I hang on for dear life as the car skids across the road. My fingers curl around the hood of the car, and I hoist myself up with everything I’ve got. Despite the strong winds, I refuse to let go. We’re headed straight for the gates, and if I don’t intervene, who the fuck knows where they’ll take Dylan.
Through the window in the back, I can see Dylan kicking and punching the screen between him and his father. There’s blood all over the inside of the car and lots of shouting. None of them have noticed me yet.
But they will.
I slide across the top of the car, clutching both sides for support as we veer from side to side. With one hand, I grip the window tightly before I fish the gun Felix gave me from my pocket and smash the driver’s window.
The guy screams his lungs out as I shoot.
BANG!
The guy instantly drops dead, and the car begins to veer.
“What the fuck?” Dylan’s father yelps.
I shove the driver’s limp body against him, and I sit down in the driver’s seat.
“ALISTAIR!” Dylan exclaims, elated.
“Get the fuck out of my car!” his father screams.
“Fuck no,” I reply as I continue driving so we don’t crash into the wall.
He tries to intervene, tearing at the steering wheel like he wants to die, and I only just manage to avoid the gates. A piece of the side mirror breaks off against the metal, but we still pass through.
“Jesus fucking Christ, get off—” his father growls as he fights me for control.
“Ali! Push the button!” Dylan yells through the pane, pointing at some kind of button on the dashboard that I quickly press.
The pane between us comes down, and he immediately puts his father into a headlock, choking the life out of him.
Meanwhile, his hands are still trying to take hold of the wheel. We’re off the road and into the woods, driving through thick branches that crack the windshield while I try to narrowly avoid the trees of Priory Forest ahead.
“Let go!” Dylan growls at him.
“F-Fuck, get your hands off m-me,” his father gargles while his face turns red.
He throws open the door, and without a second thought, he actually jumps out of the vehicle while it’s still driving.
I hit the brakes as hard as I can, and we skid across the grass all the way to the Edge.
Breathing wildly, I glance through the rearview mirror at Dylan, who’s as surprised as I am that we actually made it through alive.
“You came after me,” Dylan says between breaths.
“Of course I did,” I reply. “Where you go, I go.”
A big smile appears on his cheeks as he leans in to grab my face, and he kisses me full on the lips. “Wouldn’t want it any other way,” he says when he pulls back again, biting his lip. “All I need now is Pen, and I’m in heaven.”
“Heaven? When your dad almost tried to get us killed?” I retort.
He shrugs and makes a face, nodding softly. “I’ll just ignore that part.” He cringes in pain, grasping his head. “Fuck, that gun really hit me hard.”
I get out of the car and open the back door to help him out. “Where are Pen and Felix?”
“Society house,” I reply.
Dylan stops moving. “Wait, it’s still under attack?”
“I left when her father’s guys were blasting the place,” I reply. “But I’m sure Felix will take care of it.”
Dylan’s gaze focuses on the body crawling around in the grass. “Yeah, well, their real target is right here.”
Penelope
“Dylan’s father took him!” I yell. “And Alistair probably went after him.”
“Dylan? Dylan Caruso?” my father says.
“We have to help him,” I say, turning to face Felix.
Felix nods, and he grabs my hand. “We’ll take my bike.”
“Whoa, hold on there,” my father intervenes, grabbing my arm before Felix can take me along with him. “What makes you think I’m gonna let you take my daughter with you?”
Felix’s face darkens as he releases me and gazes at my dad. The tension between them could cut a fucking pillar in half. “You can trust me.”
My father snorts and scoffs, “Trust you? You literally destroyed my other daughter’s life, and you’re asking me to trust you?”
Penelope swallows and steps in. “Let me do this, Dad.” She places her hand on his arm. “You trusted me to find out the truth, and I did. So please … trust me with Felix.”
He trusted her? So Dylan’s father was right on at least one detail. Her father was in on all of her digging around on this campus.
A smirk forms on my lips.
“What are you laughing at?” her father asks.
“It seems like your daughter has chosen,” I reply.
His nostrils flare, and he lifts his gun again. “Watch it, boy.”
Every one of his guards behind us is on edge, ready to start attacking again at even the slightest of signals.
“Dad!” Penelope warns, grabbing the gun to point it away from me. “Stop. Please. If you love me, you’ll let me do this.”
Only after a few seconds does he actually stop. “I don’t want to lose another daughter …” He looks me in the eye. “But I value your love more than anything in this world.”
Tears spring into my eyes, and I swiftly hug him, catching him off guard. His arm still snakes its way around my waist.
“I love you too, honey,” he says.
Felix just stands there, staring at the men still waiting at the front door. “Will they let me pass without putting a bullet through my head?”
