Ruined: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 1)

by Vanessa Winters

  Most colleges had rival sports teams and friendly competitive events. But Lineage and Goldshire were different. The rivalry between them was more akin to that of opposing gangs than good-faith sportsmanship. It was so bad, in fact, that if a student from the rival school was caught on the other college’s campus, it would be grounds for immediate expulsion. Which is why what I was about to do was so stupid and reckless.

  Obscured behind a massive white oak, I set down my book bag at the base and pulled off my Goldshire jacket, replacing it with a Lineage one. How the fuck did I get my hands on such a precious commodity? Easy. Wearing a Lineage or Goldshire jacket allowed you certain privileges in Charleston. Privileges that usually only the elite partook in. But there were plenty of times where someone may have left their jacket in the library or the coffee shop, and snagging one of them could earn you upwards of five-hundred-dollars on the streets. If you really wanted one, you just needed to know where to look.

  My mom had spent years dedicating her life to disadvantaged youth. She always saw the good in them, the potential of who they could be if someone gave them the right chances. And even though there were opportunities, that didn’t change the fact that most of them had little to survive on day to day. So, theft and trading were pretty common at the halfway house she volunteered at.

  And that’s where I found my connection.

  I tucked my bag up into the low-hanging branches, slipped my sunglasses over my eyes, and pulled my hair down around my face. Then I started toward the school.

  I made it almost halfway there when I heard a voice behind me. I kept walking, ignoring whoever it was in the hopes that they would give up if I acted like I didn’t hear them. But as they came closer to me, I recognized the voice.

  “I thought we agreed that you weren’t skipping any more classes today?”

  I turned around and saw Julian wearing a black hoodie and sunglasses that covered most of his recognizable features.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed at him, trying to act as normal as possible.

  He hissed back. “Damn it, what are you doing here? Do you know what they’ll do if someone finds you over here?”

  “Damn it, Julian, I’m an adult. You can’t just keep following me around like a stalker.”

  “Technically, don’t most stalkers follow adults?” he replied sarcastically.

  “Go away,” I growled as I turned around and kept walking.

  “Lisette. Seriously, stop.” Julian reached forward to grab my hand, and I swatted him with my other arm to let go of me. I hoped that no one was watching because what was just a small squabble between friends could draw enough attention to get us noticed.

  Too late.

  One of the Lineage instructors sporting a faculty I.D. cut across the lawn toward us at record speed. Julian and I tried to separate and act like we were walking to our respective classes and didn’t hear the guy shouting at us, but it was too late. A second faculty member cut Julian off from leaving the campus, and the instructor who spotted us yelled at me until I stopped walking.

  “What are you two doing?” the professor asked me as he stepped in front of me.

  I saw from the corner of my eye that Julian was being brought back over to stand next to me.

  “Just going to class,” I answered.

  The professor looked down his nose at me. “It looked like you were having an argument, and it was getting physical.”

  “Not at all,” I laughed. “We’re friends, we were just playing around.”

  “Yeah,” Julian said to back me up. “We’re going to be late for class, though, so can we go now?”

  “What class are you going to?” the other guy asked.

  Even with sunglasses on, I could sense the blank look on Julian’s face. Our hesitation lasted a second too long, and before we knew it, we were being escorted to the Dean’s office. As we sat outside the office waiting, Julian looked for ways that we could sneak out of there without being caught. I, on the other hand, had my eyes on something else.

  And the second the secretary stepped away on a phone call, I stood up.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered to me as I walked behind the registrar’s desk to open the file cabinet.

  “Looking,” I answered. I knew that one-word answers drove him crazy, but it served him right for tracking me down. If he hadn’t come, I likely wouldn’t have gotten caught. He was the one that started all the fucking noise, after all!

  I opened the drawer and started flipping through the files when Julian hissed at me again. “Looking for what?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But I’ll know it when I see it.” I lifted my sunglasses up to the top of my head so that I could get a better look.

  Julian jumped off his seat and ran over to me and pushed my glasses back down onto the bridge of my nose.

  “Ouch!” I said. “What the hell?”

  “There are cameras in here,” he said as he pointed to the corners of the ceiling. “Don’t be stupid. If they catch you on camera, you’ll get expelled from Goldshire for trespassing.”

  He was right, I was being careless. I had to get better at sneaking around if I wanted to figure any of this out.

  “Hey!” the Dean shouted at us as his office door opened, and he caught us standing in front of the open drawer of private files.

  “Run!” Julian said. He grabbed my hand and shoved us right out the door, nearly knocking down the Dean in the process.

  Once we hit the outside grounds, I was already breathless. I tried to keep up with him as we saw the cobblestone street come into sight, but then I remembered my backpack.

  “Julian, I left my bag in the tree!”

  “We can’t go back for it,” he said. “They’ll catch us. We need to get off the campus and back to Goldshire.”

  “My I.D. is in my backpack.”

