Nefarious Boys: A Dark High School Romance (Broken Saints Society 3)

by Leia Thorne

  “You may have a point,” she says. Taking the seat next to me, she softens her voice and says, “There is a way that we can assure he will never harm you or anyone else again.”

  My skin prickles. We can’t kill him. “Christ. I don’t want to—” I look around the room and drop my voice to a whisper. “Please don’t suggest what I think you’re going to…”

  Appall shades her features. “Remi, of course not.” She attempts to laugh it off, but I’m not smiling. Then she becomes serious. “I would never do something so…grave,” she says. “But I do have influence, and connections. I can help the police investigation along in finding their prime suspect by pointing them in the right direction with a newly discovered piece of evidence. That wouldn’t be so wrong, would it?”

  I don’t consent, but I don’t stop her, either.

  “You do believe Gage hurt my Lesley, don’t you?” she asks.

  Yes. Gage causes hurt. His ambition to be elite and dominate the world means that the people in his life are either accomplices or obstacles. We will either further his mission or hinder him…and if it’s the latter, he will not hesitate to remove us from his path.

  In this sense, I believe Gage went to whatever measure necessary to try to obtain Lesley’s rightful place in the society, and her mental state may have been the casualty.

  What Mrs. de Pont reveals to me next should send me fleeing from the room.

  It’s a simple plan—one already taking place as the detectives working Lesley’s case search for the missing surveillance footage of the night Lesley died.

  “Gage is already in the footage,” she explains, “and you’d be amazed at what technology and tiny little pixels can do to deceive the eye.”

  An altered video of that night—a deepfake—where Gage came back to the penthouse. Where he stood in front of Lesley on the balcony and pushed her to her death.

  “It may have even happened just like that…” she continues. “How can we ever be sure? With the footage damaged, we may never know. But what we do know is that Gage was the catalyst, he’s to blame for why Lesley isn’t here with us today. He might as well have been the killer.”

  I nod along. It makes sense. Gage will be apprehended and tried and sentenced…and removed from my life forever. I won’t have to fear him. I will have my fortune and a position of power, and be untouchable to the boy who broke my heart.

  All I have to do is trade my soul.

  Only…as much as I want my revenge on Gage…prison? Setting him up to take the fall for Lesley’s murder? He slept with Sawyer and slayed my heart, yes. He was a horrible, despicable, selfish human being, and he toyed with Lesley’s mind to try to steal her birthright in the society, yes.

  Still, are those things deserving of the fate Mrs. de Pont has planned for him?

  Then I realize something as it all comes together in a flash of clarity.

  This is why Mrs. de Pont chose Gage, why she needed it to be him to be the one to draw me in. It wasn’t just enough to frame him for the death of her daughter; she wants him to suffer on a profound level—to experience the betrayal personally, painfully.

  The girl he tried to dupe, dupes him in the end.

  That is the knife through the cold heart of Gage Astor.

  A knock sounds at the door. “Can I be of any help?” Larissa calls through the door.

  There’s a moment of hesitancy, of indecision, where Tabatha waits for me to be the one to speak. I rise from the chair and walk toward the crimson gown, lift it off the hanger.

  “Does this come in a size two?” I ask.

  Tabatha’s eyes light up, and a smile stretches her smooth features.

  I’ve made the right choice.

  Chapter 15

  Gage

  You know what infuriates me more than anything?

  Being ignored.

  The brush-off. The dismissal. Stone-cold rejection.

  Don’t get me wrong, I have a healthy self-image. I’ve got confidence in spades. So other people’s lame opinions don’t really affect me, this is true. But then, there are the people who I’ve invested a great deal of my time and energy into. They matter.

  Remi is a huge investment. And she does not get to ignore me.

  I’ve allowed her to have time to “deal” with whatever the fallout was the other day at school between Rush and Roland. I’m making the assumption that Roland’s jealous nature over Sawyer reached a crescendo and manifested in his fist meeting Rush’s face. Which in turn may have sparked Remi’s insecurity where me, her, and Sawyer are concerned.

