by Eve, Jaymin
“The guys are on their way,” Beck said softly, and I lifted my head to meet his eyes. Needing the reassurance I often found in his gaze. Of course, the storminess of them should have scared me, but I was way past that with Beck. I was safe with him.
“Ms. Deboise,” Jarred Wells said, drawing my attention to him. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Steeling myself, I nodded, trying to get my head on straight again. Thankfully the disorienting shock in my body started to fade as the adrenaline died down. “I went out to the car and my driver was dead,” I started before quickly filling him in on everything else that happened.
“Delta can’t know we’re here,” was Beck’s only contribution to the conversation, his body tense under mine, that heat still pouring off him.
He was pissed. Mega pissed. I couldn’t really blame him either. I’d stood my ground and demanded independence, coming into the city on my own, and my fucking driver had been killed. I was sure Beck was thinking how easily it could have been me. Alone, defenseless in New York city, with a killer clearly after me.
We were one step from him telling me “I told you fucking so,” and he would have had every right.
The fine skin around Jarred Wells eyes tightened, the only sign he was at all concerned. “We must work quickly so that Delta doesn’t find out. I have a friend on the police force, a rather high up detective, who hates your company as much as I do. He can help us out in this situation.”
His eyes met mine directly and he paused for a moment. “This situation and the other one we discussed Ms. Deboise.”
I nodded.
It was nice that he was still treating me as his main point of contact on that situation; usually Beck would have just taken over. But for once, he didn’t flex his alphahole personality, allowing me to remain in control.
His gaze never left Jarred, though, watching as he called his detective friend, waiting for the car and the body to be removed, and all the while, Beck continued to observe everything in his quiet, deadly way.
Then we waited until he got the text. “The guys are here,” he said shortly, standing and lifting me with him before I was dropped gently to my feet. It was very late now but Jarred had not made one move to get us to leave. Instead, he’d stayed silently waiting with us.
“I’ll be in touch soon,” I said softly, and he just nodded.
“Take the back stairwell. Even if my friend can smooth over any witnesses, we don’t want word to get back to Delta…”
We really fucking didn’t want that to happen.
Beck and I left via the back stairwell, and as we descended, I realized something. “How did you get here? You clearly don’t have a car nearby if we had to wait for the guys.”
“Friend gave me a lift from the dinner.”
“What friend?” I pushed.
Beck shook his head. “No one you know. Let’s just call it someone who owed me a favor and knows it’s worth more than his life to talk about anything to do with Delta.”
I was really too tired and freaked out to question him further. Loving and trusting someone didn’t mean you had no secrets, it meant that you trusted them to ensure their secrets never came back to hurt you. Beck and I might have finally been at that point.
Or maybe I was just beyond giving a fuck. There was only so much one person could worry about, and I had reached my limit.
A familiar dark SUV was waiting in the shadows outside the stairwell. Beck had somehow found the time to let them know where to pick us up. “Riles,” Dylan said as I climbed in the back. “Are you okay?”
His concern was obvious, and I felt marginally better just being back with them all. “Yeah, not really.”
Beck pushed in on the other side of me, and I was between him and Evan. Jasper was driving with Dylan in shotgun.
“Tell us everything that happened,” Evan said the moment we pulled away. “Beck only gave us the highlights.”
Probably worried about the phones being tapped, even though they apparently had “untappable” phones. Untrusting bastards were starting to make sense. I could finally see just how fucking scary this situation was.
I told them quickly about my meeting with Wells. “He said the evidence from Dante is not enough. He’s apparently been looking for a way to take Delta down for years, and he won’t go after them with anything that circumstantial. We have one shot at this, and he won’t waste it.”
Which had been what Rob said also.
“This Wells kind of seems too good to be true,” Jasper said dryly.
No one disagreed. “I got the vibe that he had some sort of beef with Delta in the past. Maybe we should check him out?” I suggested.
Beck shook his head. “We’ll know soon enough if he’s playing us. Delta will come at us with all of their power.”
“So we just wait and see,” Evan said, sounding relaxed enough.
“Wells is right,” Dylan said darkly, and I wondered why he wasn’t looking back at me. Usually he faced me directly when he spoke. Lots of eye contact. That was Dylan’s thing. But now he was staring out the window. “We all have one shot, and if we fail, they will bury us. Heirs or not.”
It was a heavy feeling, the pressure grinding us down. But I was not giving up.
“I have a plan regarding that,” I said in a quiet voice. “But before I go into that, we should discuss this fucking rose killer asshole.”
Evan snorted. “Rose Killer. Sounds like a pussy-ass bitch with a name like that.”
“Have you guys gotten anything back on the other flowers?” I asked, ignoring Evan.
“No.” Dylan said shortly, and I could tell I wasn’t the only one noticing his weird attitude.
“What about information on gifts Katelyn received?” I pressed.
“Graeme is blocking all access to his family and the police files,” Jasper answered this time, and the stark contrast between him and Dylan made the tension skyrocket. “But we’re working on sneaking in through … let’s just call it a side access.”
Which was probably a good idea since we now knew this “rose killer” was an actual killer.
