RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,14

myself and hope that the end will be quick.

A sharp, shrill bell drowns out Pres, the redhead I met earlier, and the students all shuffle out of the classroom, groaning and complaining loudly about the assignment that Doctor Fitzpatrick says he’ll email us all later on this afternoon.

In the hallway, Carina sags with relief. “God, I’m so glad that’s over.”

I don’t think she means the English class itself.

I think she means the close proximity to Wren and his crew.

At the foot of a steep, winding stone stairway, Carina gives me a quick hug. “This is where I leave you, I’m afraid. I need to get to Spanish. Your biology class is up there. Don’t worry. Everyone should be nice.”

About halfway up the stairs, my cell phone chimes in my back pocket. Excited, I scramble to pull it out and read the message that’s just come through. With the crazy time differences, it feels like I’ve been waiting for this moment for a week. It’s weird that I haven’t heard a peep out of Levi and the others until now, but at least—

Oh.

Wait.

The message isn’t from one of my friends back in Tel Aviv. The unknown number is American, with a 929 area code that isn’t familiar to me.

The message is short and to the point.

“Be less obvious, Stillwater. Desperation’s an ugly look.”

4

WREN

Dead mother.

Only child.

Small, like a porcelain doll.

Pretty blonde hair.

Pouty mouth I wouldn’t mind wrapped around my dick.

I don’t know much about Elodie Stillwater, but I can already feel that familiar old spark of intrigue at the back of my head, an itch just begging to be scratched. In fairness, I felt the dirty, sick need long before I laid eyes on the girl. Her file had been sitting there, open and asking to be flicked through, the last time I got called into Harcourt’s office. The photo clipped to the top of Elodie’s paperwork had caught my eye—I’ve always been attracted to shiny, pretty things—and my pulse had quickened, stirring from a steady, slow thrum to a far more urgent, interested clip.

In the picture, she was wearing a white sailor’s uniform—a particularly unkind school uniform, I later learned, after a bit of digging. The smile on her face was genuine. She was laughing at someone or something off camera, and her eyes were alive with energy. Innocent. That’s what it was about her. She looked innocent, dressed in white, with all of that long blonde hair flowing down past her shoulders, every part of her singing with life. I’d immediately wanted to sully her.

I took the photo. Denied taking it when Harcourt asked me if I knew where it was. For two weeks prior to Elodie Stillwater’s arrival, I spent a lot of time looking at that photo, jerking off to it but then refusing to let myself come, enjoying the anger that pooled in my stomach whenever I stared at Elodie’s pretty face. I’ve loved conditioning myself ever since I was a kid. Exposing myself to some kind of stimulus and then training myself to expect a certain outcome. I love nothing more than mastering myself, both mind and body, and my first thought when I saw that girl’s smiling face, was that I wanted to make myself hate her.

Why, you ask?

Why the hell not?

Just for the fun of it.

For a way to pass the time.

Mediocrity is the curse of the weak minded. I’ve made damn sure nothing about me is mediocre, half-assed, or middle of the road, and that includes my emotions. It takes a lot to make me feel alive these days, but a dark obsession? A healthy bit of intrigue, colored with a splash of hate? Yeah, that’ll wake me from this dull, trite existence better than anything else.

So, yeah. I waited up for her to arrive. I volunteered, which should have been a pretty glaring warning to the Wolf Hall administration, since I’ve never volunteered for anything in my entire fucking life. I wanted to test out my theory and see if the time I spent torturing myself had had its desired effect, though, and there was only one way to do that. I had to see her face-to-face, even if it meant burning my way through my last pack of smokes while standing out in the freezing cold for two and a half hours.

When I watched her getting out of that Town Car, angrily pulling at the straps on her backpack, my body knew exactly what to do. My dick responded beautifully, roaring