She’s consumed me already.
With just one look, one touch, she’s beguiled me.
Fuck.
I should’ve known following her that night of the party was a bad idea, but I just had to go and stalk the girl Ares was obsessing about … and now I’m obsessed too.
I have to get out of here.
I storm down the hallway in her mother’s house, angry as hell.
I should not have fucking done that.
But fuck, I wanted to so fucking badly I couldn’t stop myself any longer.
She pissed me off with her Little Miss Innocent ruse and her incessant need to say no straight to my face, but most of all, that delicious fucking body I just can’t get enough of.
I knew I would one day go this far when I saw her touching herself.
That I would take without asking.
That I would taste her in my mouth and be so overcome by the desire to claim her as my own that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.
I hate her for it. I hate what she’s done for me. I hate that I barely know her and still want her to think only of me.
If Ares finds out, he’ll definitely kill me.
And there’s no way Crystal will be able to clean up the fucking mess I made and still look presentable. Dad’s gonna see her and know what I did.
Fuck.
I have to get out of here.
I storm down the stairs and walk straight past the dinner table.
“Caleb?” my dad calls as I head for the front door. “Where are you going?”
“Away.”
Her mom looks at me like she’s seen a ghost.
“But we haven’t even finished dinner yet,” Dad says, frowning at me. “What happened?”
“Have fun,” I growl. “I’m out of here.”
And I slam the door shut behind me.
Crystal
I steady myself against the wall as I step out of the tub, but I pause when I see the girl in the mirror. A pretty face … destroyed by a boy who wanted to teach her a lesson.
I fish my phone from the sink and tuck it into my pocket. I open the faucet and gurgle to spit out his taste, then grab my toothbrush and clean my teeth and tongue, but nothing I do can rid me of the stain that is Caleb.
My mother invaded his dad’s life, and now he’s invaded mine as a punishment.
But I never gave up, and I won’t.
I clean my face off with a paper towel and throw it away, then I brush through my hair with my fingers and get rid of any last blotches. But my face still looks like I got run over by a freight train.
And the girl underneath is far from the one I remember.
His little jewel… slowly cracking.
Two years ago
“Dad,” I mutter, yawning as I open the door to his workshop. “What are you doing up so late?”
He cuts the last few stems of the roses and places them down on his workbench. “Oh, just finishing up this order. Did I wake you?”
I saunter into the shop and marvel at all the beautiful bouquets he’s made that weren’t here a day ago.
“You did all this tonight?”
He nods. “A fickle customer. They decided to change their order at the last minute, and I wasn’t prepared.”
I look at the clock in the corner. It’s already way past midnight. He should be sleeping too.
“Dad …” I sigh. “You need your sleep too.”
“I’ll be fine, don’t worry,” he replies.
Always the stubborn one. He can never say no to an order, no matter how hard it is to create or how many bushels of flowers it’ll take. Despite earning only so little on his craft …
I touch the red and white roses, which smell like perfume and feel as delicate as silk against my fingers. “If they’re so difficult, why not just cancel the order?”
He places down the knife he was cutting them with. “Oh no. There is no canceling. Not with this customer.” He swallows, almost as if he finds it hard to admit. He approaches me and grabs my face, placing a gentle peck on my forehead. “But you don’t need to worry about that. I’ll make it work. Just go to sleep.”
“I do worry about you, Dad,” I murmur. “These customers sound like they need to be told no.”
He shakes his head. “Impossible.”
“Then why did you take the job?” I ask, and I grab his hand. “We don’t need their money. We can do without. I can get a job too, and we can—”
“Oh, my pretty little jewel,” he interrupts, a gentle smile on his face. “So concerned about other’s well-being.” He grabs a rose off one of the bushes he created and plucks it, then tucks it into my hair. “I raised you right.”
I smile and blush, feeling the prickles against my ear. “Yes, you did, Dad.”
Tears well up in my eyes. I can’t help it. He sacrifices so much to keep this family fed.
