Page 41 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
“Which is what? Playing at being gangbangers? I don’t think you understand what you’re up against,” Sara says, her cool façade cracking around the edges. She’s wearing black pants and a very familiar looking blue jacket. Bet ya it says FBI in yellow on the back.
“Did you see the carnage at Prescott High?” I ask, shaking my head. “It’s not a crime to defend ourselves which we will do if pushed.”
Sara just stares at me like I’m a puzzle she’s desperate to put together. She wants to understand me, but she can’t. We’re from different worlds. Doesn’t mean we have to be enemies. We want the same thing: for the bad guys to be punished.
“There must be a reason you and your partner were hanging around here,” Oscar deadpans, turning his attention over to Detective Constantine. Shit, I have no idea why I keep calling him ‘detective’. He’s obviously with the VGTF as well. I think about when we first met, and he was questioning me over Danny Ensbrook. Because of the GMP.
The FBI thinks the GMP took out the entire Charter Crew.
This could be a good turn of luck for us.
“We’re expecting the GMP to hit you hard-and-fast,” Sara explains, glancing over at the squad car with Pamela in the back seat. Nailing her for Neil’s murder … That’s such a Havoc move right there. What was it that Victor said to me at the boutique? “Poetic justice, personal choice, and wrongs made right.”
Perfection.
“We could protect you, Bernadette. All of you. If you wanted,” she continues when I don’t respond to her previous statement. She’s grooming me to be a snitch. Baiting me. I refuse to rise to the occasion, staring wordlessly back at her until she shakes her head and turns toward Callum instead. “Mr. Park, a word?” she asks, and he complies, moving over to speak to her on the driveway.
Me? I barely make it into the house before my head starts to spin and I get so dizzy that I can’t find my feet.
Surprisingly, it’s Oscar motherfucking Montauk who picks me up and carries me upstairs to the shower.
“You are in so much fucking trouble for making me watch that,” Vic growls out as we pass by, but I know he doesn’t mean it. I killed that. Pamela is in custody. Sara knows the GMP caused my miscarriage.
Oscar is … being nice?
We might just win this after all.
Stranger things have obviously happened.Oscar MontaukI put Bernadette in the bathtub and then crouch down beside it, laying my forearms along the side and resting my chin atop them. On the outside, I’m nothing if not calm, stoic even. On the inside, I’m shattering and cracking into a million tiny splinters. And every single one of them is aimed at the heart of the GMP.
How dare they do this to her, of all people … How dare they?! HOW FUCKING DARE THEY?!
“Penny for your thoughts,” Bernadette asks as I blink at her, still unmoving, my muscles locked and tense. God help the first person to cross me that isn’t family.
“Are you upset?” I ask, my voice like a stone wall. Why anyone would want to breach it is beyond me. But … I’ve said it before myself: blood in, blood out. There are certain things that cannot be undone.
Especially this, Oscar Montauk, you fool. Especially this.
My left hand twitches with the need to touch the side of her face, but I can’t quite seem to get myself to move. Maybe I’m afraid that if that happens, I won’t be able to control myself. What if my fingertips brush her soft face and I feel her sadness swirl through me like a storm? Then I’ll take as many guns as I can carry and do something that we’ll all regret.
My control is not absolute. You should ask fucking Victor for advice.
I pinch my mouth, and it occurs to me that Bernadette cannot read my goddamn thoughts. I scowl and spit and sneer, and that’s all she sees. She doesn’t know what goes on inside, how fucking conflicted I am. How twisted.
“Upset?” Bernie asks, taking off her grass-stained shirt with some long-gone fascist that used to be president on it. I abhor politics, one of the few remaining facets of modern-day life where common sense means nothing. The whole world is stupid as far as I’m concerned. All I want is this, me and Bernadette Savannah Blackbird and an eternity of quietly whispered things, fingertips tracing flesh, and sweet mouths. “About what?”
Her bloodied shorts come off next. She tosses them at me, and I catch them. Glancing down, I see ruby red color staining my fingertips. When I lift my gaze up, I see her scoot forward and turn the shower on, letting the hot water run over her as she sits naked in the bathtub.
