doing this so we can get out of the family – Antony and I. And Queen Boudica. She had such a shitty start to life, I want to give her everything. They’re my family and I’ll do anything to protect them.”
“Then why are you at school?” Noah asks. I know he’s thinking about all the tutoring he’d done with me, realizing why I couldn’t write an essay to save my ass. “Why are you so determined to stay there if it puts you in danger?”
“One of the neighbors heard me playing music because, for all of Howard Malloy’s security measures, he didn’t install sound dampening around the media room. Sound travels down the valley to the neighbors, who called the police on me. An officer came to the door and I… I knew what I had to do. I pretended to be her. It worked too well. The cop believed me, but he wanted to check up on me and get me in trouble for being a minor living alone. He demanded to know what school I went to, and I said the first name I could think of – Stonehurst Prep. Now I have to keep up the charade that I’m Mackenzie, so I have to go to school.” I shrug. “The rest you know.”
“Won’t the fact that you pretended to be another person put a stain in your claim for the property?” Noah asks. He doesn’t sound angry any longer, more like he’s excited to put the puzzle together.
That’s usually Eli’s role in the group – he’s the one who has to solve everyone’s problems. But Eli won’t be able to think his way out of the mess I’ve made of his life, and Noah is fucked-up enough that maybe, if he tries hard enough, he can sink to my level.
Antony keeps jiggling his foot as he shrugs. “We’ll deal with that if it comes up. But it won’t come up. This building is a problem for the council. It’s a blight on the Harrington Hills landscape. The Malloy legacy degrades the property values and the residents constantly complain. But the council doesn’t want to deal with the family – if it’s sold to a developer who’ll bulldoze the thing and build luxury condos, they’ll look the other way.”
Eli jerks to his feet. “You’re going to sell Mackenzie’s house?”
“For the last time, she’s welcome to stand up and object,” I shoot back, rising to my feet to glare at him. His face twists and I fucking hate myself, but he hates me more, and that’s exactly what I want.
If Eli hates me, he’ll be safe.
His whole body trembles. “This isn’t yours to take. You… you… desecrated it.”
He has his hand over his chest as he sweeps his arm around to indicate the ballroom, and I feel a tinge of annoyance because I’d never had anything that belonged to me in my entire life, but this room, this shard of a life that I clawed for myself from thin-fucking-air, this is mine. But the Golden Boy of Stonehurst Prep – who’s had everything handed to him on a gold-edged plate – will never understand that.
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic. I read Mackenzie’s diaries. She hated this house. It was her fucking prison, just like it is mine. You three think you have it so tough, living in your huge houses with your millions of dollars and your free ride through life. I bet you’ve never even set foot in Tartarus Oaks. You don’t know what it takes to survive there.” I lift my chin.
Noah bites his lip. He looks over at Antony, and then back at me. He wrestles with something he wants to say, but doesn’t. Instead, he asks, “So what did you do to Brentwood that has him trembling in his Brionis at the thought of facing you again?”
“I told you, I don’t have anything to do with this Brentwood. If he’s a killer, then he’s connected to another Tartarus Oaks family, because you can’t get a contract in this town without going through Constantine Dio. If he saw Mackenzie Malloy murder someone, that’s nothing to do with me.”
“But my father thinks you’re Mackenzie.”
“Exactly.” I flop back on my chair. Wordlessly, Gabriel hands me the bottle of rum. I swipe it from his hands and take a swig. “Hence, today’s little problem.”
“We don’t know that for a fact.” Antony taps away on his phone. “I’m going out to chat with our friend Brentwood, see if I can