“What the fuck is this? Shitting on my parade day?”
I don’t pause at Nikolai’s voice on my way inside the mansion. Instead, I reach the fridge and grab a bottle of water.
He throws the nearest object he can find at me, a Zippo, and I tilt my head to the side, letting it collide with the bottle of vodka. It shatters against the counter in a ceremony of glass and liquor.
“I’m assuming you’ll clean it up and replace my vodka,” Jeremy says from the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed.
“It’s my vodka. Fuck off.” My cousin shoves an ice pack on his swollen jaw and props his foot on the edge of the sofa.
Leaning against the counter, I cross my legs at the ankle. “Bad mood?”
“And you’re not? That loser won against you.”
I lift a shoulder. “I won something better than a meaningless match.”
Like Glyndon’s company and even a temporary truce from fighting me once she was watching those fireflies—and I wasn’t touching her.
She eventually relaxed once I forced my hand to remain still. Something that proved to be harder in practice than theory. Turning this into a habit is out of the question. After all, I only need her to get her guard down a little, let me in a little so I can figure her all out and, in retrospect, delve into the reasons behind my interest in her.
Am I ready to go the extra mile for that? Sure as fuck.
Considering the crease in her brows when I drove her back to her dorm, I’d say I still have a ways to go.
She’s a stubborn, hotheaded little shit, and I’m here for every fucking second of it.
Glyndon might be the solid, huge rock, but I’m water and water might slam into the rock at first, but it’ll eventually break through it.
“What’s better than winning, motherfucker?” Nikolai grunts. “Next time, don’t take my fight if you’re going to lose it. My image is at stake here, Satan’s heir.”
I pull out my pack of cigarettes and stare at it for a beat, remembering Glyndon’s words from earlier about poison. Then I shake my head and stuff one between my lips. “I assume you won the one after?”
“Barely,” Jeremy answers on his behalf, then heads to the minibar and pours himself a drink. “An art student nearly beat him to death first.”
“Bullshit!” Nikolai jumps up and points his ice pack at Jeremy. “I was only taking it easy on him at the beginning. And that bitch is no ordinary art student. He obviously works out.”
I raise a brow and blow out a trail of smoke. “Superhuman art student?”
“Maybe one of those comic book superheroes, huh?” Jeremy prompts. “Posh rich boy by day and vigilante by night.”
“With a mask, a cape, and a bat car.”
“Maybe a suit, too?”
“Fuck you both simultaneously.” Nikolai flops back against the sofa. “For your information, Landon was the reigning king in all the championships he participated in AND he’s the current leader of the Elites.”
Jeremy props an elbow on the counter beside me and takes a sip of his drink. “Our Niko actually knows information like that? Since when?”
“Since Gareth was whispering in my ear. And what the fuck? I know all the information.”
“That implies you’ll use violence.”
“Of fucking course. Why would I need to fill my head with other boring information?”
I tap the cigarette in the bottle of water, letting the ashes tarnish the pure liquid. “Landon?”
“Landon King,” Nikolai offers. “Creighton’s cousin, or second cousin, or what-the-fuck ever. I say if his bitch clone brother hadn’t shown up out of thin air, he would’ve kept the fight going all night long. That crazy motherfucker smiles when he’s beaten up, like you, Satan’s heir.” He kicks the table, and it tumbles down, all the glass shattering to minuscule pieces. “Let’s fight, Killer. I still have energy to purge.”
“Pass.” Not only will he go for hours on end, but I’m also in a good mood and don’t want to fight.
It’s not my preferred purging method, anyway.
“Control your temper.” Jeremy sits beside him and offers him his drink. “It’s going to get you killed one day.”
“One day isn’t today.” He swallows the contents of the glass in one go. “And it’s not temper, it’s energy, Jer. Goes all the way to my dick. I should’ve gotten laid tonight.”
“So Landon and his twin brother ruined your night?” I circle back to the topic at hand.
“Fuck those rich little boys, especially the dainty one who looked no different from a lotus flower. He shared Landon’s looks but had the aura of a weakling.”
“Not to mention, he stole your fun,” Jeremy points out and Nikolai tsks.
