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“You have an hour to get accommodated and changed into your uniforms.” Trinity points a slender finger at a pile of garment bags on the smaller of the two sofas. “If anything needs to be adjusted, the on-campus tailor—”

I let out a snort and her wicked eyes trail over to mine as Vic leans a muscular shoulder against the panes of floor-to-ceiling glass.

“On-campus tailor,” I repeat with a harsh, mocking laugh as Oscar moves over to the pile of uniforms and checks the sizes on each bag before separating them into piles. “Of course. Do go on.”

“You’re crass and uncultured,” Trinity spits back at me, flipping her golden hair over her shoulder and closing her eyes like she desperately needs a moment to gather herself together. “You will never fit in here.”

I touch a hand to my chest and make a sweet moue of feigned disappointment.

“Aw, you think so?” I query back, resisting the violent and unyielding urge to grab that fine, gold hair of hers in a fist and throw her against the wall until it’s streaked with blood. “That’s so sweet of you.”

With another huff of frustration, Trinity spins and heads for the door of the apartment.

“I’ll meet you in the downstairs lobby in an hour,” she sneers, wrenching the door open and disappearing into the hallway. It slams shut on its own behind her and Oscar moves over to examine the locks.

“Keycards are too easily manipulated,” he says, testing the deadbolt. “We’ll get our own locks, ones that can’t be hacked. A combination that can’t be picked.”

Hael and Callum reappear from the direction of another hallway, directly opposite the one where Aaron’s reemerging from.

“All good on our side,” Hael confirms and Aaron nods in agreement.

“Same.”

And then Oscar turns around and we’re all just sort of standing there in a loose circle looking at each other.

“Oh come on,” Vic says, pushing up from his position against the window with a grin. He throws an arm around my shoulders in a way that should be entirely companionable but comes across as possessive and needy instead. Fantasies of being fucked against the glass of these windows, butt naked and looking over the campus as the boys take turns on me, fills my head and makes it suddenly hard to breathe.

Oh, even better if I were dressed in my uniform, my pleated skirt bunched up around my hips …

“Don’t act like somebody fucking died,” Vic continues, pressing a scalding kiss to the side of my head that does nothing to dry the sudden rush of hot heat between my thighs. “We’re living in a luxury apartment on the eleventh floor. We’ve got round the clock security; the girls are safe. Mason is dead.” Victor pauses at the sound of his phone buzzing, glancing down at the screen with a wry smile on his lips.

“Ophelia?” Oscar guesses, crossing his arms over his chest. Seeing him in the Oak Valley Prep uniform won’t be much different than seeing him in his usual suits but for the color. Seeing any of the others in a jacket and tie … that’s going to rock my world. At first, I’ll probably hate it, then I’ll probably get off on it, and then … who knows?

“Ophelia,” Vic confirms, answering the call and putting it on speaker at the same moment. “Mother.”

“You wicked little monster,” she hisses and while I would normally say something like that and mean it as a compliment, I’m fairly certain Ophelia Mars intends for it to be an insult. “Mason Miller? Inside the club of all places? Now, how on earth did you manage to pull that one off?”

Vic sits down on the larger sofa, putting his phone on the coffee table in a strange déjà vu moment where I think of him sitting in Aaron’s living room, talking to Mitch Charter in this same manner. Full circle, baby. But trying to compare Ophelia and Mitch is laughable—they’re not even in the same league.

“Mason Miller?” Vic queries, and then he laughs as his mother huffs an exasperated sigh. Meanwhile, Hael wanders over to the fridge—carefully disguised as one of the cabinets—and opens it, searching for something to eat. It’s empty, obviously, and he shuts it with a pained sigh. “Oh, that’s right. That pervert we killed on Friday. Tell me: at anytime while you were riding Maxwell Barrasso’s dick, did you not consider that we were going to retaliate for what happened at our school?”

“Your message was received loud and clear.” Ophelia pauses here, and I swear, I can hear the sound of her pacing in high heels. “Tom is dead.”

“Not by our hand,” Victor says, leaning back in his seat as I drop down next to him, Cal perches on the arm, and Hael and Aaron accept piles of garment bags that Oscar hands over to them. “That was Mason’s doing. Are you terribly upset? Oh, wait, you have no heart. That’s a virtual impossibility.”