“He’s dead?” Vic asks again and Cal casts a glance over his shoulder as he gets the water started. I’d thought before, when Callum started stripping in his room at his grandma’s house, that when he took off his hoodie, he seemed more … vulnerable. Now that I see him here, naked and bathed in the yellow of the bathroom light, I can fully admit that I’ve never been more wrong about anything. There is nothing vulnerable left in Callum Park, and that’s what makes him so damn lovely. He has a single-minded focus that just so happens to be me.
“Oh, he’s dead,” Cal confirms with a slight nod, turning back to the water and letting it stream over his hands, taking swirls of pink down the drain with it. “But it was close.”
Oscar waves his hand impatiently, gray eyes narrowed and focused on Callum like he, too, can see right through people.
“Keep going,” he prompts, removing his iPad from beneath his arm to take notes. Aaron and Hael hang back, sharing a joint of their own, the smoke mingling with the one clutched between my own fingers.
“When he took off, I chased after,” Callum explains, wetting his lower lip and closing his eyes as the water sluices between them. “Maybe not the best idea I’ve ever had.” Cal splashes water over his face and sighs. Personally, I’m too busy taking note of his myriad cuts and bruises. He looks like he got his ass kicked worse than me. “You should’ve seen the other guy,” Cal whispers huskily, and I flick my attention up to his face to find him grinning at me. I don’t know how he can smile like that, injured the way he is. “Anyway, I managed to stumble on Mason Miller.”
A chill creeps over me at the sound of that name, even though I’m fairly certain I’ve never heard it before.
“Mason motherfucking Miller,” Victor says carefully, glancing over at Oscar. “Maxwell’s second-in-command. So, you found him, but did you kill him?”
“Nope.” Cal turns back around and starts to scrub himself down with my French soap. Heh. My boys, covered in my scent. I could get used to that. “He’s going to be a challenge; he anticipated every move I made before I even knew I was making it.” He doesn’t even open his eyes as he says this, like it’s not that big of a deal.
But it is.
Because anyone that Cal considers an equal or, hell, a better is terrifying to me.
“How do you stop a garrote?” I whisper, even though it’s slightly off-topic. I can’t even imagine.
Callum glances back at me, a grim smile on his beautiful mouth.
“This guy was a professional. He used a thin wire, twisted it, and then turned. In that case, you have to hit for the groin, palm strike to the ear, then kick him directly in the dick.” Cal smiles again, but his eyes darken with remembered violence. “Piece of shit. The only reason that I kicked his ass is because I’m in love.”
I flush all over and give him a look, one that he returns with a steady, even stare.
“It’s true. I have a reason to win.” Cal turns back to the spray as Victor snorts and I glance back to find Oscar frowning slightly.
“There’s no way James Barrasso managed to get his father’s second to take part in some half-assed plan. Ophelia and Trinity are bullshitting us for sure. They knew this was coming.” Oscar tucks his iPad back under his arm. “Maxwell knew about this.”
“They were after Stacey’s crew,” I say, because I haven’t even had a chance to tell Vic how the whole thing started. I bite my thumbnail and look up at Oscar. “She had a slip for Principal Vaughn’s office; I saw her in the hall just before she got shot.”
“And you were in the hall why?” Oscar purrs at me, and though I try my best to smirk, the expression just won’t form the way it’s supposed to. I’m too nervous, I think.
“I told Mr. Darkwood I was going to write a paper about the patriarchal influence on women’s opinions of pubic hair.” I shrug my shoulders as Oscar cocks a sharp brow at me and Hael howls with laughter from behind him. “Anyway, Vaughn must’ve called Stacey to his office. Either Mr. Darkwood was in on it, and sending me to Vaughn’s office was part of the master plan, or else I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be.”
Jesus. How many fucking times can a girl get ganked during her senior year?
“If it weren’t for your text, Blackbird,” Hael begins, stepping up between Oscar and Vic. “I’d probably be dead. First shooter appeared about twenty seconds later; I barely made it out of the classroom.”
“Well then, you should thank Stacey; she saved all our lives.” I pause as I think about Mr. Darkwood. Him, too. I have no idea if he’s dead or not, but I hope not. I’ll let the guy dock a few points off my next assignment for the word ebon. I don’t mind. “Actually, never mind. You can thank me, too. In dick.” I gesture at him with the joint, and he snorts. But then I catch sight of Aaron’s face behind him and I just know that I can’t keep my new secret for long.
No lies, no secrets, right? That’s Havoc policy.
