The ten day deadline Diesel gave the Aces was dwindling fast. They now had three. It was Monday, which meant by Thursday, fight night, their time would be up.
Each morning that came and went felt like another nail in their coffins. If Lenny Ace really had nothing to do with the douche canoe who’d conned Becca to get closer to The Crows, then why not just turn the bastard over?
He didn’t have that big of a crew, it wouldn’t be hard to narrow down the suspects. Find the culprit. Or fuck, choose one to use as a scapegoat to get out of the mess. Though, I was sure Diesel would see through a scheme like that.
“What are you thinking about?” Corvus asked, falling into step next to me as I made my way down to the cafeteria for lunch.
“What?”
“You had a face.”
I shrugged. “The Aces. Their time is almost up.”
His face darkened, gaze lifting away from me as we continued to walk. “You worried?”
I thought about it. Worried wasn’t the right word. I didn’t want anything to happen to them. To me. There was a modicum of discomfort simply because I couldn’t predict the future—see what was going to happen. But that discomfort was entirely overshadowed by the clawing need to put bodies into shallow graves.
Erase the threat before it could erase us.
I wanted to act before we were acted upon.
The waiting was killing me.
Corvus let out a little snort, shaking his head. “You’re fucking excited, aren’t you?”
I licked my lips. It wasn’t quite the right word, either. “Impatient,” I said, correcting him. “If something’s going to go down, I just wish it would happen already. I don’t like waiting. Not knowing—”
“When?” Corvus supplemented for me. “Not knowing what they are going to do and when and how they intend to do it.”
I nodded and Corvus scrubbed a palm over his mouth, sighing.
“It’s fucking exhausting being prepared for every scenario.”
“That why you’re not sleeping again?”
His expression soured, and he didn’t reply.
“If you need me to, I can—”
“I’m good,” he rushed to say, his back up, brows down. “Don’t worry about it.”
I pressed my lips together, muttering, “If you say so,” as we walked through the doors to the cafeteria to find the others.
A little sizzle of anticipation went through me at the memory of Brianna with her golden hair up in flames. The phantom smell of burnt hair still lingered in the air.
The guys had assured me nothing would come of what I’d done, and it turned out they were right. I didn’t hear a single word from the office about it. Nothing from Brianna’s father. Not his lawyers. The cops. No one.
If I wasn’t careful, it would go straight to my motherfucking head—this new position I’d fallen into. One with the kind of power I’d only ever dared to dream I could have.
I paused before following Corvus to the serving line, shocked still by the girl sitting three tables away. Alone.
A girl in an oversized sweater and sheer black tights, with beat up leather boots on her feet and a shaved head.
Brianna must’ve felt my eyes on her because she turned her head just enough to catch sight of me in her periphery, and stiffened. Her makeup was darker than usual. Heavy coal lined her eyes, winged out at the edges. Damn good falsies fringed her brown eyes, and somehow, even with the slightly reddened patches of healing skin showing through her buzzcut, she rocked the look.
Her upper lip curled as she turned back to her mostly empty tray, tapping something violently on her phone until I could hear the music blaring through her Bluetooth earbuds from here.
Brianna’s friends were sitting across the cafeteria, I noticed, with another girl I sometimes saw with them. It seemed that girl was the new queen. And Brianna Moore was the newest outcast.
A dark laugh escaped my mouth. “Welcome to the club, bitch,” I muttered to myself, snatching up a tray to catch up to Corvus at the end of the serving line. Barely paying any attention to what I was putting on my tray. I’d have Rook give it all a good sniff before I ate any of it, though I didn’t expect a repeat offense from the former queen of Briar Hall.
On a whim, I filled a bowl of the potato soup, slipping it onto Brianna’s table as I passed. “You should try it,” I told her. “It’s not half bad when it’s laxative free.”
Rook smirked at me as I slid into the table, but I couldn’t smile back, sensing something that was majorly off.
I couldn’t place it for a minute, but a glance at Grey made it pretty obvious. He sat across from me next to Rook, his tray stacked high with completely untouched food.
“Grey?” I asked, and he blinked, taken aback as though he hadn’t even noticed us sitting down.
“Everything good?”
“What? Oh. Yeah. Just…” he pushed his tray away, grimacing. “Stomach’s bugging me.”
“Never stopped you before,” Rook said, leaning forward to rest his forearms on the table, getting a better look at his brother. “What’s up, Bro?”
“I said I have a fucking stomachache, Rook. Leave it.”
Rook lifted his hands in truce, reaching into his jacket for a quick nip of whatever was in his flask this morning.
Grey’s gaze tracked above our heads, to the big round clock on the wall, and his jaw clenched.
A girly shriek rose above the din of lunchtime conversation, forcing all other sound to hush. I spun, ready to launch off the bench. Rook and Corv were primed, too, but Grey…
He didn’t seem surprised.
I searched the crowd, finding the girl standing at the edge of the room like she’d just jumped from her seat. She pointed animatedly at our table. “Oh my god. Oh my god!” she squealed, practically fucking vibrating.
“It’s him! You guys, it’s him!”
The girl next to her got up, snatching the phone from the vibrating chick’s hand to look at what set her off. She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, eyes flitting between us and the phone.
No. Between Corvus and the phone.
The girl pointed straight at Corvus, her face tainted with a scarlet flush. “It’s Primal Ethos! Corvus James is The Bone Man!”
Somehow, I found Corvus’ hand on the bench next to me. His cold as stone under my touch. If he got any paler, he’d turn into the skeleton he’d worked so hard to hide from the world.
“Corv,” I hedged, my pulse racing as the cafeteria exploded in a raucous outcry of sound. Students rushed to see what the girls were talking about. Phones chimed under tapping fingers, searching. Eyes watching, wide and incredulous. All of them on Corvus.
On The Bone Man.
Fuck.
“Oh my god, can I, like, have your autograph,” a brunette asked, hurrying over with a sharpie while she pulled down the neck of her shirt to expose the tops of her round breasts. An eager gleam in her eyes that had my darkness roaring to the surface.
I was on my feet in a second, shoving her until her fat ass hit the tile. “Get the fuck back,” I hissed.
Corvus rose behind me, the entire bench scraping over the floor as he pushed free of the table, the screeching sound sending the cafeteria back into a buzzing silence.
“Wait,” the girl on the floor whined, but Corvus was already gone. Storming from the cafeteria in a wake of a hundred whispering voices.
