Virtue (Briarcliff Secret Society Series Book 2)

by Ketley Allison

  “You have no fucking idea,” Addisyn says, striding forward.

  I almost, almost, cower at being run up against her fury, but I hold myself still. “What I can’t understand is, why did they reward you for killing one of their own? What was Piper doing that was so wrong in their eyes, she had to die? I doubt it was for fucking your boyfriend, though I’m sure that was enough of an impetus for you.”

  Instead of snarling like I expect, Addisyn’s lips pull up in a sneer. “Oh, yeah? Well, what I understand is, they run this school, not you, and you’re about to get your ass handed to you without me lifting a finger.”

  I raise my brows. “What—?”

  “Hey, Ems!” Addisyn calls, without looking away from me. “Eden! Come on in!”

  At last, my feet move, but they don’t stride forward with confidence. No, they fall back. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Addisyn steps aside, revealing the bedroom doorway, and Emma and Eden walking through.

  My heart plummets, its descent into cavernous darkness accelerated with the thought of Chase.

  Don’t let him come next. Please.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, my eyes bouncing between the two of them.

  Emma tsks. Eden crosses her arms.

  “Maybe next time,” Emma says sweetly. “Don’t fuck my brother behind my back for favors.”

  My shins hit the back of Addisyn’s bed. “Addisyn confessed. She killed Piper! Why are you here? Eden, where’s your mom? Why are you two smiling at me like that?”

  “You bring up a good point, Callie,” Emma says, then gestures to Eden. “Get the pages.”

  With an agility I did not brace for, Eden springs forward and snatches Piper’s lost pages from my hand.

  “Eden, no!” I cry, but it’s too late. She’s vaulted back to Emma’s side, clutching the writings like treasure.

  “And that letter of Rose Briar’s you found?” Emma says. “Consider that gone, too. Hiding shit in a textbook? C’mon, Callie, at least encrypt the evidence.”

  I appeal to Eden. To Emma. Addisyn’s off to the side, enjoying the show. “You hate the Virtues. You hate Falyn, Willow, Violet, Addisyn—all they represent. Why are you helping them? They hurt you. Scarred you. Why would you ever…?”

  I can’t finish the question, because I’m so bewildered. Here are two girls who’ve experienced first-hand torture from the Virtues, overheard Addisyn’s confession, and yet, they’re regarding me like I’m the one they need to be rid of.

  “You tricked me,” I whisper.

  “Wasn’t all that hard,” Emma says. “You’re so eager to please Chase, all I had to do was dangle his dick in front of you a few times.”

  “Ew.” Eden giggles. “You’re talking about your brother’s penis.”

  I stare on, horrified, my mind rushing to catch up with the wrongness of this scene. “Where’s Chase?”

  “God.” Emma moans, her eyes drifting to the ceiling. “You’re so predictable.”

  “You led me to believe you were on my side. Got me here, to Addisyn’s room. And I found Piper’s missing pages. What was it all for?” I ask.

  “First off,” Emma says. She looks to Addisyn. “Why didn’t you set fire to these pages when you stole them? You’re as dumb as she is.”

  “Probably because I’m not the pyro in this room,” Addisyn retorts.

  Emma grunts in annoyance, but all the movement highlights are the angry burns down one side of her neck. A scar I thought she got from an attempt to get revenge on the societies after what they did to her.

  The fool is me, I guess, because I never asked Emma for the truth. Never took the time to ask her what instigated her attack, to figure out what she did to deserve a beating from the Virtues that unleashed her wrath in the first place.

  I just assumed, and that was my downfall.

  Maybe all it was, was an initiation gone wrong. And Emma’s still trying to get in.

  “I can’t believe that,” I say out loud. “You’ve suffered so much, Emma. The pain you endured; it can’t have brought you to this point.”

  Emma bares her teeth. “Get whatever halo you have over my head off. I’m not a victim. I never was. The only idiot around here is you. And possibly Addy, for leaving crucial evidence in her room. They thank you for tipping us off, by the way.”

  They. The Virtues.