  Honestly, Remi might have played it cool after the bell tower—but she’s still raw, her ideals about love and sex a novel impression coaxed by yours truly. It takes a truly powerful mindset to set aside primitive, human reflexes.

  So I’ll give her a little more time. Then enough is enough. We have other urgent matters to address before Tabatha de Pont sets out to destroy me, and I need Remi on my side. We have little time for games.

  For now, I’m using this rare time of solitude to put my affairs in order. Organize a few contingency plans. As Tabatha has deemed to dispose of me, expelling me from the society permanently, I need to be ready for this fight with my own arsenal of blackmail goodies.

  The only place safe enough to conduct a clandestine meeting that Tabatha won’t get wind of is my domain. Emry is seated at my desk facing the floor-to-ceiling window that looks out at Sawyer’s house.

  “I want you to know,” Emry says, sweat already beading across his forehead, “this wasn’t easy to come by. My dad could get into a ton of shit for this.”

  I hold out my hand, demanding the reports. “He can buy his way out of it,” I say, zero regret in my tone. The truth is, Mr. Leighton will get a disapproving frown from the officials. But that’s about it. His massive donations to the police force is why they have large holiday bonuses. Mrs. de Pont might own the authorities…but Emry’s father greases their wheels for his own purposes.

  Which is how Emry was able to bribe an officer into giving him a copy of Remi’s accident report.

  I lean against the wall and scan the pages. The report reads pretty generic, citing all the major details that Remi has already stated. The accident happened between the hour of ten p.m. and eleven p.m. A truck driver ran Remi’s mother off the road. The car toppled over a number of times, coming to rest in a heap of twisted metal off the main highway. Remi and her mother were both unresponsive upon the EMT’s arrival at the scene.

  I know what happens next, according to Remi. Her mother died shortly after being transported to the hospital. Internal bleeding. Remi awoke hours later, no memory of the event.

  Which…is curious. Huh. I scan the pages again, looking for the witness’s name. How did the on-scene officer know it was a truck driver who caused the accident? Who is the witness?

  Remi had been blackout messed up. And her mother had been too badly injured to make a statement before she died just moments afterward.

  “What is it?” Emry asks.

  I shuffle the pages and set them aside on my desk. “It could be nothing,” I say as I step toward the window and push the sheer curtain aside. I stare at Sawyer’s window and wonder what she’s doing right now. “It could be everything,” I add.

  Emry blows out an annoyed breath. “Am I free to leave now?”

  “You’re free to do whatever you want, Emry. But don’t you want to know how this all ends?” I glance over at him.

  He shakes his head. “How what all ends? I hate it when you get like this.”

  I smile. The person closest to you may not be your confidant.

  “I’ll need one more thing,” I say, sneaking another peek at Sawyer’s bedroom window.

  Emry concedes with a noticeable sag of his shoulders. He’s in too deep to deny me anything.

  “Is there a way to get traffic camera footage from the night of Remi’s accident?” I ask.

  Emry’s laugh is disdainful. “You’re asking the impossible no
w, Gage. Can’t do it.” He stands and sinks his hands in his pockets. “Wouldn’t do it even if I could. That’s messed up and sick. I do have my limits.”

  We’ll see. “What about locating a witness?”

  His dark eyebrows draw together. “I don’t know. I guess I’d need a name to start with.”

  I walk back toward the desk and scoop up the report. I skim over it once again. The report is generally boring…until I reach the on-scene officer’s final page of his statement. The signature at the bottom doesn’t match the signatures on the other pages. A different officer signed off on the final report.

  “See if you can locate a…” I squint at the signature to make it out. “Officer Ryan McAlister.”

  He keeps his hands securely in his pockets. “And why would I do this?”

  I look at him, adjust my glasses. “Because this good officer of the law might have falsified an accident report. And I want to know why.” And who asked him to do it. Though I have my suspicions. “Also, because I think Remi has been deceived by someone she trusts. I want to protect her.”

