BOOK 2: Chapter 1

BOOK TWO BLURB:

They say he’s a legend, I call bullshit.

They say he’s the devil, I live with people every day. Those are the real devils and not some wannabe tattooed freak across the rival campus who thinks the earth was forged to be his playground.

When he breaks the arm of the Football team Captain over some petty rivalry, it’s up to me to avenge my brother.

What I don’t expect?

I don’t expect Ethan ‘Sinnett’ Volkov to show up in his room while I’m hiding under his desk planting small cameras to spy and ruin him.

I don’t expect Ethan ‘Sinnett’ Volkov to fuck two girls while I’m fighting for breath under said aforementioned desk.

I narrowly escape him.

The thing with predators though? They chase. They hunt. They eviscerate.

I fear that I, Zadie Colkin, resident good girl, lover of fur animals, ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’ girl scout, might have caught the attention of a psychopath.

****

ZADIE COLKIN.

“W—Why can’t you do it?”

My feeble attempt at trying to diffuse the situation showed just how bad of a sister I was.

I wasn’t exactly the ‘go-to-war-for-my-family’s-honor’ kind of sibling. Frankly speaking I wouldn’t go to war for a hypothetical cat I owned but still, what happened tonight meant my brother’s life was basically over.

Yeah, no athlete came back strong after an injury to the same arm he used to deliver his team to the Championships.

Ergo I should have wanted to avenge my brother from the maniac that broke his arm.

“Let’s be real here, Zee. South U knows all of our faces. The second we step into that gothic mansion to try and even the score for what they did to Tristan, they’ll see us coming and they’ll probably do a whole lot worse than break our arms.”

That speech wasn’t winning any awards.

“And you think they won’t hurt me for stepping into their turf? Theo, I can’t do this. I’m sorry for what-.”

My brother’s best friend didn’t stop there.

No, Theo Archibald wouldn’t be the golden boy of North U and Tristan’s best friend if he didn’t have that heart of gold I adored since we were six.

“You think I would let anything happen to you, peaches?”

His hand caressed my cheek and I all but melted when he gave me that smile that had all the chicks in North U begging for his attention.

I loved the nickname. Too bad he only saw me like how my brother did.

I was family.

His little sister.

His ‘off-limits’ best friend’s sister.

“No.”

“You’ll practically be invisible to them, peaches. You don’t talk to anyone, you don’t look anyone in the eye, just blend in and you’ll be fine. All you have to do is leave a few cameras and you are out. In and out, Zee. Do you trust me?”

With my life? Hundred percent.

With this? No.

But Theo came to me and I had to do everything in my willpower if I was ever going to be his wife in the future. I had to make him proud.

And avenge my brother, I guess.

“Yes.”

“That’s my good girl.”

The only answer I had to that was the blush that crept up my neck all the way to my chubby cheeks.

Theo’s ‘you can do this’ speech was two hours ago.

Two hours later, I’m standing in South U’s property or more importantly standing right behind the Victorian mansion that happens to be owned by the Graves.

There’s a reason why North U and South U campuses don’t mix.

It might have to do with the fact that North U, my campus, is owned and inhabited by people who can barely afford yachts and all things Prada.

It might also have to do with the fact that South U is rumored to have been founded by mafia heads all over the world.

But the major reason why we don’t mix?

South U is filled with delinquents. Not the ‘I scratched the mayor’s car and got away with it’ or the ‘I vandalized the school and lived to tell the tale’.

No.

Not those.

These motherfuckers are too refined for that.

I know they kill, I’ve heard rumors.

I know they skin people alive, also part of the rumors.

And from what they did to my brother today, I know there’s an off chance that if I’m caught, my body might be found lying aimlessly in a ditch tomorrow and the local police will rule it as a hit-and-run case.

I know all that and yet…

The air itself feels muggy, the music from inside the mansion I’m supposed to sneak into pounds louder than my thrashing heart.

“Look at me, peaches. I’m right here. I’ll be right here when you come out and this will all be a conquered nightmare. Remember we are doing this for Tris”, Theo’s hand dusts my cheek and it’s the only thing that’s calming me down.

Right.

Breathe, Zadie.

In and out.

“For Tris”, I affirm.

Theo gets in his car and I flash him a nervous smile.

The both of us being in South U at the same time is already a threat.

He drove me here and left.

Ten minutes later, he’ll drive back here and pick me up before anyone notices him. Or me for that matter.

That’s the same mantra I repeat when I walk around the mansion that looks like it was erected back when the fictional Camelot existed.

Getting inside isn’t as hard as I expected.

A, because no one notices me and b, everyone’s having the time of their lives to notice the chubby girl in a hoodie and a pair of worn-out black jeans who definitely doesn’t belong here.

I’ve never been to a party before.

Tristan and Theo try to keep me out of parties as often as they can and maybe now, I see why.