  But I won’t give up. “Eden, I’ve spoken to your mom. Your dad. You’re not this person.”

  “Ooooh, you spoke to my parents,” Eden sneers. But her eyes drive into mine, asserting another message I can’t immediately read. “Unlike yours, mine don’t keep me on a leash. The Virtues are everywhere, Callie. They’re not about to be stopped by a bitchy sister murdering another bitchy sister.”

  “Hey,” Addisyn says.

  “You’re protecting Addisyn,” I say, so horrifically awed, my voice comes out breathy and unsure.

  “You get props for being so determined,” Eden continues, then adds with a musical lilt, “but you’re done now.”

  “We’re not here to hurt you,” Emma adds. “As long as you stop, you can continue at Briarcliff no problem. Focus on school. Find a boyfriend who’s not my brother. Eat cakes with Ivy and complain about the popular kids.”

  The mention of Ivy sends shivers rushing down my skin. “If you hurt her—”

  Emma laughs. “I’d be more concerned with your own well-being if I were you.”

  “Can I show her?” Addisyn asks Emma, suddenly gleeful. “Can we add some confetti to our grand exit?”

  Emma pauses, then considers the papers in Eden’s hands. “I suppose it can’t hurt.” Emma turns to me. “Happy belated birthday, Callie.”

  Emma nods at Eden, who shuffles through the diary entries until she finds what she’s looking for, then shoves a single piece of paper in my direction.

  I automatically grab it, my mouth hanging open as the three of them move to the door.

  “Read it. You’ll be sorry you ever found Piper’s thoughts,” Addisyn says to me. “Then get the fuck out of my room.”

  “Consider this your final warning,” Emma says. “And that’s coming from the top.”

  Eden also looks back, an apologetic look crossing her features before they re-harden until she’s almost unrecognizable. “You got this far. It’s time to turn back.”

  “And remember,” Addisyn adds. “I’m the good sister. You can thank me later.”

  When they shut the apartment door, and I’m left in the quiet, my knees buckle until I’m seated at the edge of Addisyn’s bed, Piper’s single diary entry crumpled in my fist.

  What the hell just happened? Their wounds bamboozled me. Emma and Eden’s emotional stories enraptured and softened until I was nothing but putty to be molded by their hands.

  And Chase?

  My heart ruptures at the thought.

  Slowly, I smooth out Piper’s words. The only evidence I have left.

  Just got off the phone with Mom. I can’t believe it. Can’t FUCKING believe it. That bitch’s spawn is coming here? To my turf?

  Mom thinks it’s some kind of play. That the bitch is sending her kid here to get money from us, to show us who’s really running the show, but that’s not it. I’ve met Bitch Jr., and she says her mom’s dead.

  I choke.

  All this time, the bitch hasn’t asked for a dime of child support—well, before she stopped breathing. She must’ve pissed someone else off real good to get that kind of payback. Did she fuck someone else’s dad, too? How many dudes did she sleep with? I doubt her husband even knows. I believe Mom when she says the affair has gone on for decades. What I can’t believe is that this pathetic, puppy-eyed bitch, who’s drooling after Chase like he’s some kind of dog bone, is my half-sister.

  I already have one idiot bloodline to deal with. And now I have two? No fair. I’m the only one who deserves to be Virtuous.

  33

  I’m numb.

  Stuck in the cold, even though I’m seated indoors,
in a warm room with calming floral smells.

  I’m going to be sick.

  I launch off Addisyn’s bed and reach the toilet just in time, heaving the contents of my lunch. I’m never going to make it to dinner, and at this point, I don’t want to.

  I want nothing to do with these people. This school.

  Coughing, I stand, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve and scraping back my hair. I hold the crumpled piece of paper over the toilet before I flush, aiming to mix vomit with vomit, but my fingers can’t seem to let go.

  On a garbled cry of frustration, I shove it into my pocket and fly out of Addisyn’s room.

  I run into Moira in the hallway.

  “Honey? Goodness, are you all right?”

