by Eva Ashwood
Acid sloshed in my stomach, and something white-hot poured through my veins like molten metal.
It wasn’t her jabs against my father. It wasn’t even her jabs against me. But the mention of my arranged marriage to Barrett, the fact that the ruination of my life was fodder for this bitch’s entertainment?
No.
Fuck, no.
The thought had barely implanted in my brain before my body was moving. My fist drew back and flew forward so fast she never even saw the punch coming until it caught her on her left cheek, sending her stumbling backward.
Pain radiated up my arm like a jagged bolt of lightning, but just like it had after my mom had slapped me, rage filled my body with a feral sort of strength. Keeping my throbbing hand balled into a fist, I went after her again, sending the rest of the junior girls scattering like leaves in the wind as I caught the redhead on the jaw this time.
If we’d been at Slateview, no one would’ve interrupted the fight—except maybe the Lost Boys. They’d been the ones to maintain order in those halls, ruling by fear and keeping the peace by putting down anyone who overstepped.
But this wasn’t Slateview.
Before I could even get a third hit in, several classroom doors burst open around us, and no fewer than three teachers rushed forward to pull me and the girl apart. I was panting and glaring at her, but the rage that’d flared faded enough for me to realize what I’d done, and I shook my hand out as Mr. Duprey, a political science teacher, glowered down at me.
“How about a visit to the dean, Ms. Van Rensselaer? Now.”
The redheaded girl smirked at me, dabbing at her lips with her fingertips. She reminded me a little of Serena, the girl who’d gone out of her way to torture me at Slateview until the Lost Boys had taken me under their wing. Apparently, bitchiness was a personality trait that transcended wealth or social class.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Sure.”
Mr. Duprey escorted me personally to the dean’s office, and when the secretary ushered us inside, he explained that he’d caught me fighting in the halls.
Dean Clavier, an older man with a neatly trimmed beard and expensive, stylish glasses, nodded. “Thank you. I’ll handle it.”
As Mr. Duprey left, the dean waved at the chair in front of his desk, studying me carefully as I sat down. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me—as if he thought he knew me. As if he thought he understood me.
He didn’t. I was sure of that.
“Cordelia.” He pressed his lips together, shaking his head slightly. “I wondered if I might be seeing you in my office. After everything you’ve been through, I can’t say I’m all that surprised to see you acting out.”
I gritted my teeth at his simplistic, condescending assumptions about my behavior, but kept silent.
He didn’t seem to require a response anyway. Keeping a firm but patient expression fixed to his face, he continued.
“I know it must be quite a… culture shock to be coming back to our academy after spending a semester in a public school like Slateview. But I have to warn you, Ms. Van Rensselaer: what was acceptable at that institution will not fly here. There are rules that must be followed here, not the least of which is our insistence on decorum and non-violence. Hitting another student is a violation of everything Highland Park stands for.”
I didn’t bother telling him that there were plenty of things that happened inside these walls that went directly against what Highland Park “stood for,” and when I still didn’t speak, Dean Clavier leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk and threading his fingers together.
“I know you’ve been adjusting to being back, so I’ll let you go with a warning—one warning. That’s all you’ll get, and if this happens again, there will be very serious consequences that could affect your future at this institution. So bear that in mind next time you think about getting in a fight.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I know you probably think of yourself as ‘tough’ and want to prove to everyone that you are. Street cred, I think you call it? But you’re going to have to give that notion up if you want to continue to do well here.”
I blinked at him, my face pulling into an unconscious grimace as I absorbed his words.
He was wrong. I didn’t think of myself as tough, and I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone.
I just wasn’t afraid anymore. I was done following along blindly as decisions were made for me because I was scared to step out of line.
There was only one thing I truly feared now.
And I would do everything in my power to make sure it never came to pass.
Five
After enduring a long and pointless lecture from Dean Clavier about the importance of maintaining my decorum and reputation, and about how I needed to think about my future, I was finally dismissed.
“You’ll fit in here again soon enough, Cordelia,” he said to me as I left, patting me on the shoulder as he ushered me out the door.
His words haunted me as I went through the rest of the day in a daze, clenching and unclenching my sore hand as I walked through the halls.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I would fit into this world again before long.
But did I want to?
No one else accosted me in the corridors, but word of my fight with the redhead—whose name I found out was Marissa—spread quickly through the school. By the end of the day Caitlin, Felicia, and Allison had all seemed to decide association with me wasn’t worth the potential damage to their social standing. None of them talked to me in our shared classes or even made eye contact with me in the halls.
My skin felt itchy and too-tight by the time I stepped through the doors into the cold January air.
I needed a break. An escape.
Digging my phone out of my bag, I pulled up Mom’s contact and typed out a quick text to her.
ME: I’m going to study with Caitlin, Felicia, and Allison. We might go see a movie afterward. I’ll be home later.
