breath and slide open the closet doors. His clothes are lined up, methodically separated from each other. I push aside some of them, looking behind them. Nothing.
A flash: Diana stumbling out of her closet, clothes falling off the hanger as she pulls herself up. Rage pouring out of her. I should have run right then. I should have known better.
I shut the closet. I walk over to his desk, but it’s empty other than the laptop, a pen, and a sticky note, the words ‘psych experiment?’ scribbled on it. I move to his bed, flipping over his pillows. I get onto my knees, checking under the bed. It’s barren.
I was a fool to think he’d be anything less than meticulous.
A low voice rumbles right outside the door. I scramble under the bed, tucking my feet under it as the door opens.
“It would take more than three lines to get me fucked up,” a boy says.
He’s wearing a pair of black loafers. In the mirror’s reflection, I see Eric’s side profile. He sits down on the bed. I close my eyes. I had moved the pillows. It doesn’t seem like he’s noticed, but if he does, I’m screwed.
What’s he doing in Grayson’s room, anyway?
“That would mean something to me if you’d only taken three lines,” another voice says.
Grayson. I pull myself further away from the edges of the bed as I hear the door close, cutting off most of the noise from the party.
“My dad’s nearly ready to burn Manhattan to the ground,” he says. “What do you think he’ll do to you if he finds out how hard you’ve been self-medicating?”
“Fuck him,” Eric mumbles. “He’s crying over some bad PR from that bitch’s death.”
“Don’t be stupid. You know how important controlling the public’s opinion is.”
I focus on the stinging pain of my stitches from crawling on the floor to avoid the implication of his words. He cares more about his father’s company than Diana’s death. She was just a worthless scholarship kid to him.
“It’s not my fault,” Eric says.
“Nobody said it was.”
“That’s not the way you’re acting.”
“Eric, you’re so fucked up on drugs right now, you wouldn’t know if someone was acting or apathetic. Just go back out there, and act normal. Stop pestering me with your feelings.”
An uncomfortable silence balloons in the room. The noise of the party sounds more distant and meaningless.
“Sure, Grayson,” Eric finally says. “Welcome back.”
I listen to the door open, the blaring noise of the party, and the door click as it shuts.
Fuck. Grayson didn’t leave.
Grayson moves around the bed. He must be putting his pillows back.
“Cin,” he calls out. “It’s not polite to eavesdrop. Don’t they teach you manners in the trailer park?”
I cringe but slowly pull myself out from under the bed. I pull myself up right next to him. He offers me his hand. I ignore it.
“I didn’t know you were out of the hospital,” he says.
“They let you out as soon as you can walk without suing,” I say. “Unlike Hell, where they apparently let you out after you pay enough money.”
He gives me that dangerous, tilted smile without saying anything.
I run my fingers through my hair, remembering how terrible I look. “How did you know I was here?”
“I’d recognize your heartbeat anywhere. It’s like a rabbit’s.”
He reaches toward me. I pull away, bumping against his nightstand. “I mean it. Did you see my reflection?”
He shakes his head, still smiling. I should be terrified. He could kill me and nobody would hear it over the music. I should be running.
“I could smell your perfume,” he says. “Considering you’d never been in my room before, I knew you had to be here.”
“I don’t wear perfume.”
“Lotion then,” he says.
He moves closer to me. When he grabs my waist, I don’t resist. He sits down on his bed, pulling me between his legs.
“My turn to demand answers,” he says. “What are you doing in my room?”
“I was looking for your respect for women,” I say. “It looks like it’s not here, so I’ll look elsewhere.”
I start to turn, but his knees tighten around my thighs. I look straight at him. His blue eyes remind me of storm clouds, rolling across the sky.
“I respect women who deserve respect,” he says. “And respectable women tell the truth. So, again, what were you doing in my room?”
His tone is less friendly now. I stare down at him. I see tiny wisps of that anger he’d taken out on Diana.
“I was looking for proof,” I say.
His expression doesn’t change. He’s waiting for me to finish my sentence. I could still run.
“Proof that you killed Diana,” I finish.
The lightning strikes down so quickly across his face, he mi
ght as well be a different person. He stands up abruptly. I take several steps back. His fists are clenched together, tight enough that I swear I hear a crack.
“Why the fuck would you think I killed that bitch?” he says. “Other people, these goddamn conspiracy theorists, fine. But you? You think I killed her? God. I didn’t think you were that fucking stupid.”
“I saw how angry you were that night,” I say. “You were pissed—"
“—That she tried to kill you? Fuck, I was more than pissed. I still am. But I’m not a killer.” He shakes his head. “I seriously thought you were different, but you eat up this gossip shit like any of the other girls.”
“It’s not that,” I say. “It’s what I saw in your face. It’s—"
“Get the fuck out of my room.”
“Grayson—"
He grabs my shoulder, his thumb digging into the bottom of my throat. He yanks open his door and shoves me out. I stumble into a couple of people as he slams the door shut.
All of the students on the first floor fall silent, staring at me. I lower my head, quickly moving through them and rushing down the stairs. I spot Damian talking to Eric. I force a smile, walking up to him.
“I’m going to go home,” I say, rubbing the front of my throat. “My dorm building isn’t far from here.”
“I can drive you,” he says. I shake my head.
“I just want to walk through campus for a bit. I’ll be fine.”
Before he can respond, I walk away. I’d tell myself I’m not running away, but like Grayson said, respectable women tell the truth.
And the truth is uglier than I ever thought it could be.