home and hurting my cat. Noah, because it was probably his idea. I kicked him in the balls so hard he’d be swallowing. No way did he not have anything to do with this.
Eli, for telling them about my secret entrance. Cleo, because she’s a bitch and I hate her guts. I add all of their dumb jock friends and Cleo’s minions. Gabriel… I pause over his name, feeling a tiny stab of guilt as I add it to my list. This is for shoving me into the pool, for taking my first kiss and turning it into something ugly. I push the phone toward Antony.
“That will do. For now.”
Antony whistles under his breath as he reads the names. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
Appalled at the bare state of my cupboards, Antony sends his boys out for groceries. I notice him handing off a stack of cash to a fighter named Horace. For the first time in far too long, I study Antony with an objective eye, trying to see past my protective cousin filter into what’s going on with him.
The first thing I notice is that my cousin’s clothes are designer, and his suit hugs his cut body like he’s been poured into it. The second thing I notice is the outline of a pistol strapped across his chest.
I think back to our conversation after the cop came to the house, when I was panicking over what I’d said. Antony was the one who urged me to enroll at Stonehurst for real. “We’re in a position where this could work to our advantage,” he’d said, and he used his connections to make it happen. And I wonder now, too late, just what my cousin had been doing to get himself so connected.
Antony and I may have been family, but we aren’t immune to keeping secrets from each other.
“You sure you still want to be a lawyer?” I tug on his sleeve. “You’re doing pretty well for yourself as the owner of an underground fight club.”
Almost too well, I want to say, but I don’t. I want Antony to tell me.
“The club is a means to an end,” he replies, his voice easy. “I treat my fighters well. They’re loyal to me, which gives me immunity. Brutus is too chicken shit to get through them to me, so I’m untouchable for now. That means you are, too.”
Brutus. At the sound of his name, my blood runs cold. The echo starts in my ears – my screams bouncing back on me from inside the coffin.
I hadn’t thought about him for so long. Too long. It’s easy to forget in this glittering palace of lies and secrets that Brutus is still breathing air when my parents were—
No.
To think of him now will be to give over to the rage. And I’m not ready. Antony and I… we have a plan. We’re playing the long-game, and we are so, so close to winning.
I have to keep a clear head, because there are other assholes much closer to home who deserve all my attention.
Queen Boudica will have her revenge.
We have hours before showtime, and Antony doesn’t want me too agitated. We curl up in the movie room. I set the popcorn machine running, and Antony spreads out a feast of junk food. We watch a stream of horror films. Blood flows down the screen, limbs fly everywhere, and Antony giggles. I laugh, too. We’re both sick in the head, probably because of all the horror we lived through for real.
That’s Antony and me in a nutshell, laughing as the world drowns in blood.
Antony gets a message on his phone. He grabs my hand. “Let’s go.”
Reluctantly, I hand Queen Boudica off to Horace, who’s guarding the house while we’re out. As Boudica wraps herself around his thick neck, Horace’s features soften into something like awe. He strokes her with his giant hands, and Boudica closes her eyes in blissful repose.
“You give ‘em hell for both of us, Claws,” Horace growls.
I nod. We exit the garage and climb into Antony’s car. The windows are tinted and made of bulletproof glass, and I can barely see outside as we leave the tunnel and roll toward our destination.
We park down a side street, underneath overgrown oleander bushes that will help hide the car from the view of the mansion beyond. We walk toward the house, through the open gates, and down the drive like we own the place. I expect Antony to slide open