It was a flat out lie. None of those girls wanted to hang out with me, and the feeling was so mutual it was bordering on animosity. But I knew both of my parents had been worried about how I hadn’t seemed to be reconnecting with my old friends, so I hoped that throwing their names out would make my mother less likely to give me a hard time.
A few people stared at me out of the corners of their eyes as I made my way across the parking lot full of luxury vehicles to the car my father had given me the day he’d announced my engagement to Barrett. I’d been tempted to throw the keys back in his face, since the whole thing felt like a bribe—but it was my only piece of freedom, so I had accepted it grudgingly.
Ignoring the looks and whispers, I climbed inside the Aston Martin and drove out of the parking lot, heading toward the only place I wanted to be right now.
As the cracked sidewalks and dirty buildings of my old neighborhood came into view thirty minutes later, something seemed to loosen in my chest. I had never, ever thought this place might feel like home. But somehow, it did. And I missed it.
I didn’t miss the squat little house I had shared with Mom that had been poorly insulated and always a little too cold. But I missed the memories that’d been formed there, the moments I’d had with the boys. I missed our Christmas celebration that had made the house feel like a home for the first time.
Bishop’s house was right across the street, and when I pulled up outside, I saw his car parked in the driveway. The beat-up convertible with the top up was such a welcome sight that I practically leapt out of my car, slamming the door hard before hurrying up the walk. He technically lived with foster parents like the other two Lost Boys did, but his were almost never home. I was pretty sure they only fostered him for the money they received from the government—money Bish never saw a penny of.
He got by working for Nathaniel Ward, making his own way in the world rather than waiting for foster parents who didn’t give a fuck to help him out in any way. I respected that, even though the work he and the other boys di
d had upset me at first. It wasn’t always violent, but it was almost always illegal. Nathaniel Ward was a powerful crime lord in Baltimore’s underground, and they’d been working for him for a while.
My hand was raised to rap on the door when it was yanked open, and before I could even knock once, I was pulled into Bishop’s arms. Misael and Kace were in his living room too, and they watched me with fond smiles as I sank into Bishop’s embrace.
“What the hell are you doin’ here, Coralee?” he murmured, his voice rumbling against my chest. “Why didn’t you tell us you were comin’? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” I sucked in a deep lungful of his woodsy scent, relishing in his masculine aroma. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to see you.”
“Well, we’ll never complain about that.” He released me, grinning down at me. Then he grimaced. “But we were just about to head out to meet Nathaniel.”
“Why don’t we bring her with?” Misael suggested. “Nathaniel told us to bring her by again sometime, remember? I think it’s an open invitation.”
I lit up, raising my eyebrows hopefully as I flicked my gaze from Bish to Kace, hoping they’d both be on board with that. Anything would be better than going home, and although Nathaniel Ward still terrified me a little, I liked his wife, Josephine.
Bishop and Kace exchanged a look, and I could tell they were both weighing it carefully. What they’d said in the pool house last night clearly hadn’t been a lie. They put my safety above everything else.
Finally, they both nodded and broke gazes. Kace ran a hand through his short-cropped blond hair, the muscles of his arm bunching and making the snake tattoo that wrapped around it seem to move like it was alive. Despite the fact that it was the dead of winter, he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans which both hugged his large, muscled body.
“Yeah.” He smiled at me, a rare and beautiful sight I had come to love. “Come with us, Coralee.”
A few minutes later, the four of us piled into Bishop’s car, and it felt so much like old times that something both pleasurable and painful pricked at my chest. I tried to tamp down the pain and focus only on the pleasure, repeating the words that Josephine had once said to me.
Appreciate what you have rather than worrying about what you might lose.
Right now, I had the Lost Boys, and they had me. And I was going to appreciate every minute I got to spend with them.
We listened to music and talked as we drove, and I could tell all of us felt the same giddy happiness at being together. The guys caught me up on what’d been going on at Slateview over the past week, and I told them about my run-in with Marissa.
Bishop shot me a sharp look when I mentioned that I’d punched her twice, and I didn’t know if he was about to lecture me about keeping myself safe and not starting fights or pull the car over and yank me into his lap so he could fuck me. To my disappointment, he did neither, although heat reflected in his eyes as he lifted my hand from my lap and brought it to his lips, kissing my bruised knuckles.
Fire shot through my veins at the touch, and the car grew quieter as we approached Nathaniel’s house. Tension and desire filled the small space, and I had a strong feeling that if they hadn’t been called for a meeting with him, they would’ve blown off every other responsibility and taken me back to Bishop’s house to tear my clothes off.
When we arrived at the house, the man who looked like a butler greeted us. I’d been shocked the first time I had come here and seen how elegant and luxurious Nathaniel’s house was, but it made much more sense to me now. The line between the criminal class and the elite class of Baltimore was razor thin, almost indistinguishable sometimes.
We were ushered upstairs to Nathaniel’s office, and unlike the last time I’d been here, the people we passed by didn’t look at us as if we had one foot in the grave already. A small shiver worked its way down my spine at the memory, and I felt the Lost Boys shift closer to me. I shot Misael a grateful glance, and he squeezed my hand.