By the gaming room, we have the keg bros. Only instead of chugging beer upside down from a literal keg, these chums suck liquor off the naked tits of a group of girls fit enough to be considered cheerleaders.

There’s the tattooed guy by the couch fucking a girl while smoking weed.

There’s the other couple sucking each other’s faces while they share… Yuck, are they sharing Doritos while they kiss?

Add in the other shenanigans around here that would make my Christian mother baptize me with holy water for a week and my feet will me to move up the stairs.

Last room down the hallway.

Move to his room.

Plant the voice recorder and cameras in his office.

Then out.

In and out.

I make it up the stairs in one piece. If we count the sweat clinging to my skin and the liquid fear eating up my spine as one piece, then yeah, one piece.

There are six doors lining the hallway but the door I need to get into is at the very edge of this hallway.

The one that has no one going near it.

The one that’s painted black like the pathway to hell.

I move past a couple of bodies, past a few ‘I need to pee’ cheerleaders lining the fourth door, I’m assuming to be the bathroom, and my fingers can almost taste the door knob of Ethan Volkov’s door when my breath is knocked out of my lungs.

“Where do you think you are going, mama?”

The veiny hand splattered on my stomach tells me my days are numbered.

The hard voice that comes out as spikes aimed at my head has my heart racing and my mouth going dry.

You are done. This is it. You are dying in the hands of…

“Let the chick go, Rhys”, another voice hits me from behind and my eyes go wide.

Rhys? As in Rhys Sokolov? Right-hand man to the leader of the Graves?

I shouldn’t be relieved. Yet… somehow I am.

“Nah, I’m sick and tired of watching your big bro get all the fine asses around here. I mean damn, the crazy fuck isn’t even that likable and he gets chicks like her? What do you say, mama? Me, you and that fine ass together in bed? I’m nowhere near gentle but fuck me, if I can’t make you scream my name all night.”

“Walk away. Sin won’t like this”, Less Scary Guy says and I am practically nodding at his words.

Listen to him.

Walk away.

Please.

Please just walk away.

Rhys Sokolov doesn’t walk away though.

His hand tightens around my soft belly then his face comes near my right ear, enough to raise goosebumps from me and make my bladder an inch away from spewing pee, he whispers, “You know where to find me if my cousin doesn’t make you scream, mama. I’m one room away.”

His blatant words have my insides at war.

No one has ever… well been that blunt with me. Let alone flirted with me. I’m the girl who fails to get noticed by guys.

The type of girl no guy wants to be seen with in public.

My sense of reality is snapped back to earth when Rhys lets go of me only to twist the doorknob, open the door for me and I practically run in.

A second later the door behind me is locked shut as I hear Rhys’ cackle fading away.

I don’t look around the room.

Fear and the encounter I just had don’t allow me to.

My feet scamper to one of the two doors I was told would be Ethan’s office.

Thanks to Theo’s intel and the Big Man watching out for me from above, finding Ethan’s office goes from hard to easy.

The office isn’t much.

Not as much as I would expect from a guy who calls himself ‘Sin’, runs one of the deadliest clubs in South U called the Graves, is rumored to be inheriting the Cosa Nostra when he turns twenty-five and killed two of his bodyguards when he was ten.

Some of that sounds like bullshit to me but I can’t risk staying here a second later, whether Theo told me Ethan ‘Sin’ Volkov is out of South U campus tonight or not.

I set the first cameras in the fake books he has on the shelves before my eyes flicker to the desk that has a desktop on it and a laptop beside it.

The voice recorder is to be placed specifically under this bastard’s desk.

If Theo can hear and know the Graves’ plan, then he and the rest of the football guys out for blood can counter it with an attack of their own.

I push the swivel chair aside, kneeling on the ground and getting under the desk to place the recorder someplace safe where it can’t be knocked down or detected easily.

Tap.

The sound comes out like a whisper in the shadows.

Tap.

My chin trembles.

My mind lies to me that I’m imagining things.

Tap.

My heart slowly climbs its way up my throat, choking me and making me want to throw up where I’m seated.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

The sounds become clearer and louder than the music from downstairs.

A second later, I hear the door ten feet away from where I’m seated on the floor creak open.

Two point one seconds later, someone chants a name.

A name that has my shoulders curling inward like a flower retreating into itself when the sun sets.

“Sin.”

The sultry moan comes first.

“On the desk”, the new voice doesn’t sound like Rhys Sokolov at all.

Hard, brazen and controlled to a fault, the rough timbre of this new voice nearly sends me into a prominent heart attack.

It can’t be him.

Theo said… No, Theo said…

A minute later, the sound of bodies hitting the desk above me in a thud echoes into the room.

When I look down, two pairs of well-pedicured nails gaze at me from the other side of this small desk.

Shit!

"I want those legs open for me at all times. Let’s see whether those cunts are worth fucking over my night.”