“How far, exactly, you want this to go …” Oscar runs his finger down the back of my neck, making my muscles tense up. “That's up to you.” He moves past me, and I shiver.
We're just getting started here.
Just getting started.
Everything is different today. You’d think that kiss I shared with Victor shattered the world. When I walk on campus, people scurry out of my way, stare at me with wide, wide eyes. They avoid me like the plague while simultaneously letting me know with their body language that if I demand it, they’ll succumb to my every whim.
It’s surreal as hell.
Victor comes to find me at lunch, waiting just outside the door to the locker room, his big body curled over, hands in his pockets, eyes on the floor. When he lifts them to my face, I feel this strange, tingling sensation take over me, like I did that one time I tried to donate blood. Like I’m fading, like my life force is being drained by his stare.
“Come with me,” he says, and I do.
Because with that kiss, I promised I’d do whatever he asked.
Victor leads me back to the area next to the dumpsters where the others are waiting, watching. They’re all smoking. Because that’s what bad kids like us do, right? “That stuff’ll kill you, you know,” Ms. Keating likes to say. Once, I heard Hael smirk and shoot back, “we’re counting on it.”
He’s right.
Every step closer to the grave is one step further away from this hell we call life.
“Boys,” Vic greets, pausing in front of them and then gesturing toward me with his chin. “Glad to see we’re out the door and running.” He gives Hael a very special sort of look, and I have to wonder if the cocky dickhead thought to get his boss’ permission before blowing up the principal’s expensive SUV. And before you ask how a principal at a downtrodden public school can afford such a thing, don’t bother. I’ll explain later. It’s one of the reasons he’s on my list. “And excellent work in making it look like an accident. They’ve called off the bomb squad.”
“Whoopee, glad to be of service,” Hael says, grinning and running his tongue across his lower lip as he surveys me with an appreciative gleam in his eye. First chance he gets, he’s going to demand I crawl on his lap, same as Vic. “To be honest, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time. We’ll consider that one a freebie.”
I frown and flip him off, but he just laughs. Aaron scowls, but Callum claps his hands like he’s attending a show just for him.
“I hear you’re one of us now,” he says, pushing his hood back, so I can see his Disney prince blond hair. Only, it’s strange because he’s not the prince; he’s the villain that slaughters the wide-eyed royal and buries his body in the woods. Cal slides a knife from his boot and tosses it to Vic, making me raise my brows. He managed to slip that past security, no problem. It’s a little scary.
“Blood in,” Vic says, slicing his palm and then handing the knife to me, his eyes deadly serious. “Blood out.”
“You’re joking, right?” I ask, looking between him and the other Havoc Boys. Aaron is practically seething, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “You want to make a blood pact? Like some middle schoolers on a tree house dare?”
“Take the knife, Bernadette, or I’ll do it for you.” Vic isn’t threatening me with his cool, dark words. No, he’s simply telling the truth. I swallow hard and look down at the bloodied bit of blade. He could have a disease. Hell, as far as I know, he could have a dozen of them. But this is what I signed up for, isn’t it? To be their plaything. I swallow hard and snatch the knife. The last thing I want right now is for Vic or anyone else to see me vulnerable or unsure.
So I slice my palm with the sharp blade, hissing at the pain, and then gasp when Vic clamps his hand to mine, squeezing so hard it hurts and staring so deep into my eyes that I feel like I’m drowning.
It only lasts a couple of seconds, but as our blood mingles, and our gazes lock, I know that I’ll never be the same again.
Victor releases me, swipes the blood off on his jeans, and then tosses the knife back to Callum who catches it effortlessly.
“Just to be clear,” he continues, his gaze sweeping across the others before returning to me. “You’re on my orders and nobody else’s.” There’s a harsh bite of threat in his words, but I have a feeling it’s not exactly meant for me. He flicks his attention to the other Havoc Boys in warning. “And now that we’ve got our own Havoc Girl, we’ll start dealing with one problem at a time, beginning with the issue of my mother.” This last word comes off his tongue like a curse, like Victor Channing can’t think of anything worse than a mom.
“What issue with your mother?” I ask, wondering if I’m overstepping my bounds here. He said I’d belong to them, to Havoc, but what, exactly, that means I’m not sure. Vic told me I’d have to obey his every word, but he didn’t say I had to be a meek, kowtowing bitch, right?
Vic laughs, and the sound gives me such chills. He almost sounds like I do when I look in the mirror and wonder what the point of all this is.
“She’s gripping my inheritance in her overly manicured claws on some stupid ass technicality.” Vic gets out a cigarette as Oscar scribbles something down on his iPad and Hael gets up to molest the shiny surface of his car. Callum just sits there and eats while Aaron glares at the pavement, his shoulders so taut it almost hurts to look at him. “I have to be married before I can collect.”
“Married …” I start, and then the realization hits me like a freight train, and my eyes go wide. “Wait, what?” I snap, that last word flinging from the tip of my tongue like a rubber band from a slingshot.
Victor gives me a long, studying sort of look, dressed in a black wifebeater and jeans. He’s the picture of delinquency with his violet hair, ebony eyes, and inked body. His muscles are hard, long, and lean, built up from use and not just workouts. He most definitely doesn’t look like a high school student. Pretty sure most of us don’t, not with the darkness in our pasts or the shadows under our tired eyes. I’ve lived more nightmares in my seventeen years than most have lived their entire lives.
“You didn’t think we wanted you just for sex, did you?” he asks, his bemused tone making me bristle, like I’m an idiot. But of course I did. What else could a bunch of horny teenage assholes want with a girl they don’t even like? “If I’d wanted that, I would’ve asked you to be my whore, not a member of my crew. Now fuck off to class, and let me know if anybody gives you any trouble.”
“Stupid, piece of shit, asshole Victor Channing!” I shout, throwing an empty glass beer bottle against the side of an abandoned convenience store. I haven’t even made it home yet because one, Heather is still at her after-school thing, and two, I’m too pissed off to go back to that hellhole.
It’s the Thing’s day off, and if I walk in there in a blind rage, he’ll know it. He’ll take advantage of the situation and poke at me until I snap. I’ve come close to killing him before, and we both know it.
Wouldn’t that be ironic justice? The teenage girl sent to prison for life for murdering her cop/pedophile stepfather.