Page 70 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
It’s a traditional term, steeped more in pain and servitude than anything else, but I like the way we’ve twisted it. I’m married to Victor Channing, but I’m fucking four other guys. I hide my lascivious smile in the champagne, snatching another strawberry off a tray.
When I take a bite of it, I look Trinity right in the eyes.
Hers are brown, but not a honey-almond color like Hael’s. Nor are they dark as pitch, like Victor’s. More like … an endless stretch of sand on a deserted coastal beach, wet and covered in seaweed. She gives me nothing in response, even when I eat the strawberry the way I might suck a dick.
“Trinity’s mother is the head of the Save These Precious Children League.” Ophelia delivers the words the way any normal person might, like she’s actually interested in a charity that helps kids. The two women exchange looks and smiles before Ophelia turns back to her son. “She’s grooming her to be the head of the charity after she graduates college.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s ‘groomed’ her—just not for that,” Vic says with a laugh that makes the hair on the back of my neck raise up. His double meaning of the word ‘groomed’ doesn’t escape any of us. Ophelia’s mouth tightens imperceptibly, just enough to give her a single tiny tension wrinkle on one side. Victor looks like he was made to own the world; the rest of the people in here wish they did. Some of them might even think they do. “What’s your point, Mother? Please get to it and quickly, and we’ll pretend you’re not trying to kill my wife or that you didn’t kidnap my brother.”
Vic takes the drink from me and chugs the remainder of it, handing the empty bottle over to Oscar before he takes a step forward. Ophelia’s face doesn’t register a word of what her son is saying, but I notice her eyes stray to the necklace of diamonds at my throat again.
“Don’t melodramatize the situation, son. You sound so unbelievably gauche when you ramble like that.” She swings her gaze from the necklace—which is so very clearly upsetting to her—back to Victor’s sardonic stare.
“If there’s anything more pathetic than a greedy man grasping for more gold, it’s someone who used to have it all, lost it, and is suckling at the dick of the devil for more. Look, I’ll be straight with you,” Vic continues as Tom fidgets behind Ophelia. The way he looks at the boys and at me tells me several things. First off, he’s scared. Second, he’s jumpy. The first chance he gets to hurt one of us, he’s going to take it and he isn’t going to hold back the way I did with Kali. “We’re at war now, you and me.”
“You’re not just at war with me,” Ophelia says, still smiling, raising her glass at friends that pass by. She turns her obsidian stare on her son’s matching one. If Vic and I ever have a kid, I bet they’ll have that same eye color, like the blackest night in winter, when the clouds are so thick they block out all the stars. It’s that savage ruthlessness that’s etched into their DNA, impossible to escape or ignore. “I want you to look around and remember how to keep your mouth shut.”
“About which part of the equation?” Oscar asks, but Ophelia refuses to look in his direction. It’s as if nobody in the world exists but for Victor. Ophelia might hate him, but she wants his attention, regardless of what she has to do to get it. “The fact that you help facilitate the buying and selling of children? Or the kidnapping? The murder?”
“How are you involved with the GMP, Mother?” Vic asks, but Ophelia just sips her own champagne and smiles.
“You’re such a child, Victor. Springfield is nothing. It’s not even a dot on a map. You could be and have so much more. Trinity’s grandfather is a judge. He’s prepared to grant you an annulment on your marriage.”
I freeze where I am, go completely still, like a mannequin in a dress that’s so red that some of the less savory characters in the room are probably looking at me and remembering the last time they killed somebody. Unlike you, Bernie, who didn’t have the guts to do so.
I exhale sharply and everyone looks at me. Aaron, Oscar, Callum, Hael … Victor. He glances at me and then turns his head very slowly to stare at his mother. Everything in his posture says he wants to wrap his hands around Ophelia’s throat—and not in the same way that Oscar does to me.
My eyes meet Trinity’s, and she smiles. She’s so pretty and decorous and quiet. I’m afraid of her suddenly in a way I was never afraid of Kali. This girl … she’s different than Kali, like an empty shell all-too happy to absorb the lifeforce of whoever’s around her. She drinks her champagne, and my stomach clenches like I’m having the most awful fucking period cramps.