  Moira comes up to me and holds both my arms, peering at my face, but I can’t have her touch me. I can’t be near such warmth, when she’s fostered such coldness and doesn’t even know it.

  “I can’t be here,” I mumble, unable to look her in the eye.

  “I’m so sorry,” Moira says, clucking her tongue at some inner argument with herself. “Yael texted there was an emergency at the house, and I drove over there in a panic, thinking someone was hurt, and no one was there. I called him, and he said he never texted me anything. I called Edie and she said the same thing. I must be going insane, because I have the text right here.”

  Your daughter stole her dad’s phone, probably while he was idling near the school, waiting for a student to ping for a ride.

  But I say none of it, because I’ve seen the heartbreak on this woman’s face when talking about her daughter, and I don’t want to be the one to add to it.

  “I don’t feel well,” I say. “I think I should lie down.”

  Moira presses the back of her hand against my forehead. “You feel a little piqued, honey. I think that’s a good idea. I won’t tell the headmaster. As far as he knows, you completed your punishment today.”

  I nod, undeserving of Moira’s kindness, but too cowardly to push it away.

  Instead, I escape up the stairwell as quickly as I can, leaving her confused, muttering self behind.

  “Shit, there you are.”

  I halt so abruptly the staircase door hits me in the back when I reach my floor. “Chase.”

  He comes within inches of me, holding my shoulders. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been texting my ass off, trying to locate you three blind mice, but I haven’t received fuck all from any of you. I thought you were caught.”

  I shake my head, but it does nothing to dissipate the bonfire in my soul. “Where were you?”

  Chase jerks back. “Me? Coach called. Said the girls’ Coach needed help with practice today since their stroke was out sick. I texted you about it.”

  The girls’ stroke being Addisyn, who was busy fucking up not only my enrollment at Briarcliff, but my entire life as I knew it.

  I set my jaw. “Addisyn wasn’t sick.”

  “No shit. I saw her on my way up here.”

  “Were Emma and Eden walking with her?”

  “What? No.” Chase’s brows slam together in disgust. “That’s the last place I’d find them.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  Chase side-eyes me. “Callie, what’s going on?”

  “Did you know?”

  “Did I know what?”

  Bile erodes my throat. “Did you know I was set up? Did you know your sister was playing for the Virtues all this time? Did you know Piper and Addisyn could be my half-sisters?”

  The last sentence comes out as a howl, but that’s what I am. Off-kilter, marooned, groundless and without wings.

  Genuine confusion crosses his face, but I don’t fall for it. I can’t fall for it. He says, “What the fuck?”

  My voice goes raw, even through taut lips. “We’re done.”

  “What? Callie, hold on—”

  “LET GO OF ME!”

  Chase releases his hold on my arm, then raises his hands in surrender. He says, with softness that breaks me, “Please.”

  “No.” The denial rips from my throat, and I push past him before the pleading in his eyes swallows me whole. “I’m not doing this anymore. I hate what they’ve done to me, but most of all, I hate what you’ve let yourself become under their rule.”

  The rare, open vulnerability in Chase’s face fades with my words, my accusation like a blast of ice in his face, but I can’t seem to stop.

  “You’re the worst one,” I hiss. “You’re a coward, because you know what they represent, and you do it, anyway.”

  Chase says, with the sharpened steel of a blade, “The day you truly figure out my motives will be a day you regret, because you are so, so wrong.”

  I glare at him, communicating my hurt, my pain, my poisoned past and dismal future in that single glance.

  “You’re right,” he says, his eyes tracing my face before landing on mine. His expression carefully controlled. “Maybe you are half-Harrington. You certainly have the kind of hate they covet.”

  My lower lip trembles with hesitation, but Chase turns on his heel before I can respond.

  He disappears down the stairs, and when he’s a safe distance away, I let myself crumble. I fold into a ball, bury my face in my knees, and let out a keening wail, mourning for the person I thought I was, and the mother I thought I knew.

  34

  Briarcliff Academy loves its cruel irony, because they’ve labeled the weekend before Thanksgiving, Family Day.

  Or, what the students call the Turkey Trot, a weekend of day-drinking between lake houses that happens the very moment the families leave.

