RIOT HOUSE (Crooked Sinners #1) - Callie Hart Page 0,50

pay tribute to the old man.”

Inwardly, I groan. Five hundred people, all crammed into the same ballroom, waiting for their turn to bow and scrape at the feet of a man most of them have never even fucking met. Sounds like pure fucking torture. Add in the fact that it’s a black-tie event and I’m looking forward to tonight’s charity dinner about as much as a root canal, sans anesthetic.

“You’re quiet back there,” Dashiell accuses, looking over his shoulder at me where I’m sprawled out across the back seat of the Charger. “Goddamnit, Jacobi. Are you physically incapable of sitting up straight?” He curves one of his dirty blond eyebrows into a question mark. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you utilize a chair correctly. You know you’re supposed to bend in the middle and sit at a ninety-degree angle, yes? Your posture’s atrocious.”

“My posture is directly correlated to my level of interest in my surroundings.”

“Ouch.” Pax fakes a sniffle of hurt. “Sorry if we’re boring you, Your Highness.”

Dashiell angles the rearview mirror to face him, using it to check his tie in the mirror. Ties are not mandatory at Wolf Hall; Dash wears it of his own volition, which is just fucking sick in my book. “He’s bent out of shape about the new girl,” he says, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror. “He’s taking his time with this one.”

“I’m not taking my time. I’m laying the groundwork. There’s a difference.”

Dash ignores me. “How long did it take him to sully Erica Judge when she first showed up?” he asks Pax.

“Two hours, thirty-eight minutes. From setting eyes on her for the first time, deciding he wanted her, getting past the small talk, actually fucking her in the art room, and her parents turning around and coming back to get her. Two hours and thirty-eight fucking minutes!” Pax crows. “Living fucking legend. Pretty little Elodie’s been here for two whole weeks now, an’ he’s barely even looked at her. Waste of fresh meat, if you ask me. If you’ve changed your mind about our deal, man, we can trade back, y’know. Corsica’s one of my favorite places in the world, but that girl looks like she’s got one of those perfect, tiny, neat little porn star pussies. I’d love to crack that oyster open and go hunting for the pearl.” He holds up two fingers, flicking his tongue between them, making a grotesque slurping noise, and the back of my neck prickles. I kick the back of his headrest hard enough to make his skull bounce off the calfskin leather.

“Hey! What the fuck, man!” Pax glares at me over his shoulder. “If you’re having trouble getting your dick hard, I got plenty of meds that’ll help you get the job done. Pull that shit again, though, and you can get out and fucking walk.”

“Fine,” I hiss.

“Fine, you want some dick pills?”

“Fine, pull over. I’ll get out and fucking walk.”

“Don’t be a little bitch, Jacobi. We’re five hundred feet away from the entrance.”

“Stop the car, or I’ll do more than kick a headrest,” I purr, in a flat, calm, perfectly amicable voice.

“Jesus Christ,” Dash groans. “Let him out before he blows like fucking Etna. There’s no need to get so grouchy, y’know,” he tells me, spinning around in his chair. “You like something about this girl. For some weird reason, you’ve decided she’s the Morticia to your Gomez. There’s no need to let your temporary insanity cause contention between the three of us, though, is there.”

The Charger’s tires kick up hunks of gravel as Pax purposefully slams on the breaks. I open up the door and climb out into the cold.

Dashiell offers me a winning smile. “Take a minute to think about what really matters on your pilgrimage to school, won’t you, fella? See you in three whole minutes.”

The Charger jumps its brakes, surging down the driveway towards the academy’s imposing building, and a thick cloud of exhaust fumes envelopes me for a second, obscuring the dismal view up ahead.

I wish it would fucking rain again.

I wish the day, along with Dashiell’s father’s vexing charity dinner, was already over.

I wish my smug fucking friends weren’t right.

My attention’s inexplicably snagged on Elodie, and her appeal seems to grow on a daily goddamn basis. Under any other circumstances, I would have charmed the back teeth off of the girl and screwed the living shit out of her already, but this isn’t about sex. It isn’t not about sex, I s’pose. But it’s