“Poor Carl,” I said softly, my chest aching again. “He has kids and grandkids. I mean had. He had…” I broke off.
“For what it’s worth,” Beck said gently, “his family will be compensated.”
It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was something at least. I had no idea how Beck was going to manage that without tipping Delta off to our involvement, but he’d figure out a way.
The bright lights of the city hit me as we finally left the back streets where the Wells building was. Despite the fact it was the middle of the night, there were people everywhere, and I blinked at the sudden noise and activity. I’d been sitting in a dark murder bubble for too long, and I almost couldn’t correlate the two worlds.
“What’s your plan?” Beck broke the silence, and I jerked in my seat.
“Shit, you scared me,” I said, pressing my hand to my chest. “Sorry, I must have been in my own world.”
His thumb brushed across my cheek. “You’re in shock still. Give yourself a break.”
I nodded, my head bouncing up and down even though I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was feeling. “So the plan.”
I took a deep breath, wondering if they would think I was a fucking idiot or not.
“I think we should vote Huntley into Delta.”
I let that sink in for a moment, wondering what their initial reaction would be.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Jasper asked, sounding almost amused by my crazy suggestion. “Beck, you need to get your woman checked. She’s fucking crazy.”
I held a hand up, even though Jasper was watching the road and couldn’t even see me. “Hear me out before you dismiss my brilliance.” My attempt at a joke fell very flat. “There’s more to it than just voting them in and hoping that the board goes to war and kills each other.”
Evan snorted, shaking his head. “That actually might not be
a bad idea. Wars within Delta would weaken them a lot.”
“That’s not enough for me,” I said, letting some of the dark anger that had been simmering inside since I was first brought into this world spill out. “I want them to suffer. I want them alive, stripped of their money and power, at the mercy of the criminals in whatever horrible jail we arrange for them to be at.”
They had destroyed so many lives. It was time to pay.
“And how do you propose letting Huntley win the final seat will ensure that?” Beck asked, sounding like he was taking me seriously.
I cleared my throat. “We need access to the vault. That’s where all the evidence is. Decades of fucking evidence.”
My body was tense as I waited again. “No one knows where the vault is,” Dylan said, pensive and still doing the weird stare out the window thing. “No one. It’s the highest guarded secret Delta has.”
“Someone has to know,” I told him just as thoughtfully. “Someone deposits the evidence in there.”
Beck’s hand gripped mine, his thumb brushing over my skin. “One of the elders is the secret keeper. There is always only one and no torture would make him give up the location—upon his death, there’s a fucking ceremony and everything where they use his thumb to open up a safe that gives direction to the next secret keeper.”
Jasper snorted. “That old fuck wouldn’t break. He’s not human. But I suppose we could knock him off and remove the thumb.”
I shook my head. “No, we aren’t there yet. Plus, I’m guessing he’s pretty heavily guarded.”
The grim silence told me that I’d hit the nail on the head there.
“Okay, so he’s the only one that knows. Is he unguarded when he puts the video in the vault though? Like … when he put mine in there?” I was trying to piece it all together.
Beck shook his head. “Nah, he hires a runner who he kills after the fact. Promises someone money, and then when they do their task, he gets rid of them.”
Disgusting. The Delta board needed to go down.
“Why doesn’t he just do it himself? Would be easier.”
Dylan finally turned around, and I flinched at how hard and dark his face was. “When have you ever seen Delta get their own hands dirty? The elder will want no tie to the vault, no matter what, and he’s ensuring that by using his disposable lackies.”
Fuck. “Even more reason to use my plan. If we can’t torture the information out of the old fuck, we need to ensure that there’s a new recruit who requires an initiation video. There are no more heirs, so the only option is Huntley on the final seat. Then we follow the lackey, somehow, and find the location and requirement for entry into the vault. It’s our only shot. The vault is the one place that will have what we need. Evidence that cannot be disputed.”
I crossed my fingers on the hand Beck didn’t hold, praying that this plan might be viable. Because I needed something. And I needed it soon. Even if the five of us eventually took over our roles as heirs, with our parents and the elders still there calling the shots, threatening our loved ones, we’d never be free. The danger would never wane. We had to end this shit once and for all.
“It might work,” Jasper said softly, able to turn a little now that we were almost out of the city. “There’s a chance at least.”
“If it doesn’t work,” Dylan warned, “We’ve added a very dangerous person to our board, and we will lose some control.”
Beck was silent, all of us waiting for his opinion. He was the unspoken leader of this merry band of assholes, and his opinion held a lot of weight. “I think we should give it a shot,” he finally said, and I let out a relieved breath. “Huntley won’t add much more danger to our position—Delta board and our parents have always been the true threats. It’s worth it to see if we can take them down.”
“This will be interesting,” Dylan murmured so quietly I think I was the only one who heard him. For whatever reason, it sent a shiver of apprehension through me.
13
I clenched my jaw and tried to drag myself out of the foul mood I’d woken up in, but it was no use. I sighed heavily and slammed my locker door shut, just barely missing Eddy’s fingertips—she had only just gotten back from her week at her grandparents, and was as annoyed as me to be at school.
“Sorry,” I muttered to her when she yelped and glared at me.
