My Secret Heart (Stonehurst Prep #2) - Steffanie Holmes
Prologue: Not-Mackenzie
(Four years earlier)
“Stop twitching like a teenager on a meth binge, Jesus fuck.” Antony rocks beneath me. “You nearly took my eye out.”
“You want to try balancing on my spindly shoulders while cutting this?” I snap back, sucking my bleeding finger into my mouth as I aim the cutters at the next coil of barbed wire. “Stop whining. If the neighbors hear us, we’re done for.”
Antony grunts and shifts his weight beneath me, and I tighten my thighs around his neck as a tremble rocks through my body. I’m not shaking because I’m struggling to balance sitting on his shoulders – I’ve always been pretty good at that sort of thing. I’m a wreck because I’m still living inside the nightmare of waking up in a coffin, of sucking in stale air and knowing my last breath will taste of graveyard dirt and loneliness.
If Antony hadn’t found me…
I should be dead right now. My parents are dead. The truth of it hasn’t hit me yet. It’s a story of something terrible that happened to someone else. When Daddy talked to me about his work, he had the same matter-of-fact tone he used to discuss the weather. Grey skies and drug deals, el Nino and Al Capone – it’s all the same to him.
I’m detached from my life, floating in the ocean of my own delusion as I snap, snap, snap at the barbed wire.
Is this how Daddy stayed sane? I discard the thought as soon as it comes to me. Daddy was many things, but sane wasn’t one of them.
Finally, I have a section of wire cut away that’s wide enough for me to slip through. Antony gives me a boost, and I vault over the wall. I tuck my knees to my chest and throw my arms out as I land to cushion the impact the way Antony taught me. It doesn’t work. I cry out as my ankle rolls and the force radiates up my leg.
“You okay?” Antony yells, his voice muffled by the high stone wall between us.
“Shut up.” The last thing we need is some nosy neighbor overhearing him and calling the cops. Although there doesn’t appear to be neighbors nearby. A strip of manmade woodland surrounds the mansion on two sides, closing us off from the rest of Harrington Hill. And those neighbors probably had their own woodlands and fancy gardens and huge fuck-off walls, too.
Rich people love their privacy. Behind their barricades, they can get up to all the illicit things that have lined my family’s coffers for centuries.
I lean my weight on my good ankle and stand, taking in my surroundings. I’ve landed on a tiled bar area – upturned pool furniture scattered around a sunken fire pit and outdoor kitchen festooned with spiderwebs. In front of me, the azure waters of a swimming pool glisten in the moonlight. A blow-up unicorn bobs in the water, its neck bent at an impossible angle as it slowly deflates – a remnant of the life of the girl who grew up in this palace. It’s a fitting metaphor for Mackenzie Malloy – the spoiled princess touched by magic who’s discovered she bleeds like the rest of us.
Beyond the pool, the house glitters, bright and inviting. Strips of LED lighting glow softly as they illuminate a path across the garden. Dorothy’s yellow-brick road through the land of Oz. I see more lights on inside, and hip furniture arranged just-so behind the tinted windows. It looks as if the owners will be home any minute.
I’m itching to explore inside, but I need to find a way to let Antony in first. I duck through an iron gate down the side of the house and into the front yard, picking my way gingerly around evil-ass looking succulents. Whoever did the landscaping has a hard-on for spikes.
Twin iron gates tower above me, topped with more spikes and hung from a pair of stone pillars that could pass as the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. We already tried a crowbar on the gates, but that wouldn’t fly. I spy a metal box screwed into one of the pillars. I kick off the front panel. Inside is a manual override, in case the gate’s electronics short during a storm and the rich bastards inside need to send out their servants to restock the cellar with Dom Pérignon and gilt-edged toilet paper. I crank the handle to make a gap wide enough for Antony to fit through, and we’re both inside.