Page 13 of Mayhem At Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 3)
“Drive it back to their place,” Vic says with a smile. He moves over to the vehicle and, with all five of us pushing on the side, we manage to turn it back over. “It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump a-motherfucking-way.” Victor leans over and kisses my temple, banding an arm around my waist and pulling me up against him. “Let’s get this over with so we can get back to fucking, shall we? This is my goddamn honeymoon.”
“Our,” I correct, but I’m not sure if I’m trying to tell Vic that it belongs to me and him or … all of us.The Vincents own a mansion at the edge of the sea. It’s a five-thousand square foot, six-bedroom, five-bath nightmare with a stone wall, a gated driveway with a keypad, and direct access to the beach. According to the Zillow listing I pull up on my phone, they paid three-point-nine million dollars for it.
Tell me again how a pediatrician and a social worker can afford a house worth nearly four mil?
Oh, that’s right.
By trafficking helpless young girls to perverts.
“Swanky,” Hael whistles, opening a drawer in the kitchen and raising his brows. “The fuck? There’s a freezer in here.” He lifts up a container of ice cream, checks the label, and then tears the plastic ring off the top. Three more drawers later and he’s found himself a spoon to eat it with.
“It’s called an undercounter freezer,” Oscar says, all without looking up from his iPad. “They’re extremely expensive, unquestionably bourgeois, and paid for with money the Vincents got from selling lost, little girls.”
“Please!” Coraleigh screams, tied to her own chair in her own living room. There’s an entire wall of windows to her left, looking out at the sea and the sunshine, but there isn’t a soul on that beach because, well, it’s a private beach. It’s not open to the rabble of peasantry, the ones silly enough to work normal jobs and not exploit people for gain. Therefore, nobody will hear her scream. Nobody will see our buggies parked out front of the house. And, because Oscar is a genius with that iPad of his, nobody will see the security footage from the Vincents’ cameras. “Listen to me: we can work things out amicably. This doesn’t have to devolve into violence.”
Callum laughs, sitting on the edge of one of the counters and eating an apple he’s stolen from a nearby fruit bowl. Meanwhile, Aaron is upstairs with all of our girls, making sure they change out of their sandy clothes and into fresh pj’s. There’s another girl up there, too, the one the Vincents were going to sell to the Kushners.
She’s little and raven-haired and even though she looks nothing like Penelope, I saw her, and I just suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about my sister. They have the same eyes. Not the color of them, because Pen was blue-eyed, and this girl has an obsidian gaze like Vic. But … there’s something else there, a vibrancy and a will to live that looks like it’s trapped under a tarp, a bubble waiting to float free just so long as it isn’t popped first.
I thought that once Neil was gone, I would feel better somehow, less sad about my sister’s being dead, as if vengeance is a cure-all for grief. While I’m happy that we’ve scrubbed that monster from existence, the sadness hasn’t dimmed an iota.
I stand there in front of the Vincents, looking around at this stupidly luxurious house and wondering how someone’s brain can be so corrupted by greed that they forget the basic tenets of humanity: compassion, empathy, and kindness.
“Are we going to kill them?” I ask, partially because I’m genuinely curious but also because I know the question will scare the crap out of Leigh and her husband (whose name I have yet to learn, mostly because I don’t care to).
“Not sure yet,” Vic replies, playing along as he lounges on the curved window seat, his back against the glass, a bottle of beer in his right hand. “Depends on that information they have, the information they wanted to, uh, barter with us about.” He gives a signature anti-smile as I move over to the drawer where Hael found the ice cream, looking for more.
“Wanna share?” he asks, offering it, and the spoon, up to me. I smile as I take it, feeling Vic’s eyes burn into my back as my fingers tangle with Hael’s. We stare at each other as I scoop out some chocolate ice cream and suck it off in the slowest, most sensual way possible.
“Listen,” Coraleigh continues, glaring at us as if we’ve invaded her private space. I wonder if she thinks about the girls she sells off, and how violated they must feel. Probably not, huh? “Marcus and I are respected members of the community. If we go missing, somebody will notice.”
