Page 124 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
I put my hands on my hips and stare down at her.
My wife.
The only woman I would ever marry—inheritance be damned.
I’m just playing a game here, that’s all. It’s all I ever do, play games.
“You don’t believe me?” I ask, and I hear Hael snort from somewhere behind me. Piece of shit. Of course he finds this funny. “And why is that?”
“Because when Sara was sniffing around the cemetery, you said she had to die. Well, if you wanted her to find Neil all along then you wouldn’t have said that.” Bernadette holds my gaze in a way that no other person on this earth can. She both challenges and enthralls me. I feel like her master and her slave, all at the same time.
I smile, and I can tell by the expression on her face that she doesn’t like that. She thinks I’m patronizing her. Really, I’m just amused.
“Bernadette, we’re going to frame your mother for Neil’s murder,” I say bluntly, and she blinks back at me in surprise.
“You … what?” she starts, dropping her arms by her sides.
I look up to see the remaining letters of Havoc watching me. We understand each other, my brothers and me. That’s why we’re all still here together, because nobody else in the world will ever understand the way we do things. We live in the dark, but we crave something from the light. We don’t do what we do for money or pussy or power; it’s all for her. It’s all for Bernadette. It’s a single-minded focus that few would ever be able to comprehend.
“Pack a bag,” I tell her, turning away from her. “You like having sleepovers with Hael and Callum? Well, you’re gonna have one with me. Tonight. Now.” I take off for the front door as she curses me out from behind, but at least this one time, this one motherfucking time, she actually follows my orders.“Where’s your dad?” Bernie asks, stepping into the house with her backpack slung over one shoulder. My eyes find the spot on the wall where we first fucked, where I shoved her into it and mounted her like some wild animal in a thrall. I scoff, but it’s more for myself than for her.
“Who the fuck knows? Hopefully lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”
I light up a cigarette because well, shit, Bernadette Savannah Blackbird makes me nervous. I smoke when I’m nervous because, as the leader of Havoc, I’m not actually allowed to be nervous. So I hide it. I tuck it away and bury it like I do bodies.
“Did you ever find out who those men were?” she asks me as I pull out my phone and start a Grubhub order. We’ll get food, and we’ll talk, and then hopefully she’ll let me fuck her until the sun comes up. If she doesn’t, I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do. Being around Trinity Jade makes my face hurt. She makes my dick so soft that I wonder if I’ll ever get hard again. She makes me murderous, to be quite frank. “The ones who beat your dad up?”
I glance over my shoulder and find my wife watching me, my grandmother’s ring glinting on her finger. I actually liked Ruby, my mother’s mother. She was a rich ass white lady with zero ability to check her own privilege, but she was funny. And her laugh was infectious. She was the only person around who could willingly get me to come in the house and sit patiently at the table, no phone, no iPad, no toys.
The reason she left that money to me is because she knew her daughter was a venomous snake. She knew it as surely as I know it. I think she was afraid that I might become my mother—or to a lesser extent, my father. That’s why she put those rules in place. But goddamn if it isn’t a pain in my ass now.
“Idiots from the local watering hole.” I smile wryly. “He borrowed money from pretty much every man in South Prescott to gamble with. Why? You thought he was clever enough to be in the GMP or something?”
“I feel like I don’t know anything anymore,” Bernie tells me, setting her bag down on the table. “I never thought you’d consider Ophelia’s offer. Never. Your love for me … it goes beyond pride and common sense. At least, I thought it did.” Bernadette stares me down with eyes the color of emeralds. Does she have any idea how fucking fierce she looks? Regardless of what happened with Kali, she’s the strongest woman I know in so many ways. “And I liked it that way, Vic. We’re not supposed to be rational, me and you.”
I place the food order on my phone and then slip it into my back pocket as I turn around to face her dead-on.
