Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,197

but I take advantage of that single second when he’s balancing on one knee atop me, and I roll.

Maxwell is knocked off as I scrabble for the gun. My fingers wrap around the grip, but my opponent is right there, putting a knee on my back and hitting my wrist so hard that the weapon drops back to the ground. He reaches for it, and that simple movement puts him off-balance yet again.

I shove up to my feet, throwing Maxwell aside. It doesn’t last; he’s up on his own feet and lunging for the gun in less time than it takes me to steady myself.

We’re standing on the edge of a sharp incline, where the woods sweep down toward the perimeter wall that surrounds the grounds of Oak Valley Prep. I just let myself fall backwards, even though it’s a risky move.

With a grunt, I hit the ground and then I just start rolling. But my movements are quick enough and erratic enough that even when Maxwell takes a few shots at me, he doesn’t find his target. Once I stop rolling, I’m so dizzy and breathless that I lose several precious seconds trying to suck in air. My entire body hurts now, throbbing and screaming as I shove back up to a standing position.

Maxwell is already sliding down the incline toward me, the gun still in his hands. He aims for me and pulls the trigger; if the gun were still loaded, he might’ve actually hit me. Unfortunately for him, he’s run out of ammo, so he simply chucks the weapon aside and comes at me anyway.

This time, as he’s moving through the trees and I’m stumbling back looking for a branch or rock or anything that I can use as a weapon, Maxwell pulls a knife from an ankle sheath hidden beneath the finely pressed lines of his slacks.

Licking my lips, I think about Bernadette, about how beautiful her mouth is when she smiles at me, how kind her eyes are even when she tries to be a hard-ass. I think about how good it felt to take her at the same time as Victor, how tight and warm and perfect everything was. And I imagine living in that house with her, with them, with the girls. We could have it all. If only one of us doesn’t die here today.

Because if somebody does, Bernadette will never be the same again. She will never recover. I know that because I lost her once, and even though it was a temporary state, something that could be rectified later on, I was devastated, broken, bitter. No, if one of us dies we might as well take her with us.

Maxwell’s brown eyes are dark with violence as he moves toward me like a man who’s used to wielding knives, used to drawing blood and hurting people.

See, if he’d had his whole army behind him, we would’ve lost.

If it were just me and him in these woods, then I might die. It’s becoming quite clear that as good as I am, Maxwell Barrasso is better. Plus, we killed his son. He has a very personal vendetta against us that demands bloodshed to be satisfied.

But, as we explained to Mason Miller, wolves have packs.

A gunshot goes off and Maxwell lets out a violent shout of pain, collapsing to his knees in the leaves as blood blooms on his thigh, staining his navy slacks an even darker color and turning the faint pinstripes red.

“What do we have here?” Cal muses, coming out of the woods with the pistol held up by his shoulder. He even itches the bright yellow blond of his hair with the grip, as if everything about this moment is calculated and casual and planned. Really, this is just Havoc in a nutshell. This is what we do.

Panting, I use the trunk of a tree to catch my breath while Cal gets close enough to Maxwell that the man actually tries to swing that knife of his. Callum just shoots him in the hand and the man screams. It’s fitting, a mimicry of what we did to his second-in-command. Only, I was the bait this time instead of Bernadette.

“You okay, Aaron?” Cal asks, and I nod, watching as Callum crouches down beside Maxwell. “You could’ve left things well-enough alone. You could’ve left our territory. You could’ve resisted the temptation to rape and pillage our school. And now, today, here, you could’ve resisted the urge to plunder that child. Everything you have