  Julian came to an abrupt stop. Losing my I.D. wasn’t a problem, but Lineage getting a hold of it was. If they found my bag, they could prove I had trespassed on their property. We ran back to the tree, and Julian pulled my bag down and swung it over his shoulder. But just as we were about to make a run for it again, we heard the security guards coming near.

  I looked at him in a panic, and without hesitation, he grabbed me around the waist and hoisted us both up into the tree. We climbed just above the bottom limbs of the branches to get higher and above the Spanish moss, which hid most of the canopy above. Balance was also not my forte as I struggled to hold onto the branch without falling. Julian saw me start to teeter dangerously close to falling off and climbed from his branch over to mine. He wrapped an arm around my waist as he laid on top of me and held us both steady against the wide branch of the tree.

  “When did you become this nimble?” I teased him in a whisper.

  Our bodies were pressed together, and our faces were so close that our noses were touching.

  “I guess when I needed to start saving your ass.” He grinned. He stared at me silently as we heard the security guards pass by underneath us. I felt something press against my pelvis, and for a moment, I got that heated feeling again. Julian turned his head and diverted his eyes from me and acted like he didn’t feel it. But when the guards had passed, he turned his face back to me and our lips were so close that they brushed against each other.

  It wasn’t a kiss. That would have been weird. But it was something. The kind of something that had been happening a lot between us and wasn’t simply going to go away.

  “Come on,” he said as he rolled off of me and dangled by one arm from the branch. He dropped to the ground and then called for me to jump down too.

  “Uh, it’s a bit high, Julian,” I yelled down to him.

  “Trust me,” he said.

  I heard him but couldn’t see where he was through all the moss. So, I closed my eyes and slid off the branch, hoping that if I fractured or broke something, it wouldn’t be my writing hand. But Julian caught me and set me down onto my feet without a scratch.

>   We were careful not to be seen again as we made our way back across to Goldshire, and it seemed like we had narrowly managed to escape detection that time. Julian came back to my dorm with me, and I fully expected a lecture about not being so careless and reckless or about dropping the wild obsession about finding my mother’s killer.

  But instead of reprimanding me, he headed straight for the door.

  I assumed he was too tired—or too furious—to tell me how stupid I was. But just before he left, he froze beneath the frame, his back still to me.

  “The next time you plan on doing something stupid, you damn well better tell me. Because whether you like it or not, I’m coming with you.”

  And as his words struck my gut, he passed through the doorframe. Leaving me with my thoughts, my suspicions, my questions, and my shock.

  3

  The next day I only had one class, and then I had to go to work. Even though I didn’t get paid to work at the halfway house, it was my mom’s pet project, and I kept her commitment to it alive in order to honor her memory.

  I didn’t need to get paid, either. I mean, no one at Goldshire was short on money. Besides, Bricks had done a lot of good for a lot of the local teenage runaways. It wasn’t just a building for them to spend the night in; it was a place of sanctuary where they could sit with other kids, eat a hot meal, and sleep knowing that no harm would come to them. At least that’s what my mother had always said.

  If only the same had held true for her.

  It didn’t even seem possible that she could have been killed while volunteering at Bricks that night. I was there working with her, and there was at least a half-dozen kids there that night for a meal and a warm bed. The doors were always kept locked unless someone had a visitor, and even then it was by keyed-entry only. Everyone that was there that night was questioned by the police, and when no evidence that any sort of foul play had been found my mother’s death was ruled a suicide.

  But I had known from the moment I found her lying on the cold floor of that storage closet that she hadn’t killed herself. Both of her wrists had been slit, and the suicide note was tucked loosely between her fingers.

  And while I’m not a medical expert, a couple of things didn’t add up.

  I’m not sure how long it takes someone to bleed out, but the fact that my mother’s apparent suicide note had no blood on it whatsoever despite it being all around her body stuck me as odd. I’d done a great deal of research into what happened when someone slit their wrists. And from the documents I read through, that note shouldn’t been tainted in it. But, it was completely clean.

  Odd, right?

  There was another odd thing, though. Something that the police still couldn’t explain, despite ruling her death as a suicide: and that was the utensil used to slit her wrists. The coroner ruled that it had be some sort of sharp, smooth-edged knife. But, there was none to be found on her body. Nowhere around her. Nowhere beside her. Nowhere in her pockets. Nada.

  If Mom had slit her wrists, shouldn’t the knife have simply… been there?

  Either way, I have blamed myself every single day since her death for not going back there to check on her sooner. For not knocking on the door when I thought for the first time that she had been gone for a while. And after I found her body, most of those kids didn’t return to the halfway house again after that night. I can’t say that I blamed them. Who would want to go back to a place that someone had died in?

  Only one of those kids ended up crossing paths with me again A kid by the name of Adam.

  And he was somewhat of an enigma.

  At the time, Adam had been homeless, and even though he was technically an adult since he had just turned 21, my mother let him in any way. She said he was still “young enough” to deserve our help. I wasn’t sure of Adam’s backstory, other that he didn’t have any parents or family and that he had been on the streets since graduating high school.