  His stoic gaze holds mine. “Being a hero doesn’t suit you, Gage.”

  I laugh, I can’t help it. Valor. Gallantry. Not my strong suit; Emry’s right there. Still, heroism may have its benefit. I’m a selfish beast, and if saving the damsel in distress plays out in my favor…so be it. “Just let me know what you find,” I say, dropping the report on my desk.

  As Emry leaves my bedroom, I decide time is too valuable to waste. I can wait for him to dig up the information I want, or I can go right to the source. At this point, Emry would only be confirming what I already suspect.

  The person closest to you may not be your confidant.

  That line keeps running through my head. I can’t remember where I heard it—but it stuck with me. A testament to human nature. Our selfish, self-serving disposition. In a society full of secrets and fight for power, everyone—every single player down to the butler—has a contingency plan.

  So let me ask you: How was it chance that Remi St. James moved to Crescent Valley and attended Brighton Saints?

  Simple: it wasn’t chance at all.

  Oh, there’s such a thing as fate…but fate needs a directive, and a gross amount of money doesn’t hurt to steer fate in the right direction.

  I never put too much stock in hunches. I mean, I have a sixth sense when it comes to people and their behavior. I don’t contribute that to gut instinct; people will tell you everything you want to know if you just watch, listen to them closely enough.

  I leave the house and cruise past downtown. My car hugs the curves of the winding backroads that wrap the crescent-shaped lake. This part of town is rarely seen. It’s where the help resides.

  It’s where Marvin the manservant parks his ass when he’s not tending to and kissing Mrs. de Pont’s.

  And as I kill my headlights and pull up along the curb of his brick ranch, I’m in luck. The house interior is dim. The driveway is vacant. I put my Audi in Park and swing my car door open. I trek around the perimeter of the house, on the lookout for anything…interesting.

  Where would a vacant soul like Marvin keep his secrets?

  I spot a shamble of a shed in the far back of the yard. As I approach the wooden structure, I notice a padlock on the doors. Promising…but not very secure. It takes me roughly five minutes to pry the hinges off the weakened wood and pop the door open.

  I snap on my phone flashlight and smile. A gray cloth covers a vehicle. Now, it makes sense that if Marvin has a treasure—like some collectable—that he’d keep it behind lock and key with a dust cover. But not here. Not in a place where he barely resides, where he probably only comes to get a change of clothes and sleep.

  I toss the cover aside to reveal the hood of the automobile. And what do you know…it’s a truck—a Ford pick-up—possibly the very one that ran Remi and her mother off the highway.

  “Bingo,” I whisper.

  Marvin didn’t dispose of the truck.

  Why would he? It’s evidence. As I crouch down to get a better look, I creep around the side of the truck and notice a paint scratch. Possibly the same color as the car Remi’s mother was driving that night.

  I snap a picture, then recover the truck, making sure to wipe away my footprints from the dirty floorboards as I back out of the shed.

  As I replace the hinges and the lock, I close the door, the shed seemingly untouched.

  I drive back into the center of town with a renewed confidence bolstering my mood. Oh, I’m sure Tabatha believes her trusted confidant got rid of the evidence. I’m also sure that he kept it because there’s some money trail that leads back to the chairwoman should Marvin ever become a person of interest in that hit-and-run.

  That vehicle tucked away in his shed proves Tabatha doesn’t have as many trustworthy people in her life as she thinks.

  As I reach across the seat to grab my phone, a text pops up on the screen.

  Emry: There is no such officer by that name. He’s a ghost. But here’s the contact info for the actual on-scene officer.

  Now the puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place.

  I swipe away Emry’s message and dial the number he sent over. A short conversation with the cop leads to my bank account drained of a few hundred bucks, but I have all the proof I need.

  I punch out a text to Remi. Time for my little saint to stop hiding.

  Resistance is felt when we push against the current. When we strive to reach for a goal just beyond our grasp.

