Havoc at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #1) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,51
as all the rest of them, my perpetrators and the Havoc Boys combined.
They’ve twisted me, warped me, made me in their likeness.
I swallow hard, but I don’t look away or close my eyes.
“And do you really believe that we believe that you’d let us go? No, a monster like you knows that as soon as you have the upper hand, you take it.” Vic smiles, but it’s not a pretty expression. The way his mouth looks right now, I can hardly believe that just a short while ago, he was burning me with it, searing me with heat. “As soon as we left, you’d have a private army on our asses.” Vic pats him on the cheek and stands up. “Besides, you know too much already. Do you really think you’re walking away from this?”
“What the hell is this all about? I didn’t do anything,” Don whispers, wiggling like a caterpillar in his bindings, eyes flicking nervously toward the edge of the roof. At some point, we’re going to be heard out here, and the gig will be up. But I stand there, and I make myself trust in Havoc. They weave cruelty, pain, and revenge like fibers in the dark, soothing cloth of reality.
“You’ve never hurt anyone?” Aaron clarifies, the blind rage in his voice making me do a double take. Whereas Vic sounds calm, cool, collected, my ex is giving off the impression that he actually cares. I mean, if he did, he wouldn’t have dumped me and turned on me in an instant, right? “In your short, miserable life, you’ve been nothing but a goddamn angel? You are a demon, Don, and you’ll die like a dog.”
“Takes one to know one,” Don bites out with one, last burst of sass, and Vic chuckles.
“Undo the ropes,” he says, and Oscar nods, moving to untie the silken purple bindings on Don’s wrists and ankles. Donald calms down for a moment, but only until he realizes that when Vic said to untie the ropes, he didn’t mean all of them. “Did you know that our friend here is a master at these silk ropes? He can tie them without leaving a mark. And what’s funny is that once the hubbub dies down, nobody will remember the spoiled, rich prep school kid who hung himself from the tree outside his window.”
“N—” Don starts to shout, but Hael’s already tossed the rope around the limb of the tree and pulled the knot tight. In the span of an instant, before I can even think to protest or wonder if I would at all, Vic is kicking Donald down the sloping roof and … off.
The branch groans, and the rope creaks, but all I can hear is the thumping of my heart as I clamp my hands over my ears.
“Bernadette,” Vic says, putting his hands on my wrists and pulling them away from my ears. “Pay attention.”
With a sick, lurching sensation in my stomach, I move toward the edge of the roof, guided by his hand, and find that the silk purple rope tying Don's throat has come undone.
He's lying on the ground groaning, unable to get up but most certainly not dead.
My eyes flick up to Oscar's gray ones, so devoid of emotion, so goddamn scary.
“I'm a master of knots,” is all he says in that Lucullan smooth voice of his.
I'm at a loss for words, something that doesn't happen to me often anymore. The Havoc Boys have just given Donald Asher the sensation of dying without actually having done anything at all.
The way they locked me in that closet or chased me in the woods.
That's a special sort of cruelty, isn't it?
One that leaves no trace.
“Let's get down there before the little creep wakes up,” Hael says with a smirk, not at all disturbed by what he's just done. Is it fucked-up that I'm not either? That I feel like Donald got less than he deserved?
We head inside and down the stairs to find Don struggling to get up, choking and shaking, his pants stained with urine.
“Darling,” Vic says to me as he puts his boot on the back of Don's neck and pushes him to the ground. “I want you to go back out the gate and wait for us in the trees. Callum'll go with you.”
“Wait, what?” I ask, snapping my face up from Don's sweaty one. “This is my request; I get to watch.”
“Not if I say you don't.” Vic's face is hard when he lifts his attention