Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,111

a keycard to get into the apartment which I appreciate. Also, it looks like said keycard system is newly installed—probably thanks to us and our breach of the student dorms after Donald Asher. My turn to shiver with hatred as I smoke my cigarette like I own this damn place, following Trinity through a posh lounge area that’s blissfully empty at this time. The smoking thing won’t work in front of the regular staff; they won’t know about Havoc’s little arrangement with the schoolboard.

I’m going to have to, like, actually pretend to study and shit while I’m here.

“As for your previous question, we’ll keep up this ‘charade’ until Victor and I have been married a full year and he gets his inheritance. You’ve only got nine months left to wait, lucky you.”

“And how am I supposed to find assurance in that? Once you’ve gotten what you want, what stops you from spilling my secret?” Trinity glances over her shoulder as we pause in front of an elevator. Wow. A building with an elevator. Most definitely not something you find in south Prescott or, if you do, you wouldn’t get on it if you were smart. “What stops Ophelia? If she finds out that I’m … helping you …” Trinity pauses for a moment to let out a sharp, angry exhale. “Then she could very well talk to my father. What then?”

“God, you’re annoying,” I murmur as the elevator doors ding open and we squeeze inside together, the boys forming a wall of muscle and ink across the front. Trinity instructs Cal to hit the button for the eleventh floor and up we go. “Look, we have plans for Ophelia. Does that help? I wouldn’t worry about her.”

“It’s you that I’m worried about,” Trinity tells me as I glance over and find her creepy pale brown eyes studying me. They’re the color of a brown recluse or a puddle of mud diluted with water. At least, that’s how I perceive them. Maybe when James Barrasso gazed into his sister/fuckbuddy’s brown eyes, he saw something entirely different. Too bad I had to gouge his eyes out with my thumbs. Does Trinity know exactly how he met his end? I’m guessing not.

“Once we have our money, we won’t give a fuck what happens to you, princess,” I drawl, stabbing my cigarette out on the front of her book bag and watching as her teeth grind together in a rare show of frustration. Trinity schools her expression again with a monumental amount of effort.

“Why don’t you keep asking prying questions?” Oscar suggests, and then I notice in the mirrored walls as he puts his revolver up against the side of Trinity’s skull. She returns his stare in the very same mirror, body going completely still. There are cameras all over this fucking school but, incidentally, there are none inside the elevator.

A dark zone.

Good to know.

Trinity says nothing and Oscar puts his weapon away just in time for the doors to slide open with a pleasant ding. We file out into the posh hallway and my skin crawls with the wrongness of it. The marble floors, the textured wallpaper, the light fixtures with the stained glass. This isn’t where I belong, where any of us belongs.

But, if anything, Prescott kids are masters of adaptation.

That’s what we have to do now, adapt.

I keep my inuring social commentary to myself for the time being as Trinity shoulders her way between the boys and leads us down the hall to the first door on the right. She unlocks the door with a keycard that Oscar immediately whips out of her fingers.

“How do we know you don’t have other copies of this?” he inquires, hitting the corner of the plastic card against the door of the apartment as Trinity pushes it open, her brown eyes blazing. Looks like there really is a limit to what she’ll take.

“You don’t know, and there’s no way for me to make that assurance—in the same manner that you can’t convince me you won’t turn like rabid dogs after collecting on the inheritance.” Trinity walks into the middle of the apartment and pauses, turning to face us with a frown etched onto what she probably hopes people think are nude lips. But I know better. I know all about Oak Valley Prep girls and their obsession with caking makeup on their faces in just such a way that it looks like they’re wearing nothing at all.

Oscar flicks the card onto a stone countertop as