“No drama,” she replied with a cautious side eye. “Someone have a rough night?”
I heaved another sigh and tossed my hair back over my shoulder. As if the weekend hadn’t been bad enough—what with Carl being murdered and the ominous rose left for me—my hair-tie had snapped on the way to school and I didn’t have a backup. “Yeah, you could say that,” I agreed. Without even meaning to, I searched the halls for Beck.
When the guys had told me the plan for this week, I’d pitched a shit fit that had ended up with Beck sleeping on the couch and me staring at the ceiling all damn night.
“Do nothing.” That was what the plan had boiled down to.
“Hey, why don’t we cut out and go get real coffee?” Eddy suggested, linking her arm through mine. “You look like you could do with a break... from everything, and I missed you while I was gone.”
I almost waved her off, but the odd note to her voice had me looking closer at her. “I’m fine,” I assured her with a small frown. “Just not sleeping well since... you know.”
Her lips pursed, and she nodded. “Since your best friend and my casual lover got accused of murdering one of our classmates? Yeah, that’s sort of what I meant.”
She paused, spotting the guys coming toward us down the hall. “Have they…?” she broke off, biting her lip as she kept her eyes on the four kings of Ducis Academy. “Are they being assholes about it? I know they’re the ones who beat Dante up back when you took that week off school.”
Startled, I stopped walking, spinning her to face me. Something else was pushing this doubt from her, something more serious than she was letting on. “They’re totally fine,” I replied, “they’re helping to come up with a plan for getting Dante released, seeing as we all know he didn’t do it.” I peered at her closer. “Is everything okay with you? Was it okay at your family’s? Your parents haven’t been causing drama have they?”
Eddy shook her head and gave me a tight smile. “Nah, all good. Grandmother was same old—busybody bitch. But it was a nice escape. Parents are MIA as usual.” She eyed the guys one last time. “Anyway, I better get to history.” She hurried back down the hallway right before the guys reached me, and I frowned after her, confused as fuck.
“What’s her deal?” Evan asked, wrinkling his nose as Eddy disappeared into the swarm of uniformed students.
“I have no idea,” I murmured in response. I didn’t bother telling them she’d just said she needed to get to class when it was the beginning of the lunch break. She was avoiding the guys for some reason ... I made a mental note to corner her later and find out why.
Beck slung his arm around my shoulders, tugging me in close and nailing me with a seriously intense kiss. Startled, I let out a squeak and pushed him back. Eventually. It wasn’t like I didn’t want him kissing me, I was just confused as to why PDA was suddenly a thing for us.
“Uh, hi?” I squinted up at him, even as he tucked me into his side while we headed for the cafeteria.
“Hey,” he replied with a cocky smirk.
Shithead. He knew exactly what I was asking.
Jasper snorted a laugh as he held the lunchroom door open for us, and I speared him with my suspicious glare.
“Start talking,” I demanded, knowing he was the easiest target.
Jasper gave me a wide, smug grin. “Beck overheard one of the guys in social studies talking about your tits. Looks like he decided to stake claim.”
I spluttered a shocked noise and poked Beck in the side. “Is that true? Did you just publicly piss on me because some guy complimented my rack?”
He gave no response, but when we reached our usual table, he s
at and hauled me into his lap and proceeded to make sure the entire fucking academy knew we were together. His grip on my ass only let up when I was groaning softly into his mouth and fighting the urge to grind all over his hard cock.
“You’re damn right, I did,” he told me in a voice drenched in sex and need. “Now no one can pretend they don’t know.”
I arched a brow. “Know what?”
Beck’s gaze was blazing hot, setting my whole body on fire. “That you’re mine.”
I bit my lip to hold back the elated smile that wanted to burst free.
“Now, Sebastian,” I scolded teasingly. “We’ve been over this. But I guess we can settle on mutual ownership ... until I can get you alone for a power struggle later.” I suggested the last in a breathy, lust filled whisper, and Beck’s hips jerked slightly.
“Guys. Point made.” Jasper threw a balled up napkin at Beck’s head in a playful gesture, but when we turned to look, his eyes held a little more seriousness.
Clearing my throat in embarrassment—suddenly remembering that the entire freaking academy was watching me dry fuck my boyfriend—I made to get off Beck’s lap. He grabbed me around the waist before I could make it far, spinning me around to face the table but keeping me on his lap.
“Just for a couple of minutes,” he growled softly in my ear. “Give me a moment to think about really unsexy things so I don’t sit here with my boner on display for the whole school.”
I snickered a laugh, grabbing a fry from the tray of food Dylan had just delivered in front of me. “Case in point of who owns who,” I whispered back to Beck with an evil smirk.
“Guys, serious chat time,” Evan said, drawing my attention away from Beck’s erection pressed against my ass. “Beck staking a public claim sort of drops Riley in the cross-hairs for Delta, doesn’t it?” He shot a glance at Dylan as he said this, and I was curious to hear the answer.
We had been keeping our shit low key so that Delta wouldn’t try to use our feelings for each other against us. Me being the weak link in the group and all, it was not a good idea for them to know that I was a weakness for any of the guys. So what changed?
