“Penelope,” Felix answers for me. “A friend.”
“Penelope who?” he asks.
“Uh …” Fuck. “Richards.”
He narrows his eyes. “Richards. Hmm …” The man looks me up and down, tucking his hands into the pockets of his expensive suit. “Interesting.” He turns back to the boys. “Why is she here?”
“Because she was with us that night,” Dylan says, rolling a lighter between his index finger and thumb. “She can vouch for us.” His eyes land on mine. “Can’t you, Pen?”
“Um.” I’m really confused what’s going on here. “What?”
His father’s eyes narrow. “Are you being roped in to lie for these boys?”
“No,” Alistair adds. “It’s the truth. You were at the bonfire near the Hot Springs too, the other night, weren’t you? We were dancing.”
My eyes widen.
Oh fuck.
They’re using me as an alibi.
“Yeah, I was with them. Why do you ask?”
The dean’s face is stone-cold, so much different from how Dylan behaves. “Two boys from that Phantom frat went missing, and I need to know if they’re involved.” He narrows his eyes at me. “After what happened with Nathan Reed…”
Why do I feel like he’s trying to implicate me?
Fuck, how much does he know?
Dylan frowns. “I told you, we didn’t—”
“Shhh!” His father interrupts him with a single finger. “I don’t want to hear it. I already paid for the hospital expenses as well as the damage.” He adjusts his coat. “The family chose not to sue the university. But it won’t regrow a lost limb. You should feel lucky money was all they wanted.”
I swallow. So he does know.
“We already told you we had nothing to do with it,” Felix retorts, folding his arms. “Nathan’s lying.”
“I don’t fucking care who’s lying,” the dean seethes. “This ends now.”
When no one replies, he finally turns around and walks in my direction. “If you value your time here at this university, you’d better stay away from these boys.”
A chill runs up and down my spine as the man marches past me and out the door.
“Wow …” I mutter.
That man held a kind of power, not just in his stride but in his attitude as well.
Because there hasn’t been anyone able to completely silence these boys, until now.
“Tell me about it,” Dylan scoffs, jumping up from the couch.
“What the fuck was that about?” Felix suddenly blasts through the room at Dylan. “What the fuck did you tell your father?”
“Nothing, I told you,” Dylan quips. “I don’t fucking know how he knows. Maybe Nathan told his parents and they told my father.”
“He threatened Pen, though,” Alistair adds. “If he tries to implicate us, we can always throw it in his face. That would get him kicked out of here, and his parents wouldn’t be too happy about that.”
“Why do you think his father paid them off?” Felix says through gritted teeth. “It’s the only reason we got away after letting him live.” Now his eyes focus on mine. “We’re in deep shit now, though.”
“What are you looking at me for?” I ask. “You called me here, not the other way around.”
He gets up in my face. “What did you do last night?”
I’m burning up just from the intense look in his eyes. “I was at a party.”
“With them,” he says through gritted teeth.
“You wouldn’t help me. We found one of my sister’s bullies.”
His nostrils flare. “I knew it.” He stares at Dylan and Alistair. “Those two Phantom boys … it was you.”
Alistair throws his hands in the air. “I’m pleading the Fifth.”
Dylan turns on his lighter and fishes a smoke from his pocket, setting it ablaze. “We made some fucking fireworks.”
Felix closes his eyes, rubbing them, but it won’t take away the fire literally emanating off his body. “You killed them.”
“Well, one of them died, that’s for sure,” I say. “The other one just got pummeled in the face.”
But the lethal look in Felix’s eyes the moment he opens them instantly makes me regret it.
“Don’t worry, Ali and I took care of it.”
“Just as they agreed they would, according to the deal we made,” I snide.
He tried to blame me for my sister’s death and refused to find the real people responsible.
Felix leans in until he’s only a hair’s length away from my face. “So you let them kill for you?” He points at Ali and Dylan.
It’s almost as if he considers it an insult.
I swallow. “It wasn’t intentional.”
“Why?” he growls.
“Because Josh touched my sister,” I reply.
“Josh … Josh Walton?”
“Yes,” Dylan answers.
“He admitted it to my face,” I continue, “and then tried to do it to me too.”
“I saved her,” Dylan says from the back. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Felix’s face twitches and he towers over me, then snorts. Shaking his head, he marches out the room. “I need a fucking drink.”
Wait, what? He’s not running off, is he?
I follow him out of the library and straight into the same room we were in before with the bar and the pool table.
“Felix.” I try to draw his attention, but he keeps marching on until he’s at the bar.
“Why are you running off?” Dylan asks, coming in right behind us with Alistair.
Felix grabs a glass and fills it with whiskey, chugging it down, then taking another.
“Hand me one too,” Alistair says as he approaches the bar.
“Felix …” I mutter.
Felix slides him a glass and pours it in, but slams the bottle down so harshly it makes me jolt up and down.
“Don’t,” he grits. “Don’t say my name like it belongs to you.”
His eyes light on fire, a burning brighter than the night he tortured Nathan. And it’s making me hold in my breath.
“Like you say mine as though I belong to you?” I retort. “I’m still my own person, even with this deal we’ve got going on.”
Alistair swiftly takes his glass off the bar and takes a sip.
“Is that why you had them kill for you?” Felix asks, his voice dark and heavy.
“She didn’t ask,” Dylan intervenes. “Those fuckers interrupted us when she was naked.”
“Naked?!”
The glass he’s holding shatters in his hand. Shards embed in his skin, but it doesn’t seem to faze him.