  But, the look in his eye every time he looked at me told of grizzly tales and secrets his lips would never speak of.

  I remembered him because he stood out from anyone else that I had seen around there. He had medium-length spiky black hair and dark eyes, and a nose piercing that had a silver ring dangling from his nostril. And those eyes. Those brooding, shadowed, almost blackish kind of eyes. They stuck with me just as much as my mother’s dead stare.

  And it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I saw him again at Goldshire.

  He was there on some diplomatic council meeting with Michael, a complete asshole and the son of the Headmistress of Lineage. Adam had been wearing a Lineage jacket, but aside from that, he still looked like the punk indie-guy that I remembered him as. I had no idea what he was doing at my school or how he had managed to get into Lineage. Going from being homeless to attending Lineage would have simply been impossible. And I was planning on asking him after the meeting. But as soon as their meeting was over, he and Michael were quickly ushered off campus. Adam had seen me, too, though. Just as he was walking out, he had turned and looked right at me.

  And that same dark stare found my gaze once more.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been that surprised when I saw him walk into the halfway house while I was working later that same week. I think my shock came mostly from just seeing a face that I hadn’t seen since the night of my mother’s death. Still, his voice startled me when it sounded in my ear.

  “You really should keep that door locked,” Adam said as he walked in.

  I was all alone in the building since most of the kids didn’t come in until it got closer to dinnertime. I hadn’t kept the door locked since mom died. I just didn’t feel like I was scared of anything anymore.

  I set the broom against the wall, giving myself something to do other than shriek.

  “It’s Adam, right?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “I remember you,” I said. “And I saw you at my school a few weeks ago.” I noticed his jacket again and motioned my hand toward it. “So, you’re a Lineage student now, huh? The jacket looks nice on you.”

  He chuckled and then took the jacket off to hang over the back of a chair. Wow, I guess I hadn’t noticed his body before.

  It was kind of nice, for a Lineage boy.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Although I’m not sure I fit in there very well.” He flicked his nose ring with his finger. “I get told just about every day to take this piercing out. They haven’t gotten me to do it yet, though.”

  I laughed at that. Lineage was notorious for conformity. I bet he was really testing the patience of some of the faculty there. He walked in closer to me, so I offered him a seat to sit and talk.

  “So how did you manage to get into Lineage?” I asked. “I mean, no offense, but it’s pretty impossible unless you have family that’s alumni there.”

  “The guy I was with when I came to your school got me in,” he answered. “Michael.”

  I inadvertently made a face at the mention of Michael's name, which made Adam laugh again.

  “I guess you’re not a fan of his,” he joked.

  “How exactly did that work?” I asked, ignoring his comment. “I didn’t think you could just bring random people into admissions.”

  “You ask a lot of questions,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yeah, it’s kind of a thing with me.”

  The shadow of a grin ticked his cheek. “Michael’s mom is the headmistress there, and supposedly there’s some clause in their admissions policy that says an existing student can sponsor your admission if there’s a strong relationship. Like if someone gets adopted or becomes someone’s girlfriend or stuff like that.”

  “Wait, so you were either adopted by Michael’s mom, or you became his girlfriend?” I teased.

  Adam’s laugh was contagious, and when he laughed, the defined muscles in his chest pressed against his tight black T-shirt. Causing me to stare.

  An embarrassing amount of staring, actually.

  Adam snorted. “Nah, he was able to twi
st his mom’s arm to make a special exception for me. I think he needed a friend, and I think his mom was eager to seem like she was doing something charitable by allowing a homeless and parentless guy into her school.”

  “That seems like the kind of publicity stunt Marta would do,” I said.

  I didn’t know much about Michael’s mother, but I knew enough to know that she was the kind of manipulative widow that would make a great movie villain. “Do you like it there at Lineage?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “It’s alright. I mean, I’m way far behind in classes since I didn’t start when most of the other people started college, and they’re not really my people, if you know what I mean. It’s better than being on the streets, though. And, I get to see you again.”

  I skipped over his last sentiment. “Actually, most people from the two colleges aren’t allowed to intermingle. I was surprised to see you at Goldshire.”

  He quirked and eyebrow and I giggled. “All right, all right. I was surprised to see you again at all.”

  He licked his lips. “That’s more like it.”

  I hadn’t meant anything by that comment, only that I was genuinely surprised to have seen him again. He surprised me by leaning forward across the table and took my hand in his. His eyes looked serious and intent. “Lisette, I’m really sorry about what happened to your mother that night.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I hoped he caught my tone of voice that said “move past it now”.

  There wasn’t any reason to say “thanks” to someone for apologizing for the death of someone unimportant to them. Still, it always just seemed like the easiest response to get people to move on to something else and end the awkwardness of an unnecessarily polite situation.

  “I didn’t kill her,” Adam said as he continued to stare at me and press his hands around mine.

  I blinked. “What? Why would you say that?”