“What happened to you?” Victor asks, tilting his head slightly to one side, his dark eyes even darker in the mysterious shadows of the theater. Prescott High hasn’t received proper funding in years, but Ms. Keating busts ass every fall to raise money for the arts programs. She thinks artistic endeavors can heal damaged souls. It’s a lofty ideal, but impractical at best. Nobody can save us, society’s throwaways. “You used to be so …” He reaches out and lifts a lock of my hair, tossing a dark smirk my direction. “Sweet.”
“You,” I say, without flinching, without hesitating. From a chair in the front row, Hael chuckles, playing with his phone, probably texting some girl. Out of them all, he’s the biggest whore, hands down. Oscar sits on the edge of the stage, legs crossed at the knee, working on his iPad again. “Now what’s my price?”
“Seven people, identities unknown,” Oscar says, his voice mellifluent and mellow, but dangerous as hell, like a fine bottle of brandy one could drown in. It’d be so easy to, with those sweet, smooth sips. Might kill you in the wrong dose, but it goes down easy. “One of whom I’m simply assuming is that cop father of yours.”
“He is not my father.” The words come out like the first snap of hoarfrost on the branches, unforgiving and merciless, destroying the sweetness of spring and summer in an instant. I’ve never been more adamant about anything in my life.
Vic watches me, unperturbed, as Callum pauses and slips a Phantom of the Opera mask over his face, snapping the elastic in the quiet space. Aaron isn’t here, his lack of presence as strong a statement as any words he might say if he were.
“Pardon me, that cop stepfather of yours,” Oscar continues as Vic watches me, dark and unyielding, a stone wall that can’t be breached. What makes this work, what makes Havoc an option for me, is that they’re neither black nor white, just this unrelenting sea of gray. Make a bargain, pay a price, reap the rewards. I know what’s expected of them, now I just need to find out what’s expected of me.
But I’ve already had this conversation with myself, and I know how far I’m willing to go: I’ll pay anything, do anything, to get what I want. What was left of me, of Bernadette Blackbird, died along with my sister, so my only recourse here is revenge. I’ll take it.
“But regardless of parentage, a cop is a cop,” Oscar continues, pushing his glasses up his nose with his middle finger. His lenses shimmer in what little light there is. “And that’s a big job, dealing with someone like that. I’ve spent all week calculating the risks, and there are many.”
“Too many,” Vic scoffs, shaking his head and running his tattooed fingers through his dark hair. He surveys me, a girl he’s known since we started attending the same elementary school ten years ago. We were never friends, per se, but I remember when I first transferred from the fancy Montessori school downtown, and the other kids picked on me for being snobby (maybe I was, I don’t remember). Victor stood up for me once. He pushed a kid down the slide for pulling my pigtails.
I haven’t forgotten.
I also haven’t forgotten that when I was fifteen years old, he locked me in a closet for a week with nothing but bottled water, granola bars, and a bucket. All because Kali Rose-Kennedy asked him to. That bitch. I’ve always wondered what I did to make her hate me.
“Why do you do it anyway?” I ask, feeling Vic’s hot gaze sweep over me like a summer storm. His attention, it burns as hot as his fingers on my arm. When he looks at me, I can barely breathe. There’s a fine line between hate and lust, isn’t there? I’m sure I feel equal parts of both when he stares at me with his heavily lidded eyes, long lashes, and hard mouth. This is a man built of sin and heartache. He’s as broken as I am. “The whole Havoc thing? I’ve never understood it. You’re not beholden to anyone, so why tell the whole world that you are? That one word can command you?”
“Have you ever been lied to, Bernadette?” Victor asks me, his voice dark and deep and full of shadows. He doesn’t move, but there’s a charge in the air that says he could destroy my carefully crafted façade before I could even think to try and stop him.
“What do you think?” I snort back, adjusting my leather jacket and noticing that his eyes don’t move from mine like most guys. Even with a high neckline, I’ve noticed that most men only see what they want to see, and oftentimes, it’s breasts that they’re interested in, covered up or no. Victor keeps his attention on my face, destroying me with that hard gaze of his.
