The thing about Neil though, is that he’s underestimated Victor Channing.
“We have a video of him,” Vic says, nodding his chin in Neil’s direction. “With your sister Penelope.”
On the outside, I do nothing. I’m still standing there, trying to help Aaron keep his feet, blood smearing across my hands. On the inside, I’m shattering into a mosaic of hurt and pain and rage. It’s leaded glass, that mosaic, and my anger is the iron that holds all the pretty pieces together. One day, I’m going to pick up one of those pieces and I’m going to stab Neil Pence through the empty cavity where his heart should be.
“Neil, what the hell is going on?” Kali asks, crossing an arm over her still-flat stomach and looking between Victor and the Thing with a particularly vacuous facial expression. Nobody ever said the lying little twit had any working brain cells. Principal Vaughn looks like he might shit his pants. “You said we were going to come over here and put a stop to all this.”
“A stop to what?” Oscar asks innocently, pushing his glasses up his nose with an inked middle finger while at the same time keeping his revolver trained on Scott. “A raucous Halloween night? I see Kali came in costume. It’s quite popular for girls to dress up like whores on All Hallows’ Eve, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you, Montauk,” she snarls, smoothing her hands down her pale pink skirt. Despite Oscar’s quip, she didn’t dress up, she didn’t come to Stacey’s party. She abandoned Mitch’s pathetic clown crew, but why? What is she doing here? What is Vaughn doing here? And why are three of the seven people on my list standing in this room?
“You have one minute to fuck off out of here before we make all three of you disappear—permanently.” Victor steps back and drops the gun to his side. His eyes are like two dark pools, ready to swallow me up and drown me. But his attention keeps flicking to Aaron. He’s worried, and so am I. My ex-boyfriend doesn’t look so hot right about now. “I’m going to count down from sixty.”
“You don’t want to know why I’m here?” Neil teases, eyes narrowing as his thin lips curl into a smirk. “What Scott’s doing here? He came to me, you know, after you trashed his cabin and made him do all those nasty things on the Internet.”
“Sixty.” Vic nods, and both Callum and Hael step forward to flank him. Nobody’s smiling tonight. Nobody’s reveling in this moment, not like they did before when we went after Don. “Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.”
“Let’s just go, please,” Vaughn says, shaking, his gaze latching on me like I’m the sole party responsible for this mess. “This was a bad idea in the first place. You didn’t tell me they had a video.”
“Fifty-seven.” Vic barely looks like he’s breathing, he’s standing so damn still. Callum’s hood is pulled up over his blond hair, his face bathed in shadows. He probably needs me as much as Aaron does right now, just in a different way. Did you hear yourself, Bernadette? He needs you? Havoc doesn’t fucking need you. And you don’t owe them your emotional energy or support.
And yet here I am, wanting to give it.
My hand curls around Aaron’s arm as he pants beside me, fighting to maintain at least some semblance of power and control.
“We’re at a crossroads here. You move on me, I bury you,” Neil growls out, never taking his eyes off of Vic. “And leave Kali out of it.”
“What about me?” Principal Vaughn bursts out, putting one hand on the mantle to steady himself. “You said you’d help me out of this mess! I helped you when you asked for it.”
“That confession of yours is gone,” Neil says, sniffling and backing up a few feet. My blood chills because I know my stepfather; he’s only telling us what he wants us to hear. See how powerful I am? See what I can do? Don’t you ever forget that I have fingers in many pies. Kali clings to his arm and then turns a poisonous glare on me, dropping her poor-me act for once. There’s no audience around to lap it up, so she doesn’t bother. “That’s all I’ve got. Scott, you’re on your own now.”
Neil turns and takes off for the front door with Kali in tow. Principal Vaughn scrambles after him, and the boys let them go. I realize then that maybe we’re stretched too thin. I did this. I called Havoc, and I started this mess.
I grit my teeth.
The shittiest part about all of this? I actually feel bad about it, like I’m inconveniencing the Havoc Boys. They ruined my life sophomore year. Does it matter what their twisted reasons were, what price Kali paid? They did it, and I suffered, and now here I am praying to what little good is left in the universe that Aaron Fadler doesn’t fucking die on me.
