Fallen Stars and Broken Dreams - C.C. Masters Page 0,46

could spook Stacey so much.

She bit her lower lip. “Probably not murder. But getting into a fight with them could lead to you disappearing. You don’t want to cross them.”

My eyebrows rose, but Stacey pulled away.

“I’m only warning you because it seemed like you somehow got on their bad side,” she said as she avoided eye contact.

Stacey’s phone rang, and I could hear Ella yelling over the speaker from six feet away.

“I have to go,” Stacey mumbled as she pushed the cart out of my doorway.

I thanked her again and said goodbye, and she gave me a nervous wave in return.

After she was gone, I sat down on my bed to think about what she said. I’d seen enough in New York to know that the rich didn’t live by the same rules that the rest of us did. Instead of getting arrested on drunk and disorderly charges, they were driven home by police. People at my school turned the other cheek when our biggest donors were rude and demanding. Everyone bent over backward to please them.

Kingston and Maverik clearly didn’t like me or want me here, but would they physically harm me? I hadn’t gotten that vibe from them. Even when they kidnapped me, Maverik was still careful not to hurt me, and Kingston was distressed when he saw the marks on my wrists.

As much as he might deny it, Maverik had stepped in to stop my mom after she hit me. He could have stayed lurking in the shadows and never revealed himself. That probably would have been the smarter thing to do.

Still, I wasn’t the type of person to let things go just because I thought they might secretly be nice guys under the layers of asshole they wore. If they were intent on terrorizing me, then I was going to get them back.

Chapter 15

Katya

I hovered in my room later that night, knowing that the two guys would undoubtedly be going out to party. This was an opportunity to search their space, find out what they really cared about, and get some revenge. To my delight, Awake had delivered everything I wanted within two hours of me ordering it. I realized that left a trail of evidence, but those two weren’t the type to go tattling to their dad over petty stuff.

I heard doors slam, and Kingston shouting excitedly as they left. I rolled my eyes when I heard the pre-party conversation. I just hoped that they would come home wasted and be caught defenseless by what I was going to leave for them.

Once I was sure they were out of the front gate, I booked it to Kingston’s room with my bag of goodies. I snickered when I got to his bathroom and looked over his broad range of grooming products. The purple hair shampoo for blondes was a stroke of good luck that I couldn’t have been more delighted by.

The expensive-looking shampoo went right down the drain. I saved a little to mix with the purple manic panic hair dye I found online. It wasn’t precisely the right smell or color, but hopefully he’d be too drunk or hungover to notice right away.

Both guys got their toilet paper replaced by those sticky lint rollers. A sober person would probably notice immediately, but I was banking on bleary eyes missing the obvious until they reached for a square. Of course, I removed every last roll of real toilet paper from their bathrooms entirely. Scooping out their deodorant and replacing it with cream cheese took a little longer than I expected, but I had plenty of time. You can’t rush perfection.

I had to stick them in Maverik’s mini-fridge to get them to solidify properly, and that’s when I noticed his water bottles. How refreshing would it be to reach for a nice, cold drink to help with that hangover dehydration, only to get a mouthful of vinegar? I laughed out loud when I went down to the kitchen for reinforcements. Luckily, Mrs. Ferguson had multiple bottles of white vinegar – so she wouldn’t miss one.

Kingston’s body wash? Replaced by Elmer’s glue. It turned out that Maverik used bar soap, so I rushed back to my room for a bottle of clear nail polish. I wondered how long he’d struggle to get it to lather. Naturally, I removed the extra soap from his bathroom to make it impossible to get clean.

I almost felt bad about dumping an expensive bottle of cologne, but then I remembered that these guys