His words come out through gritted teeth. “You fucked her?”
Dylan makes a funny face. “Well … she could take a whole lot more than just me.”
Felix’s blazing eyes settle on Alistair.
Alistair frowns, lowering his glass. “Wait … you didn’t know?”
“But you put that plug inside her,” Dylan says. “I thought you meant it as a gift.”
I turn to look at him, equal parts disgusted and intrigued they’d consider me as a reward you could deliver to someone. “A gift?”
“That was meant for me and me alone!” Felix says, storming at Dylan. “You motherfucker, you fucked her without me?”
He grasps Dylan by the collar and lifts a fist.
“Get your hands off me,” Dylan barks.
“You touched something that belongs to me.”
What?
“She belongs to all of us,” Dylan replies. “That’s the whole fucking point of that fucking agreement we have with her!”
“I allowed her to be shared,” Felix says, his voice booming through the room. “That does not mean you can just go off and fuck her when I’m not around.”
Is this … what I think it is?
“What the fuck did you do with her?” Felix asks, threatening to hit him again.
“Felix, calm down,” Alistair says.
But Felix ignores him. “Did you stick your dick up her pussy? Did it feel good to fuck her when I wasn’t even there?”
Oh my God. He wants me for himself.
Dylan smirks. “You jealous?”
Felix punches him in the face, and I cover my mouth with my hand. “Oh my God.”
“Fuck you,” Felix growls, shoving Dylan away.
Fuck, they really are fighting over me. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
“Yeah, well fuck you too,” Dylan retorts, spitting the blood out in his face. “You don’t deserve her.”
“Guys, let’s not fight about this,” Alistair says. “I don’t think it’s worth it.”
“Yet you fucked her while I wasn’t around too, didn’t you?” Felix replies. “You’re a part of the problem.”
“Last I checked, we’re all a part of this agreement, and she wanted us both,” Alistair says. “Shame you don’t like sharing. I do.”
Dylan snorts. “You should’ve seen her face when she came all over me and licked up Ali’s cum.”
My whole body flushes with heat just thinking about it.
“Don’t,” Felix rasps, practically breathing fire.
“But you weren’t there,” Dylan adds.
“For good reasons, it seems,” Alistair chimes in.
“We’re not the problem here,” Dylan says, shoving a finger into Felix’s chest. “You are.”
“I’ll make you my fucking problem,” Felix growls.
“Guys,” I mutter.
But they pay no attention to me.
Dylan wipes the blood off his lip. “You’d better give me a good fucking reason not to kick your fucking ass right now.”
“You wanna try me?” Felix taunts, cracking his knuckles.
“GUYS. STOP!” I step between them and spread my arms, staring down Felix. “Stop it.”
I mean as much as I enjoy three guys fighting over me, this is not going to help anyone.
Felix eyes me down for a second, and I contemplate hitting him where it hurts by telling him how fucking hard I came. But I’m not gonna stoop that low.
“We agreed I would do whatever you told me. All three of you. And in exchange, you would help me find everyone responsible for my sister’s misery.” I swallow away the lump in my throat.
“And I did my part,” he replies, stepping closer. “Until you ran away.”
“I went to the only people who would help me,” I retort.
He briefly eyes Dylan and Alistair again.
“Hey, don’t look at us. You were the one who chased her off.”
“Did you both forget she might be responsible for Eve’s death?” he says, his face contorting. “You saw the fucking text message. You know about that fucking death pact she made with Eve.”
He walks to the cabinet and fishes out the diary I’ve been missing, holding it open on a specific page where I pasted a photo of me and my sister as a memorial.
He pulls it away, ripping off the glue that kept it all together, revealing only a part of the text I pasted inside. The last text she sent me.
Her final goodbye.
But her words are misconstrued. Butchered, because of the glue keeping part of the photo from coming off.
I’ve done everything that’s been asked and more. It’s never going to be enough. And I refuse to go through life … broken. Split in half by a decision that wasn’t mine to make.
So I will stop it now.
This bonfire near The Edge will be the last night spent at this godforsaken university—
Tears well up in my eyes seeing these words again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You put this in the diary, didn’t you?” Felix asks. “Like a little piece of truth buried along with all the lies. Just like the death pact you made with your sister.”
“Stop,” I hiss.
“Is it true?” Alistair asks as he approaches.
This is why they tormented me. Why Alistair and Dylan hung those posters. Why they tried to corner me in the stairwell. Why they chased me into the woods with those creepy masks.
Why Felix tried to break me.
I shake my head and rummage in my pocket to fish out my phone, then pull up my sister’s face. God, I haven’t seen her in such a long time that it hurts to look. But this needs to end now.
So I turn and show Dylan and Alistair the real text.
I can’t do it anymore, sis. Please don’t be mad at me. I’ve done everything I could and more. It’s never going to be enough. And I refuse to go through life … broken. Split in half by a decision that wasn’t mine to make.
So I will stop it now.
This bonfire near The Edge will be the last night spent at this godforsaken university for me.
I love you, sis.
And whatever you do, don’t ever get involved with those boys of the Skull & Serpent Society.
xoxo
Eve
Dylan reaches for my phone, and I let him take it so he can have a closer look.
“Oh … wow.”
Exactly.
“Let me see,” Alistair says, and he snatches the phone out of Dylan’s hands. “Oh boy. Felix …” he mutters.
I turn to look at him, but all he does is stare nonchalantly, shaking his bloody hand like it means nothing to him.
“You believed a lie,” I tell him to his face. “A lie you told yourself was true.”
