Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,147

glancing over at Aaron, like he trusts him to deliver whatever news this is in the most … tranquil and pacifying manner possible.

“What?” I ask, looking between Vic and Aaron, back to Hael, over to Cal. Oscar seems unsurprised to see the boys here, his phone in his hand, fingers clenched tight. Whatever this is, he’s known about it. For how long, I’m not sure, maybe just long enough to walk me up here, but he waited to tell me until now so it must be bad. “Jesus, you guys, what the fuck is it?”

“Your mother,” Aaron begins, and I quirk a brow. There’s not really much else that bitch could do that would surprise me. There is literally nothing she could do that would hurt me worse than what she did to Penelope. “Bernadette, she killed herself.”

I just stand there, staring at Aaron like he’s lost the fucking plot.

Killed herself? No, she didn’t kill herself. Stacey and Vera’s girl, she was going to do it. We’ve been working on this for weeks. Pamela is the last name on my list, and it’s my right to decide what happens to her and when. She doesn’t get to just kill herself.

“What?” I ask, setting my book bag on the counter and trying to blink my way through this. “I don’t understand. We were going to have her … dealt with. We were …”

“She took her own life,” Victor repeats, crossing his arms over his massive chest and exhaling. His gaze is not unsympathetic. “We thought at first that maybe the GMP had gotten to her, but she was in solitary again this week, so …” He trails off, waiting for me to have some sort of reaction. “We figured it might’ve been one of the guards, but we managed to grease some palms and talk to someone who saw the security footage.”

“How.” It’s not even a question. It’s a goddamn statement. I’m so fucking pissed off right now that I’m quivering. How dare she?! is the first thought that comes to mind. You wouldn’t think, considering I was already planning on having the bitch killed, that I would care she was dead.

Only … I do.

I do so much that it feels suddenly hard to stand up, and I slump into one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Oscar moves up beside me, stroking long, careful fingers across the back of my neck. My gaze shifts his direction, and our eyes meet. Casual touching is hard for him, so this is kind of a big deal to me, even in the light of the Pam stuff.

“She purchased some drugs off a fellow inmate,” Victor explains as Hael moves into the kitchen and gets me something to drink. He places the brandy in front of me, and I don’t even have to ask where he got it from. He and Cal have been breaking into some of the staff apartments for fun, just to see if they can do it without getting caught. Sometimes, they take an item or two, nothing noticeable, but just because they can.

This is where the brandy comes from.

And you know how much I love the taste of stolen things.

I down the whole of it in one go and then slam the glass back down so that Hael can refill it.

“Bernadette,” Victor hazards as Oscar stays close on my left side, Aaron just behind me, and Cal climbs up onto the counter to crouch the way he likes to do. “What are your thoughts?”

My thoughts … I down the second glass of alcohol and let the warm fire of it percolate up through me, cutting through the storm of feelings that are swirling around inside my chest.

Pamela is dead.

I wanted her dead, but … my mother is dead. And I was supposed to kill her. And now she’s taken away the last bit of power I held over her, the only shred of vengeance. A small noise escapes me, and my palm itches, right on that thin, white scar where Victor cut me and we shared blood.

Havoc.

Blood in, blood out.

I look around at the five of them, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides.

“I want to go out,” I say, but I don’t tell them where or why. I’m not entirely certain that even I know the answers to those questions just yet. “Call the fucking valet.”

Sara’s protective detail follows us to the store to grab supplies where the boys look at me like I’m nuts for purchasing