“Perhaps,” Dad replies. “Can’t guarantee you’ll keep all your limbs, though.”
I stomp on his foot, and he grunts from the pain. “Dad.”
“Fine,” he says through gritted teeth as I step off again. He focuses on Felix as though he wants to gouge his eyes out. “As long as you keep your hands off my daughter.”
Felix raises his hands like he’s committed to keeping a truce.
And I’ve honestly never seen him this docile before. Normally, he would’ve sliced a finger or two off already.
My father tucks his gun into his belt and waves his hand around. “Go.”
I don’t take his permission lightly. “Thanks, Dad.”
Felix and I run off toward the exit, passing by my father’s men even though some of them still grimace when they make eye contact with him. But I don’t care about their judgment. Right now, we need to stop Dylan’s father, and I want my fucking revenge.
Felix jumps on his bike outside and says, “Hop on.”
He hands me a helmet, and I swiftly put it on, then jump on the rear seat.
“Hold on tight,” he says, and he lowers his visor and races off.
My hands wrap tightly around his waist as we drive, turning corners, the tires screeching across the asphalt. I’ve never gone this fast before, but I don’t know if my heart is raging from the speed or from how close I am to his body. I can feel each of his ripped muscles and ragged breaths, and for a second, I wonder if his heart has picked up too.
One part of me wants to put a knife to his throat for letting my sister die. For hurting me after I burned the whole place down.
But they didn’t know Eve was pregnant. Or that Dylan’s father was responsible for all our misery.
And when they realized their mistake … all they wanted to do was make things better, despite what an impossible task it truly is.
I sigh and close my eyes, waiting until the storm inside my heart passes, but it’s as relentless as the darkness outside. It doesn’t take us long to reach the gates of the property, which are still open to allow firefighters and police inside. We slip past a new convoy of cars and drive off the campus.
It’s only been a couple of minutes since Dylan was jumped and knocked out with a gun.
They couldn’t have gone far, right?
Felix’s body tightens against my hands as he looks around at our surroundings, checking to see if there’s a car anywhere.
“There!” I scream and point at an abandoned car in the grass just beyond a few trees near where the bonfire was this summer.
Felix immediately hits the throttle, and we take a sharp turn, directly headed toward the car. A body is curled on the grass near it, and two guys are crawling up from the ground.
Dylan and Alistair.
Dylan
I push away from Ali and stand on my own two feet as I barge over to my father, enraged. With a simple flick, I pull out a knife, clutching it tightly as I approach.
“Dylan, are you sure you wanna do this?” Alistair asks as he follows right behind me.
“I have to,” I reply. “All the things Penelope accused him of … it’s all true.”
I suck in a breath. The baby. The breakup. Eve jumping because she saw no other way out.
All because of him.
I clutch the knife so hard it leaves a painful indent in the palm of my hand.
But no amount of physical pain can ever come close to what’s in this decrepit my heart.
The loss, the grief … the unending rage.
My father is crawling away like a coward. A maggot.
“But he didn’t stop there,” I growl, hovering over my father’s body. “He literally sicced his worst enemy onto you, onto Felix, onto the entire society, just so he could easily get rid of everyone and escape any sort of blame.”
“What?” Alistair mutters.
He doesn’t know what I heard in that car. What despicable truth came from my father’s mouth. “He called Ricci and told him where we were so you guys would die, and he could take me.”
“Wait,” my father mumbles as I stick a knife under his throat. “I would do anything for you, Dylan, you know that. I’m your father.”
“You’re not my fucking father anymore!” I scream in his face. “You almost killed the girls I loved twice!”
“Dylan?” Penelope’s voice calls to me, and I look up.
I know she heard me. But I don’t regret saying that word out loud.
Felix has his arm around her, keeping her from running to me.
She’s here. She’s safe.
But Eve wasn’t.
We should’ve protected her from him.
I inch closer with the knife, imagining myself slicing through his throat. But with every passing second and every droplet of sweat rolling down my forehead, the idea of actually committing becomes harder and harder.
“You can’t do it, can you?”
I push myself off him and lift him from the ground so we’re face-to-face. With my knife still pointed at his face, I brace myself for the attack.
“Do it then,” he says. “If you want to kill me so badly.”
My teeth grind together, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t push myself to stab him.
Fuck!
Why can’t I fucking do it? He deserves every inch of pain.
Suddenly, Penelope comes rushing out of nowhere and stabs him in the belly.
He cringes, and I step back in shock.
“That’s for driving my sister over the edge,” Penelope growls.
“Dylan!” Alistair calls out, but I can barely hear him.
My father stumbles backward while I struggle to hold on to the knife I was determined to stab him with.
“Dylan, what are you doing?” Penelope asks, but I can barely hear her. When she grabs my arm, my eyes fixate on her grip and find her eyes after.