“Stole your fun, how?”
“Well, cousin, as soon as that dainty lotus flower showed up, Landon hiked up the aggression and went all in. But when he left, Landon actually lost. Just like that. Talk about weird twin shit.”
He was probably scaring his brother.
Well, fuck.
Maybe Glyndon is right and her brother is on the spectrum. I know Eli King is for sure. We met as kids through our parents, and he was the only one who had a look that mirrored mine.
Irrevocably bored.
Now the question is whether to eliminate Landon or not. Let’s wait and see if he forms an obstacle in my endeavors with Glyndon first.
“I swear to fuck I’m done with twin fuckery after dealing with Mia and Maya’s swapping shit. Speaking of my sisters, let me make sure they’re in their dorms and not sneaking somewhere and causing someone to lose their lives.” Nikolai fishes out his phone and taps a message—probably to his bodyguards. Being part of the Bratva gives both Jeremy and Nikolai special security that even the campus can’t interfere with.
“Make sure to tighten security.” Jeremy’s brow furrows. “I caught Anoushka sneaking around in the fight club with her new friends.”
“Shouldn’t have let her go to the enemy’s territory,” Nikolai says absentmindedly. “Now, she’ll start developing habits of fraternizing with those posh kids.”
“Over my dead body.” Jeremy takes a long drink. “I don’t like her friends. Especially that loud silver-haired one.”
“Cecily Knight,” I supply for him. “Her father owns an investment corporation and her mother is some higher-up in social services.”
“And you know all of this because?” Jeremy asks.
“I do my research about our neighbors. Besides, I told you Aiden and Elsa King, Creighton and Eli’s parents, are friends with my folks. And so are Cole and Silver Nash, Ava’s parents.”
Nikolai pulls the ice pack away from his face, revealing a purple bruise near his temple. “How about fake lotus and Landon’s parents?”
“Never met them. Heard of them, though. Their father has half of the King fortune. The other half belongs to Aiden. Their mother is a renowned artist.” I type her name in the search bar of my phone and show them the sketch paintings of people, places, and memories.
Nikolai whistles. “Don’t understand shit about art, but these would look sick as tattoos.” He snatches the phone to stare at a family picture taken at some opening of a gallery.
Levi holds Astrid by the waist as she smiles at the camera, seeming happy, fulfilled, like Mom does whenever Gareth and I show up to her charities.
Landon stands beside his mother, holding her shoulder. Brandon is by his father’s side, grabbing Glyndon’s shoulder.
Among all of them, Landon’s smile is the fakest. No one would discern it, not even his parents, but he’s putting on the most epic show so that even he probably believes he’s happy to be there.
Been there, done that, have the pictures to prove it.
Glyn’s smile however is the saddest. She doesn’t want to smile, looking a bit uncomfortable in her formal little dark blue dress that matches her mother’s pantsuit.
She’s putting on a show but in a completely different way than her brother. They’re both pretending to be happy, but she’s the only one who’s feeling bad about it.
“Met them only once and I can tell this is the fake lotus.” Nikolai taps Brandon’s face. “On closer inspection, he’s hot. Not sure if I’d fuck him or his sister. Maybe both at the same time if they’re not weirded out about seeing each other naked.”
I pull my phone from his hand and stalk to the stairs without a word. Then fetch my Zippo and throw it in a flash. It hits Nikolai on the side of his head—the injured side.
Good. I see my quarterback skills aren’t completely gone.
Nikolai slams a hand on his temple and howls, “What the fuck was that for, you motherfucking fuck?”
Jeremy tips his head against the sofa and laughs, the sound following after me as I reach the top of the stairs.
My steps are nonchalant, normal, but my body’s temperature is not. Maybe I should beat Nikolai to the point that Aunt Rai won’t recognize him next time she sees him.
Gareth’s door opens and he steps out holding the phone to his face, a smile on his lips. “There he is.”
He comes to stand beside me, placing the phone in our direct view. Mom and Dad are on the other end, looking to be in the garden.
It’s around dusk there, and the sun makes its descent behind them, giving them a picturesque background.