The butler left us just outside Nathaniel’s office, and when the man himself opened the door, his gaze traveled quickly over the boys before landing on me. I tensed slightly, not quite sure what his reaction would be, but he smiled broadly.
“Cora. It’s nice to see you. How’s everything been at home?”
There were more layers of subtext to that question than I could possibly untangle. It was because of Nathaniel’s intervention that Dad had been proven innocent of the crimes he’d been accused of. Nathaniel had revealed that my father had been set up, and that revelation had resulted in his release from prison.
And in exchange, my father owed him a favor.
I hadn’t forgotten about that bargain, and I was sure Nathaniel hadn’t either. But his question didn’t sound like it had been meant just as a reminder of the debt Dad owed him. He sounded genuinely curious, maybe even a little concerned—as if he had some idea what being wrenched out of this life and away from my boys had done to me.
“It’s… it’s been okay,” I said, attempting to put on a smile. It was the vaguest answer I could give without outright lying, but he didn’t seem fooled for one moment.
He cocked his head at me, then nodded, letting the subject drop. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. If you’d like to wait in the library while we deal with our business, I’ll make sure Josephine knows you’re here. I’m sure she’d love to say hello. I won’t keep your boys for too long.”
He gave me another smile and then ushered the Lost Boys into his office. Kace brushed his hand over my lower back as he stepped forward, the touch soothing and reassuring. Once they disappeared inside the office, I made my way toward the library. I’d gotten caught wandering in here by Josephine the first time I’d met her, but this time, I was actually hoping she would come and say hello.
There was something about her that drew me in, that made me want to listen when she spoke.
She was so different from my own mother, but was so many things I wanted to be.
She was soft without being weak. Elegant. Self-assured. She was a part of Nathaniel’s world without allowing herself to become dominated by it, and I couldn’t help but look to her as a role-model.
“Cora.” Her smoky voice behind me made me turn, and a smile broke across my face as I caught sight of her. “What a pleasant surprise to see you here. I’m so glad you came with your boys today.”
“Hi, Josephine.”
She gestured me over to a seat by the window, glancing back toward the door as we settled down in the bright winter light streaming through the glass. “Nathaniel has been giving them greater and greater responsibility, and he’s been quite pleased with their work. You should be proud.”
I could tell she meant it, and it occurred to me that maybe Nathaniel was grooming the Lost Boys to step into higher level roles in his organization once they graduated high school. After all, it wouldn’t be long now.
“That’s good. I am,” I said, surprising myself with how much I meant it.
There was a part of me that still resisted the idea of them becoming any more enmeshed in this life and this line of work. But at the same time, I had come to accept a long time ago that this was part of who they were. And it made me glad to see them succeeding.
“And how are you? How have things been?” Josephine asked, turning her attention back to me.
I opened my mouth to tell her the same thing I’d told Nathaniel. That I was okay, and that things were fine. But somewhere between my brain and my tongue, the protective filter I had erected failed, and when my mouth finally did open, the truth spilled out.
“I’m engaged.”
The two words felt like daggers to my own heart, and Josephine’s eyes widened. Apparently, although the Lost Boys had gotten wind of it, the news hadn’t reached Nathaniel yet—although I was sure it would now.
“You are?” she asked carefully, her gaze measuring my response as she spoke.
“Yes.”
Before I could think or second-guess myself,
I told her everything there was to know about the whole fucked up situation, every detail since my father had called me into his office to break the news to me. Her brows pulled together as I spoke, and when I finished, she was silent for a moment.
I waited, although I wasn’t quite sure what I was waiting for. It wasn’t like she could fix this.
No one could.
But I was still desperate to know her thoughts, to receive what little pittance of comfort she might be able to give me.
“My family no longer speaks to me,” she said finally, and I blinked. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting at all.
“They don’t?”
“No.” She shook her head, sadness entering her blue eyes. “They haven’t since the day I married Nathaniel. I chose him over them, you see. And just as they had promised they would, they erased me from their lives.”
My heart picked up its pace as I listened to her, leaning forward slightly as I hung on each word she uttered.
“Do you miss them?”
She smiled quietly, nodding. “Of course I do. But not as much as I used to. I love Nathaniel more than I’ve ever loved anyone in this world, and I’ve found a new family here. With him.”
I tugged my lip between my teeth, considering her words. Could I do that? If it came down to it, if my father outright refused to let go of this insane marriage arrangement, could I walk away from him and my mother forever? Would he even let me?
Maybe Josephine could see a hint of the thoughts bouncing around inside my head, because she reached out, resting her hand over one of mine. “I’m not telling you this to send you off on some half-cocked mission. I know family and relationships are never simple or black-and-white. I know it can seem almost impossible to choose between duty and desire.” She gave my hand a little squeeze. “So I suppose I’m just telling you this to let you know that I understand.”