  Resistance is life’s way of letting us know that what we endeavor to achieve won’t come easily. It’s work. It’s hard. It makes us weary. Frustrated. Hopeless. Most give up, quit. The path of least resistance is a cliché for a reason; it’s the path most people choose.

  I use resistance as a barometer to gauge how close I am to my conquest.

  Like with Remi, right now, as we’re staring out over the dark rippling water of the lake. We’re seated on the sandy bank. She’s too far away; a safe distance from me should she need to add another layer of resistance.

  “I don’t think my dad even noticed that I left,” she says suddenly.

  I lay my hand flat along the hard-packed sand close to hers, our fingers nearly touching. “Is that a bad thing?”

  She shrugs. “We used to be so close. Before…”

  Before the accident, she means. I used to think showing pain was weakness. But Remi has been in pain for a long time. It’s a part of her, a reflex, like breathing. I also used to believe in survival of the fittest—that the strong should dominate the weak.

  An example of that logic is how callously and methodically Tabatha de Pont removed the obstacle in her way to the thing she most wanted.

  Remi.

  She pulls her knees close to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. “Do you love Sawyer?” she asks, breaking the silence and surprising me.

  Bold. It’s an honest question that deserves an honest answer. Remi is making a decision here, and my answer will influence her one way or another.

  I wonder what Sawyer said to her the other day; what she really knows, how much of the truth she’s unearthed. How can I probe for that information without showing my hand?

  “I do love her,” I say, removing my glasses. I tuck them in my jacket inseam.

  “Oh,” she says.

  I turn her way. “You want the truth?”

  She nods slowly. “I think I need to hear the truth, Gage.”

  I inhale a deep breath. “She’s my best friend,” I say, and laugh. “It’s twisted as hell, even I know this. How obsessed I was with having her. My whole life, I’ve never been told no. So to be denied a thing over and over…having it flaunted in my face every single day…” I sigh. “It was never about Sawyer,” I say honestly, maybe for the first time. “It was about domination. Obtaining the unobtainable. Control. And to be brutally honest, I think it was Sawyer who commanded that power over me in the end.”

  “What do
you mean?”

  I take her hand, lace our fingers together. “Did you feel like she was taking something away from you during the initiation?” I ask her.

  She shakes her head. “No. Not really.”

  “Right,” I say. “It was about you. Your choice. Your power to decide for yourself and body.”

  Remi thinks on this a moment. “Sawyer was always afraid of what would happen should she lose that control over you,” she says, deep in thought. “But she’s stronger now than I’ve ever seen her. Like she took that power for herself.”

  She’s fucking right. It pains me a bit to hear, but the Sawyer I knew is gone. In her place is a woman who is making choices for her life, no longer fearful of what others think. Fucking Masters proves that. Christ.

  Remi tightens her grasp on my hand. “So where does that leave us?”

  I lick my lips, move in closer to her. “We, my smoking hot girlfriend—” I pull her onto my lap “—can do whatever the hell we want.”

  She wraps her legs around my waist as her arms link my shoulders. Her eyes search my face. “Do you always have to be the one in control?” she asks, her voice solemn.

  My mouth tips into a grin. “That depends…”

  “I’m serious, Gage.”

  “I am, too,” I say. I think I know where she’s going with this. “Tabatha de Pont offered you something, didn’t she?”

  Her brows draw together. “Yes.”

  “A position of power,” I clarify.

  She nods.

  “Are you going to accept it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I touch a strand of her dark hair. “You two have been getting very close,” I say.

  “She’s been like a mentor.” Remi flicks her gaze away. “I respect her. But…I think she’s lied to me.” As her eyes find mine, she studies my reaction.

  Does she finally know about Lesley?

  Of course, she does. Tabatha would have to expose the truth that they’re sisters in order to coax Remi into accepting the chairwoman’s legacy.

  Only how much of the truth does she know? Tabatha would try to poison her against me, yet she wouldn’t expose her own deception just for my sake. So does Remi really suspect her, or is it a ploy to get me to admit my part in the whole charade?