  And so, while everyone scrambles around, trying on Thanksgiving-themed costumes and discussing the best selfie angle, I sit at my desk, flipping my pen in my fingers and scowling into the air.

  “Scary,” Ivy muses as she perches on my bed. “You should definitely dress as a scary turkey, or hey, just wear the face you have on now. Freshmen will scatter at the sight of you.”

  “Funny,” I say, giving her the once-over. “Are you going to wear that when your parents come?”

  Ivy grabs the front of her costume and flaps it idly. “Probably not, since my dad would lock me in a basement for the rest of my life.”

  She’s dressed as a sexy turkey—since that’s a thing—which in her mind, means a sexy fawn Halloween costume with red, brown, and white feathers glued to her suede-clad, minidress ass. A homemade feathered headpiece and white-glitter eye-shadow completes the look. Ivy’s dressed so delicious and cute, I’m thinking on her trip back to her dorms, she’s hoping Riordan notices her efforts.

  Riordan Hughes, who is a confirmed Noble member. I’m watching Ivy’s budding relationship carefully but won’t say anything. Ivy’s the one who gave me the name of the Nobles way back in the beginning—surely, she’s cautious around them.

  And if she isn’t … well, I wish I had proof to show her, but everything, and I mean everything, has been deleted off my phone and my cloud. Piper’s diary. Rose’s letters. Howard Mason’s musings.

  Thank you, oh so much, Chase Fucking Stone.

  A week has passed since that terrible evening of discoveries, where it feels as though I gained two friends, then lost them that same day. I avoid Chase at all costs, but he doesn’t seek me out, either. The thought that he’s content to keep his distance doesn’t sit well, because the part of me that’s still alive and owns a heartbeat wants him to fight, to convince me, of his innocence.

  But he does none of those things.

  I haven’t called Dad to verify Piper’s writings, or told Ivy, or confessed to Ahmar. It’s like a cancer that sits inside me now, spreading and growing at an alarming rate, but the worst part is, I don’t know if talking to any of them will help me shrink this brewing hate.

  My mom’s dead, and with her went all her secrets. She’d told me she didn’t know who my father was—that he was just a one-night-stand who never knew she became pregnant—which was probably a lie.

  All my li
fe, I wished for my biological father, but now that I know who he might be, I want to go back to the faceless dad who never knew I existed.

  “I should go,” Ivy says as she stands, smoothing her mini dress. “And remove this gorgeous atrocity before my parents get here. Are you going to be okay?”

  The question comes out tentative, since I’ve been so distant these past few days, unable to confess, but unable to cover it up well, either. “I’ll be fine,” I say, pointing at the door with my pen. “Go. I’ll see you at the picnic.”

  “God, I hope my parents don’t come in costume,” Ivy moans as she leaves my room. “How mortifying would that be?”

  “Plan on it,” I say helpfully. “Because if I were your mom, that’s exactly what I’d do.”

  Ivy scowls at my answer but breaks into a grin and waves before leaving.

  Left to my own devices, I try to work on some schoolwork, but come up empty. I push to my feet and head to the kitchenette instead, scooping some old Halloween chocolate I’d ordered online, but conscious of putting myself out in the open for Emma to see.

  My fears are unfounded, because Emma hasn’t been around this week. Or if she has, she’s done it while I was sleeping, and I do not want to think on that possibility too hard. More likely, she’s staying at her family’s lake house instead of the dorms, an arrangement I’m all too happy to abide by.

  I haven’t seen much of Eden, either, though I constantly picture them scheming like witches, steepling their hands over a steaming cauldron in the forest as they cackle. Their betrayal is a punch to the gut every time I think about it, but I can’t let their stabs to my heart hold true. They were never my friends to begin with. We came together with what I thought was a single goal—to take down Addisyn, then the Virtues—and when that goal failed, I should be glad I walked away unscathed. On the outside, at least.

  Instead, I was a tool for their devices. A means to score evidence Addisyn was keeping to herself and didn’t tell the Virtues.