What is going on with me?
Suddenly, my father pulls out a gun and points it at Penelope.
I push her out of the way. “No!”
BANG!
The gunshot hits me in the shoulder, and the force knocks me down into the grass.
“Dylan! Look what you made me do.” My father’s gun is still pointed right at Penelope. “That girl needs to perish.”
When I turn to look at her, Felix has already stepped in front of her.
“I’d rather fucking die than watch you kill her in front of me,” Felix rasps.
He’d die for her?
I never realized his obsession with her went that deep … but maybe he didn’t either. And I have a feeling none of us knew we were falling for her until it was too late to stop.
I’m momentarily too stunned to move, not just from the pain but from all the bundled-up emotions too.
Until Ali steps between her and the barrel too. “I won’t let you kill her.”
My father grinds his teeth. With each passing second, his eyes looked increasingly insane, like he couldn’t stomach the idea of all of us protecting this one girl.
“That girl is responsible for all of your problems, just like her goddamn sister, and now you’re all protecting her?” he growls.
Suddenly, he points the gun away from them … and aims it at me.
“What are you doing?” I ask, writhing on the ground.
“Get up,” he growls.
I do what he says only because of the barrel of the gun and the imminent threat to my life.
“Come here,” he says.
Everyone’s on edge, including me.
Would he actually shoot me? But all the schemes, all the lies, they were all to protect me, right?
He whips his gun back and forth and says, “Come. Now!”
Any semblance of emotion is gone from his face, something that’s never happened before.
At least, not in my presence.
But I guess he kept this side of him hidden from me all this time.
I swallow and approach him.
“Dylan, don’t do it!” Penelope says.
“Don’t intervene,” I reply, terrified she might try something. “Felix, take her,” I tell him.
He nods, but Penelope protests, fighting against Felix’s strong grip on her shoulder. “No! Fuck no, I’m not going anywhere!” she yells, tears staining her eyes. “I’m not leaving you.”
I’m struck by the sincerity in her voice.
Could she possibly ever forgive me for what I did?
My father grabs my bloody arm and pulls me to him, pushing the barrel into my head. “You drove me to do this. I sacrificed everything for you, and for what?”
“You did this to yourself,” I growl. “I never asked you for a damn thing.”
“That girl was going to ruin your life!” he spits back, shoving the gun further into my head.
“So you ruined hers instead,” I grit.
He practically spits out his words. “I had no other choice!”
“So you admit it,” Penelope rasps from the side, tears rolling down her cheeks.
Watching her cry hurts more than the wound in my shoulder.
Fuck. I wish I could spare her from this pain.
“You admit you killed her,” Penelope says.
My father snorts and throws out a stilted laugh. “I didn’t force her to run off that ledge. She made that choice.”
“But you told her to leave and abort the baby or face the consequences!” Penelope screams.
Everyone is silent for a few seconds, but the air crackles like lightning.
“I did what I had to, to protect my son and—”
“Your reputation,” I interject. “Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
But instead of replying, he only pushes the gun further into my temple, confirming my suspicions.
“And then you forced Nathan and Kai to torment me to get me to leave too,” Penelope says. “They set fire to the Alpha Psi house because you told them to, didn’t you?”
“Nathan’s a tool,” my father spouts. “They were supposed to retrieve the diary and destroy the evidence, but they couldn’t even do that correctly.”
No wonder those guys didn’t want to talk. If they did, he would have them killed.
“This was never about me …” I mutter, making a fist, despite the pain. “It was about you and your poisonous need to be a perfect little family.” I brace myself. “But that family has turned to dust because of you.”
I spin on my heels and punch him in the face, but he recoils and knocks his forehead against mine. I punch him again, this time in the gut.
BANG!
The gun goes off, a bullet entering through my waist.
“Dylan!” Alistair says, trying to approach us.
“Don’t intervene!” I yell back.
“Come on then, boy,” my father taunts him. “I’ll blow your brains out before you even so much as touch me.”
“You mother—”
I grasp his wrist and force him to lower the gun, but he won’t let go without a fight. We struggle for power as we backtrack all the way to The Edge.
“Give up,” I tell him. “Give it to me.”
“And let my life be ruined by your fucked-up antics?” he retorts. “Fuck no.”
He jabs me in the stomach so hard I buck and heave.
“You deserve to rot in jail for the rest of your life,” I say through gritted teeth, looking up at him.
“I’ll kill every last one of these motherfuckers you call friends before I let that happen,” he says.
My eyes widen as he aims his gun right at Penelope.
No.
I can’t let it happen.
I throw myself at him as hard as I can, knocking him off balance.
BANG!
The gun goes off as he tumbles off The Edge, grasping my ankle just before he goes, pulling me with him.
