Page 158 of Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 5)
“We don’t have many good choices but to rest on the reality of the VGTF raiding the school. Maxwell and Ophelia will be arrested. At this point, that’s a fact.” He crosses his arms over his chest with a deep-set frown resting on his sharp lips. Instead of a suit, he’s wearing a gray wife beater and silky charcoal pants that probably feel amazing brushing up against his bare cock.
I adjust myself in Aaron’s arms and he hugs me close. Last night, we sat together in the living room with a single candle burning and worked on scanning those old photos of me and Penelope into the cloud. We did the same with the documents in the cardboard box and then sat there, eating chocolate and reminiscing. He remembers my sister better than any of the other boys, Aaron does.
His fingers play absently in my hair, the way they used to do when we were fifteen and newly in love. Oscar watches us for a moment before glancing back at Vic.
“I’ve calculated the risks for a dozen different scenarios, and this is our best bet.” Oscar gestures at the iPad again and then folds his fingers beneath his chin, stroking the strong column of his throat. “It’s out of our hands now.”
The fingers of Victor’s left hand clench around the end of the sofa arm, fingertips denting the leather in just such a way that it creaks. I’m not the only one looking at him; the rest of the boys are watching. They know as well as I do that letting Ophelia go means spending months more on edge, fighting, struggling, plotting, planning. It also means that Vic might never get to cross his mother off his own, personal list.
A muscle in his jaw ticks, but he nods once, nice and sharp. An agreement.
“That’s it?” Aaron asks, sitting us both up from our snuggled position on the couch. He keeps his arms around me though. “That’s how we’re going to deal with these fuckers? They stormed our school, Vic. They killed Stacey; they almost killed Callum. Your mom …”
“I know all about my mother,” Victor replies, his voice quiet, almost menacing. He turns his attention away from us, toward the window and the glowing orb of the sun as it dips low in the sky. With just a couple of weeks left in the school year, we’re running out of time.
“Based on what we know of the raid,” I start, drawing all of the boys’ attention but for Vic’s. He keeps his gaze focused out the window instead, fingers idly teasing the leather of the couch. “It’s going to be slow and nonviolent, and likely to coincide with the final part of the ceremony. What if we go in assuming the VGTF will take care of Ophelia and Maxwell but come up with a contingency plan. I mean, it’s possible that someone tips them off about the raid; they might not even come to the graduation ceremony.”
“While I agree that it’s a fool’s error to simply assume Ophelia and Maxwell will both be there, the VGTF wouldn’t waste resources on raiding a prestigious private school without a kingpin as a prize. If they’re still coming, then they firmly believe they’ll find Maxwell, at the very least.” Oscar points at the iPad screen, tapping a red X at the end of a long, curving road. It starts at the back of the school, near the Student Parking Area. “This is the south entrance; Maxell has already planned to leave an armed motorcade waiting here. As of this morning, the plans were still on. So, in my best estimate, there’s a ninety-percent chance that he’ll show up as planned.”
“As Ophelia’s plus one?” I ask, because I’d sort of just assumed that, that Maxwell was coming to support Ophelia. But then I thought about Trinity. Just because she doesn’t want Samuel Jade or her community at large to know she’s Maxwell’s biological daughter, that doesn’t mean Maxwell isn’t committed to being a father figure in some fashion or another.
“That, I don’t know,” Oscar admits, shaking his head as he finally takes a seat on the end of the couch where Aaron and I are sitting. “But I must admit, Stacey’s girls are coming in handy. We wouldn’t have information about the motorcade without them.”
“They are coming to the ceremony then,” I murmur, teasing the ring pierced through the nail on my left pointer finger. “What if something they see tips them off while they’re here? I mean, what if the VGTF moves in and Maxwell decides to bolt? He could whisk Ophelia off in his helicopter and we’d never see them in person again.”
“Yet, they’d still be up our asses,” Hael repeats with a sigh, circling us back to the same argument we’ve had many times before. “So what do we do?”