He catches one of the tears with his thumb. “Don’t cry, my jewel. Your face is far too pretty for those tears to stain it.”
I laugh it off. “I just worry too much.”
“I know you do.” He looks down at me from underneath his eyelashes. “But I need you to go to college. Okay? And you need to make sure you study hard, and to do that, you need your sleep.” He grabs my shoulders and turns me around so I face the door again. “So go back to bed, little jewel, and we’ll see each other again at breakfast in the morning.”
He pushes me forward, so I keep walking, but I can’t help but glance over my shoulder. “Promise me you’ll go to bed too, Dad. I know you want to take care of us, but you have to take care of yourself too.”
He picks up the bouquet he was working on again. “I promise I will take care of … everyone.”
Even now, he can never choose himself.
“Sleep tight, little jewel.”
Present
His pretty little jewel.
Tainted.
But not destroyed.
Dad wouldn’t want me to give up that easily.
I grab some of my mom’s foundation and smear it on my face to conceal the splotches and tap on some of her pink blush. Then I grab her mascara and put some on.
There. Much better.
I turn toward the tub, which is a complete mess, and grasp the shower curtain and put it all into the big bin in the corner. No way we’re going to use that ever again.
I open the door and blink a couple of times from the brightness of the light.
I hadn’t even realized I spent so much time in the darkness with him.
I take in a deep breath and go downstairs. Gloom overwhelms me at the thought of having to see him sitting there with a grin on his face, knowing full well what he just did.
But when I finally get to the dining room, he’s gone.
“Crystal? What’s going on?” my mom asks. “Is everything okay?”
“Um … yeah,” I mutter, trying to put up a fake smile. “I just showed him around and put on some makeup while I was upstairs too.”
“O-kay.” My mom frowns.
God, I hope she believes my lie.
“You sure took a lot of time showing him around upstairs,” she says.
I blush and avert my eyes. “Yeah … Anyway, where’s Caleb?”
“He left,” she responds.
“I don’t know what’s up with him. I apologize for the rudeness,” his dad says, clearing his throat.
“It’s fine,” my mom replies with a polite smile. “It happens. I know how difficult it can be to raise kids on your own.”
“Right, thank you,” he responds with a smile.
“Um, Mom, you’re gonna have to replace the shower curtain,” I mutter.
Her brows furrow. “What? Why?”
“I accidentally leaned into it, and it broke off. Sorry.” I rub my lips together. “I put it in the bin. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“It’s okay. Thank you for telling me. Do you know why Caleb left?”
“No.” I lie, shrugging. “Did he say something?”
“No, he just ran off,” she replies.
“He does that sometimes,” his dad adds. “Things have been difficult on him ever since his mom …” His dad swallows away the lump in his throat. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll talk to him later. Promise.”
My mom reaches for his hands. “Thank you. I’d love that. I really want this to work.”
So quickly falling in love already. I’m impressed.
“Me too,” his dad says. “And for what it’s worth, I think you cooked a lovely dinner.”
They smile at each other, and my mom blushes. “Thank you.” Then she looks at me. “Let’s eat, Crystal.”
I nod and sit back down again like everything’s normal.
She’ll never know what I did for her and never find out what I plan to do. Because I’ll take my secrets with me to the grave.
Ares
The next day
I’m glad we finally managed to get rid of those damn bodies in the freezer, but it was far too much trouble for my liking, with Blaine’s connections being iffy at best. Too many men asked questions they shouldn’t be asking, but there is no way in hell I would ever ask my dad’s men to take care of it, so I guess I’m content.
“Hey, don’t be so pouty,” Blaine muses as he sits beside me just as class starts.
“I’m not. I’m just contemplating the best course of action now that those men are dead,” I say.
His brows furrow. “You think they’ll come after us?”
“I don’t think it. I know it.” I lean on the table on my elbows and tap my fingers together. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“But they were just peons,” Blaine says. “They shouldn’t have stepped onto our territory if they wanted to live.”