Reina Ellis is a beautiful blonde—the type you find on the cover of magazines and wonder how the hell does she look to be in her thirties when she’s in her late forties. She has a natural shine in her blue eyes, one that neither Gareth nor I inherited.
My father, however, has a harder look, and it probably has to do with his line of work and the big-fish-eats-little-fish mentality. Let’s say time has treated Asher Carson well, too. He has sharp features that both my brother and I got in our genes, and he passed out his green eyes to Gareth. In a way, my brother is a copy of him, both in looks and personality.
I’m the bleaker version of both of them.
The black sheep of the family.
An automatic smile pulls on my lips. “Hi, Mom. Looking great, as usual.”
“Don’t give me that, you ungrateful son. You haven’t called me in two days.”
“I’ve been busy with studies. You know how brutal med school is. Besides”—I hold my brother by the shoulder—“I’m sure Gareth tells you all about me.”
His smile remains in place and he doesn’t even stiffen. We have an unspoken rule that we’re the perfect siblings in front of our parents.
I break that rule if I feel like it, but Gareth never does.
He cares.
“I’m sure you’re busy, but check in occasionally.” She sighs. “I miss your faces all the time. Will you come visit, Kill? I haven’t seen you since the summer.”
“I’ll see how things go with school.”
“Make time and visit over the next holiday,” Dad tells me—no, he informs me.
I counter the hostile energy with an even bigger smile. “Hi, Dad. Do you miss me, too?”
I expect him to fall for the provocation, but he smiles while stroking Mom’s shoulder. “Of course, I miss you, son. Your mom and I would love to have you over with your brother next time.”
“I’ll make sure he comes along,” Gareth says like the golden fucking boy he is.
“Wait a second.” Mom gets close to the camera, staring at me. “Oh my God! Is that a cut on your lip? Killian Patrick Carson, did you get into a fight?”
Mom’s habit of using my middle name when she’s upset is a translation of her giver-of-life-and-name status.
I can’t help being amused by it every time.
Gareth goes rigid, completely blindsided, but by the time he opens his mouth, I’m already grinning. “Unless making out is a fight, I don’t think so?”
Her lips fall open. “Didn’t need that image.”
“You’re the one who asked, Mom. Besides, I’m at my prime. You didn’t think I’d just be studying, right?”
“Tone it down,” Dad warns. He has a sixth sense of figuring out when it’ll become too much for my mom and cuts it off. Over time, I’ve started to develop that sense, too.
Only, I use it to push people to their limits. Not my mom.
Others.
That’s the only thing Dad and I agree on.
“Well, I guess that’s fine as long as you’re not getting into trouble.” Her voice softens. “Take care of each other, boys, okay? I love you.”
“Love you, too, Mom,” Gareth says.
“Love you, Mom,” I speak with the same level of sincerity as my brother.
She hangs up with a huge smile on her face.
As soon as they’re gone, Gareth pushes away from me as if I were the plague.
“Go easy on the disgust level, big bro. It makes you look weak.”
He flips me off and stalks back to his room.
I head to mine and check my phone. Countless unread texts and booty calls sit in my notifications. A few from annoying clingy pests who don’t know how to simply pick up their dignity and back off.
My feet come to a halt in the middle of the room as I scroll to the photos from tonight.
Plural.
The first was from afar when I first saw Glyndon with Annika and her friends. I watched her for exactly fifteen minutes before I told Jeremy about his sister’s presence and got my opening to approach her.
In the pictures I’ve taken, Glyndon is either listening or laughing about something they said. She’s not the talker in that group—or in her family—and it shows.
The other pictures were with the fireflies. I zoom in on her face, then trail my finger down to where her hand is clenched on her shorts.
I can almost smell raspberries and paint as I trace the contours of her cheeks, neck, lips.
My thumb taps on her face and I can finally see what Devlin loved about her, what he struggled with for her.
How he floundered and cried and begged on his fucking knees for her.
Still, he didn’t fuck her.
She didn’t want to, is what she said.
Motherfucker got friend-zoned to death. Literally.
I’d feel sorry for him if I knew how. But since I don’t, I’m completely fine with finishing what he couldn’t.
