Empire High Betrayal (Empire High #3) - Ivy Smoak Page 0,37

would again one day. I’d make sure of it. “Thanks.”

“No problem. And I’m still cute.”

I laughed. “Sure.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “You’ll see, Brooklyn. One day you’ll look back at all of this and wish you would have said yes to me.”

I smiled. “You never know.” But I did. I looked down at the picture. I wanted Matt. And I wanted what was in this picture too. Yes, their friendship had fallen apart. But that just meant it could be put together. I knew that. My heart was being put back together too.

And as I looked down at the picture, it made me want something else too. I could so easily picture Matt and my kids hanging out by the pool. With smiles that big. I’d never thought about kids before. Hell, I was still a kid. But it was so easy to picture it with Matt. Maybe because he seemed to have pushed down the gas pedal on our relationship. And one day, I wanted our kids to be friends with James’ kids. And Rob’s.

I looked up at James. “I just think that maybe you’re all sorry. And that there’s no reason to throw away a lifetime of friendship over a misunderstanding.”

“Well…if you accept my proposal, I guess I could forgive him.”

I rolled my eyes.

He groaned. “Don’t do that. I like it too much.”

I laughed. “When I roll my eyes?”

“So sexy.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

He laughed. “Yeah, but you like it.”

I shook my head. “Can we please focus?”

“Sure thing.” He tossed me his notebook.

I looked down at what James had written. Drop her off in the middle of nowhere. Take her clothes. Point a gun at her head. Threaten to kill her best friend. “Best friend” was scratched out with “minion.” Make her disappear? A chill ran down my spine. Matt had wanted me to be the bigger person. He didn’t want me to stoop to Isabella’s level. He’d said I was better than her. But God, I desperately wanted to make her disappear. And I was pretty sure the Hunters had the resources to make it happen.

I should have corrected James. Convinced him that I just wanted it to be a silly prank like I’d insisted before. But I just kept staring at the question mark after the word disappear. Like he was asking me for my permission. Like he was offering to do it for me.

And I wasn’t sure why, but I wrote down yes and then handed it back to him. His eyes locked with mine. For a second I’d forgotten that his life was just as tangled up in Isabella’s as mine. Maybe his mom just wanted him to marry a Pruitt because she liked Isabella. Or maybe it was more sinister like Isabella had said – that the Hunters owed my dad a debt. And they’d paid it with James’ future. Either way, Isabella was going to ruin both our lives. Unless we ruined hers first.

James raised his left eyebrow at me.

And I nodded.

“New plan,” James said. “I think we all know what we really want here.” He tossed his notebook to the side. “We want to make Isabella disappear for good. What do you say, Rob? Got something in your evil genius mind for that?”

“Now we’re talking.” Rob rubbed his hands together. “Oh! We’re going to need pizza for this. Nothing like pizza to plot murder.” He pulled out his phone and sent a text. “So what are we thinking, cheese or pepperoni?”

How could Rob think about what kind of pizza we wanted when he just said we wanted to kill someone? Disappear was different than kill. Right?

“Cheese sounds good,” James said. “Unless you want something else?” he asked me.

I shook my head. James wasn’t freaking out. Apparently he’d meant kill too.

“Perfect,” Rob said. “Cheese it is. Now how do you want to kill the troll?”

Chapter 13

Monday

Rob didn’t need to ask us our opinion. Because before we even had a chance to respond, he told us his whole plan. A plan that was clearly well thought out because it was so detailed. And graphic.

“The key is making sure every inch of her burns so that they can’t trace anything back to us,” Rob said. “Unless you’d rather use lye. But I really like the idea of fire. It seems like a more graceful way to end it, you know?”

I finally found my voice. “What the fuck, Rob?”

He started laughing. And then laughing some more. He pointed at me, barely even able to breathe. “You