“They’re lures,” I respond.
He frowns. “What … like …?”
“Bait,” Caleb adds as he flops down onto the bench. “To get us to react. And we did.”
“You’re late,” Blaine mutters, casually filing his black-painted nails.
Caleb shrugs and ignores him. “Anyway, there’s no trace of those bodies or the kills. If anyone asks, we’ll just deny we’re involved. Easy.”
“You’re a fool if you think that will stop those fuckers,” I tell him, leaning back in my seat and fishing my vape out of my bag.
The teacher narrows his eyes at me as I take a drag right in front of him, but I don’t care. He won’t kick me out. He knows the power our family name holds at this fucking university.
That’s the only positive thing about it.
“What do you want to do about it, then?” Blaine asks, snorting. “Face them head-on? That’s a massacre.”
“No,” I say, taking another deep drag of the vape. “Let them come to us.” I hand the vape to Blaine, who seems eager to take a drag as well.
“Oh, cherry flavored. My favorite,” Blaine muses like a happy bird.
Caleb’s phone keeps buzzing, and I look over at him as he continuously scrolls on a social media profile without a care in the world that people are texting him. But the pictures I see floating by make me narrow my eyes.
Crystal Murphy.
I tilt my head and watch him scroll faster and faster, as though he’s memorizing each photo until they blend into one. A perfect photo for a perfect girl.
Too perfect to destroy …
Yet neither of us can help ourselves.
I lean in to whisper into his ear, “Her?”
He stops and slams his phone down on the desk like he got caught masturbating.
“Don’t worry,” I say, placing a hand on his knee. “I won’t tell a soul.”
He doesn’t respond, merely quivers when I slowly raise my hand up to his thigh.
“When?”
“After I watched her play with herself,” he responds.
“When you came on her window?”
He nods. “I couldn’t stop thinking about her.” He breathes out a sigh and makes a fist with his hand. “She followed me.”
I stop moving. “How do you know?”
“I saw her and her mother at the Fi’s Cups and Cakes store at the same time I was there with my dad. She was waiting for me. I’m sure of it.”
“Oh, this is getting interesting,” Blaine muses, taking another drag of my vape. “Tell us more.”
Caleb grinds his teeth. “My dad took me out to dinner to meet his new girlfriend, and it turned out to be her fucking mom.”
My eyes widen, and my fingers dig into his flesh. But he doesn’t even flinch.
“She sent her mom to my dad. I know she did,” Caleb grits. “It’s too much of a coincidence, but she won’t admit it.”
“Hmm …” A smile forms on my lips. “So the rose turns out to be prickly after all.”
Blaine watches us with amusement. “You know, I quite like you two getting obsessed over something other than each other for once.”
I ignore him and grab Caleb’s phone so we can both look at the pictures he was obsessing over. “She’s an enigma, isn’t she? A beautiful mystery you can’t wait to crack open and uncover.” I lick my lips at the sight of her gorgeous face, wondering how it looked from his point of view when she came from my fingers.
He and Blaine are the only ones who saw.
But I will have my chance to see what her face looks like as she falls apart soon enough now that I know what she’s been up to.
A wicked grin spreads on my cheeks as my hand slides up even farther across Caleb’s thigh.
“Oh boy, here we go,” Blaine mutters. “You’ve made her your target now, haven’t you?”
Caleb slowly nods, nails digging into the wood of his desk as I reach his shaft.
“She made herself a target when she hurled her mom at your dad,” I whisper, poking at his thick length, which bobs up and down in his pants. “She deserves to be punished along with her friends.”
He glances my way, the desire in his eyes so fierce it’s hard to ignore, and it makes me want to slam my lips onto his. But I’ll let him simmer in his heat for a little longer.
“That girl …” I whisper into his ear, “We’re going to destroy her, and she’s going to beg us to do it.”