My stomach churns with nerves. Two guys down, three to go … Only, I’m pretty sure these three are going to make a way bigger deal out of it than necessary. Vic with his possessive desire to impregnant me (fucking gross), Oscar with his emotional intimacy issues, and Hael with all his previous baby mama drama.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
I take another drag on the joint and attempt to avoid staring at Cal’s tight ass.
“Oh, don’t worry about asking for dick, princess. You’ll get plenty of it.” Vic lights up a cigarette and smirks at me. “If I were you, I’d be asking for get out of jail free cards instead.”
I flip him off, but my mind is already spinning with possibilities.
Ophelia made a deal with Trinity—likely by blackmailing her about being a brother-fucker—to marry Vic. This would, if she could pull it off, effectively give her a portion of the inheritance. She clearly has some connection with the GMP as well, likely also in regard to her mother’s money. So why send goons after us if they were already winning?
“They weren’t there to hurt Vic,” I muse, thinking on it for a moment as I taste the bitter tang of marijuana smoke on my tongue. The THC tingles as I pull in another hit, savoring the fruity flavor of it. Swear to fuck, whatever the strain of weed is, be it Pineapple Express or Pink Cookies or what the hell ever, it tastes exactly the way it’s named. “The GMP, I mean. I bet they were going to leave Victor alive.”
“You think they just wanted to clean house?” Vic clarifies, and I nod, struggling to find all the pieces and put them together in some kind of order that makes sense. In order to fight an enemy that’s stronger than you, you have to understand them. Subterfuge over brute strength.
And this, this is why Havoc needed a Havoc Girl.
I look over at Vic and see that he’s waiting with his cigarette halfway to his mouth, like he actually cares what I have to say. I appreciate that. When he put that crown on my head, he wasn’t just posturing. He meant the gesture with the entirety of his inky black heart.
“Ophelia would never let them kill you because the money then defaults to charity, yes?” Vic gives a curt nod, and it occurs to me that his grandmother must’ve really seen something awful in her daughter to think up a stipulation like that. Likely, the reason she wanted him to live with his alcoholic father was to keep him away from Ophelia as well. Because even a drunk is better than a devil. “And they didn’t kill me when they had the chance either. There’s something to that.”
I remember James’ rage when he finally caught up to me. “Find the little bitch and put a bullet in her. I’m done playing games.” The question is: what game, exactly, were they playing to begin with?
Victor just stares back at me as Cal shuts the water off and I scramble to get him a towel. He takes it and then throws an arm around my shoulders to keep himself upright while he dries off, getting me wet in the process—just not in the way I’d normally like.
A rush of hot heat between my thighs is not the welcoming signal that it usually is. I look down to find blood on my shorts. Again.
“Bernadette Channing,” Vic warns, and I close my eyes for a moment against the penetrating depth of his stare.
Motherfucker.
I can’t hold onto this any longer, so I just … don’t.
I open my eyes.
“The hospital called to tell me I was pregnant,” I say, and I swear on the devil’s tits, you could hear a pin drop in that bathroom. Hael glances back at me from his place in the hallway as Aaron offers up a melancholic but encouraging smile from behind him. “Also … I’m … not pregnant anymore.” I gesture at my bloodied shorts for emphasis, forcing myself to meet Vic’s gaze.
“What?” Victor’s voice is so sharp that I almost cringe at the sound of it. Instead, I just keep staring down those obsidian eyes of his, watching as he tries to keep control of his temper and almost fails. Vic. The master of control. He’s fucking seething.
“Do we need to go to the hospital?” Oscar asks, his voice strangely calm, almost inflectionless. His emotions are locked away in a vault right now.
Hael, on the other hand, has braced his palm against the wall and is currently bent over, eyes squeezed shut. When he lifts his head and stares at me over Oscar’s shoulder, I feel a wave of exhaustion crash over me. I need sleep. Desperately so.
“No,” I say, because I’m not totally ignorant. Once, in tenth grade—just before she called Havoc on me, coincidentally—Kali thought she might be having a miscarriage. She’d slept with this boy, ugh, what was his name? That’s right Clarence. I remember thinking that no kid born after 1945 would be named Clarence. Anyway, she thought she was pregnant, and then she thought she was having a miscarriage. We looked it up. “There’s nothing they can do.”
“Bernie,” Vic says, his tone a warning. It’s thick with fear and upset and possessiveness. In short, it’s perfect. I ignore him, leaning down to flick open the lid of the toilet and then dropping my shorts as if I were Callum, as if I don’t care that all five of them are staring at me in that way of theirs, like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.