Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,50

has all those rich friends, doesn’t she? I start to shake. What if she sold us to the Kushners? I wonder. What if, all along, she’s been a part of this? Woven into the very fabric of my demise.

My throat gets so dry that I can hardly imagine speaking another word.

I let Vic band an arm around me and pull me close, putting his lips against the top of my head.

“What do you need, wife?” he asks, and I can tell his heart is broken. For me, I’ll bet. Because I always hurt for him, too. I have since we were kids and I saw his mom stop by the school once—just once in all our years of elementary, junior, and high school combined—and dig her nails into his skin so hard that he bled.

I recognized that pain in him, when he was eight, and I was eight, and our eyes met across the dusty surface of a playground that’s already been forgotten in time.

“Do we have any girls in the county jail right now?” I ask absently.

“No,” Vic begins cautiously, his thumb brushing across my knuckles and making me shiver. “But we could find one. I bet one of Stacey’s girls would know who to contact. What do you want to do?”

I stay where I am for a moment.

I haven’t fully processed it yet.

I’m not sure that I can, not right now. Not after yesterday.

“Find out for me. And then I’ll give Pam a choice. Admit to what she did or …” I pause, working my jaw in anger for a moment. My fingers curl around Victor’s. “I guess she might find herself hanging from her sheets one morning.”

I try to pull away, but Vic tightens his hand on mine. I see Oscar stiffen at the table, like this is a dance we just danced, as if he recognizes all the moves.

“Ophelia called while you were upstairs,” Vic tells me, his mouth turning down into a frown. He wants to pursue, nail down my emotions, probably nail me … But he can’t do any of those things, so he settles for letting that feeling travel down his fingers and into my arm. “Sara Young wasn’t wrong: the GMP is coming for us.”

I stare back at him, and then shake my head.

“But. There’s a but in there somewhere.” I see Oscar watching us, but I’m having trouble meeting his eyes, so I keep my attention on Vic. Another cramp hits me like a punch to the gut, and I grimace. Victor pulls me close and parks his hands on my hips. I know what he’s thinking, a bunch of bullshit like they killed my baby or whatever alpha-hole crap goes through that thick skull of his. He keeps it carefully tucked away, but it won’t last, that feigned indifference. Eventually, we’ll be stripped down and trembling in front of one another, souls bared, hearts naked.

“She wants us to renegotiate with Trinity. If we speed up that process, and guarantee Maxwell a cut of the money, he’ll keep his men back for the time being.” Vic leans down to put his mouth near my ear. “But guess what? I saved you the trouble of deciding what to do.”

“Yeah?” I ask, rubbing my thumb across my wedding ring. I can’t look at him right now, reeking of sin and sex, looking like a goddamn demon made of carnal torture and ink. My body hurts too much to feel like this; it isn’t fair.

“Well, they already tried to have us executed, didn’t they?” Vic smiles at me, all white teeth and bullshit, just the way I like him. His purple-dark hair is smoothed back, his eyes the color of an empty grave, freshly dug and awaiting a body to fall into its shadowy hands. “And it didn’t work out so well for them. I told Ophelia to fuck off.”

I let out a sharp exhale when something catches my eye.

It’s the pamphlet for Oak River Elementary.

It’s almost time for my phone call with Heather.

“What’s going to happen to Prescott High?” I ask, looking back at Vic. I wonder where Aaron, Hael, and Cal are? After nearly losing Aaron, and coming close to the same with Cal, I’m not letting any of them get more than a hundred feet from me at any given time.

“Indefinitely closed,” Oscar says, his voice just this side of genteel. You’d almost think he was having feelings in that crazy head of his.

“What’s the district’s plan?” I ask, glancing back