Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,176

a moment, and I swear, I can hear cogs and gears turning in Victor’s and Oscar’s heads. My own eyes scan the map as Hael sits up with a groan.

“We all know I ain’t the brains of these operations, so, let me do what I do best and pour us some drinks.”

“Scotch,” Victor and Oscar both say, almost in unison. That makes me smile, but I’m the only one. Everyone else is still frowning, still planning and plotting.

“What if we used Trinity?” I ask with a loose shrug of my shoulders. “Surely, we could convince her that it was in her best interest to get Maxwell and Ophelia alone?” I’m feeling pretty proud of myself until Oscar shakes his head once, slow and sharp.

“No,” he says, but in a contemplative way like he’s truly trying to see if my idea won’t work. His silver eyes shift over to mine. “If we tell her what we want and she in any way lets that slip to either party, we’re in trouble. Whatever fragile peace we’ve had for the last few months is guaranteed to break. That means, even if the VGTF round the pair up, they’ll be gunning for us from prison. Frankly, it’s better to just keep on playing the fake fiancée game.”

“She can’t feel very fondly toward Ophelia?” I retort, giving Hael’s knuckles a kiss as he hands me a glass of scotch before offering up drinks to anyone else. Our gazes catch just before he turns away with a smile. I look back over at Vic and Oscar while Aaron scoots close against my left side, peering at the map. “I mean, don’t you think she’d want her gone, considering the blackmail and all?”

“We don’t know her feelings about her father.” Oscar’s mouth twitches at one corner, like he might actually be considering smiling about something. “If those feelings are anything like the ones she had for her brother, well …” I snort, but I don’t think he’s actually implying that Trinity and Maxwell have an incestuous relationship. What he is saying, however, is that if Maxwell is coming to this school to watch a shitty graduation ceremony, then it’s possible he cares about his daughter. Maybe she cares about him, too. “It isn’t worth the risk. Besides,” and here his voice gets wry and thick with disdain, “I don’t exactly trust that conniving little cunt.”

“She looks at Vic like she wants to ride his dick,” Aaron adds, and I feel myself bristle with jealousy. For his part, my husband just quirks the corner of his lip in amusement.

“There’s always the possibility of a bathroom break,” Oscar muses, tilting his head briefly from side to side to stretch his neck, eyes closing for a moment. “Unlikely but possible.”

I sigh and rub at my temples a bit, determined to come up with a plan the way I did for Mason Miller. Because all I really want is to prove myself to Havoc, prove to my boys that I deserve to wear that crown and that I belong. If only I can see something they don’t …

Hael passes out more scotch, and then we all drink until the sky is fully dark and our blood is warm and thick with alcohol. After nearly six hours of discussing strategy and studying the map, discussing risks and listening to Victor and Oscar bounce ideas off of each other, we give up and retire to the bedroom.

What we do in there, it’s not quite as magical and mysterious as what we did surrounded by candlelight. But there’s a lot of touching and fucking and it comes pretty goddamn close.

Havoc—All of Them

Ten years earlier …

The little girl with the ashy blond hair is dropped off at the curb by a woman in a salmon colored raincoat, her expensive shoes clacking across the debris strewn pavement as she digs her fingernails into the child’s arm.

For her part, the girl looks unaffected by this subtle violence, her emerald eyes so bright that little Callum Park’s pink mouth parts in surprise. His own eyes, a blue so perfect that sometimes the adults in his life get caught up in imagining that he could be a famous child actor or model or something, sparkle as the girl is dragged past him and up the front steps of a dilapidated building with asbestos issues and too much mold in the gym.

Callum turns back to his friends and finds that he isn’t the only one in their little group to