He turned to look at me, face paling. “What?”
“I said we know about the Network.”
He took a short, faltering step backward. “You… you did this?”
“Yeah. So don’t even try to lie about it,” I said, taking a few steps toward him. “We know everything.”
His nostrils flared as he stared over at me. “How could you?” he said in a low voice. “After everything I’ve done for this family… how the fuck could you ruin it like this? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
The female FBI agent spoke up again. “Mr. Connery, I have to advise you not to speak until your lawyer is present.”
He glared at her. “Shut up!” he said before whirling back around to look at me. “Answer the fucking question, Hunter. How could you do this to your own father?”
My eyes narrowed. “When I say I know everything, I mean everything,” I said. “I know what you did to Lindsay, and I know what you did to Laney, too.”
His eyes widened. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Lindsay found out about the Network, so you killed her, didn’t you? Or you got one of your associates to kill her. Either way, it’s your fault she’s gone,” I said, hands curling into tight fists. “As for Laney… you convinced her father to sell her to Peter Elton when she was only fourteen. Did you really think I’d let any of that shit go once I found out?”
Dad’s face twisted into an incredulous expression. “That’s not true.”
“Stop fucking lying.”
He raised a hand. “Look, I admit, I may have introduced Laney’s father to—”
The agent cut him off again, looking exasperated. “Mr. Connery, once again, I have to advise you not to speak until you have a lawyer present.”
Dad narrowed his eyes at her. “I can say whatever the hell I want,” he hissed.
“No, you can’t. You need to come with us right now.” The other agent held up the cuffs. “What’s it gonna be? Easy way or hard way?”
“Just let me speak to my son first! Please. All I need is a minute.” My father’s eyes were wild with panic now, and his face had turned bone-white.
The agents exchanged glances. Then one of them shrugged. “It’s your funeral,” he said. “You know all of this can be used against you in court.”
Dad ignored them and turned back to me, palms in the air. “Hunter, I swear. I may have introduced Jamie Collins to Peter Elton and sorted out a deal there, but that’s it. I didn’t hurt Lindsay! No one from the Network did either. She committed suicide, and you need to accept that.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth, son. Lindsay had no idea about any of it. I swear,” he said, shaking his head. “And even if she knew everything, I would never, ever hurt her!”
I snorted. “Sure.”
Dad glanced back at the agents and the police officer. “You’re not arresting me on suspicion of murder, are you?” he asked stiffly.
They all shook their heads. “No, but as we’ve already stated multiple times, you need to stop talking,” one of them said. “You’re only incriminating yourself further with every word you say, and I can also tell you that we will be opening another case in regard to the disappearance of Vera Everett and the death of your daughter. So if I were you, I’d shut my mouth right about now.”
Dad’s eyes widened again. “Vera Everett?” he said, voice rising in pitch. “You mean that girl who went missing twenty-five years ago?”
“We know she was involved in your secret society, Dad,” I said. “I’m guessing she threatened to expose you, so you got rid of her.”
“She vanished on a camping trip! It was some sort of accident!” he said, frantically shaking his head. “Jesus, this is a fucking set-up!”
“It’s not a set-up, Charles,” the male agent said, stepping forward to grab his arms. He pulled them behind his back. “Right now, you’re under arrest for the sex trafficking charges, and that’s why we’re taking you in.” He paused to snap the cuffs around his wrists. “We gave you the chance to do it the easy way, but now you’ve given us no choice. Let’s go.”
“No!” Dad shouted. “You need to listen to me!”
The agents started dragging him across the hall with the help of the police officer. Despite the cuffs pinning his arms behind his back, he fought them with every ounce of strength he had, making the journey to the door slow and painful.
“Listen to me, Hunter!” he shouted over his shoulder. “We never killed anyone! I swear! If a girl ever crossed us, we’d ruin her life. I admit that. But nothing else!”
I folded my arms and watched him go with a cold sneer.
He kept yelling back at me. “You have to believe me about your sister!” he said. “I never touched a hair on her head! I loved her!”
He sounded sincere, but I couldn’t trust a word he said.
Never again.
When he was finally gone, I rejoined Laney and Adam on the staircase landing.
“It’s over,” Laney said with a bright grin, hugging me and my brother in turn. “I can’t believe it’s actually over!”
I expected to feel a wave of elated relief, but instead I felt strangely flat.
Even though the coordinated arrests were happening right at this moment, something still felt wrong to me, like there was a problem right under my nose that I’d completely missed. There were unanswered questions, too; things we’d let slip over the last few days while we were busy concentrating on busting the Network-Medusa sex ring.
For instance, what happened to Lindsay’s necklace the night she died? How did it end up in a pawn shop?
If Dad or another Network member killed her, I couldn’t think of any reason why they’d snatch her jewelry off her body and pawn it. There had to be some sort of rational explanation, but I had no idea what it could be.
Another important question was: who left those notes in the abandoned RFA buildings and set Laney up to fall through the floor as a warning?
All we knew for sure was that it was a girl.
We initially thought it was one of the Medusa girls acting on the Network’s orders to make Laney drop the investigation into them, but the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t add up. There was just no feasible way they could know for an absolute fact that we were looking into them.
Sure, they could’ve suspected that Laney told me about them and asked me to help her with an investigation after I rescued her from Harker Island that night—something they confirmed when Laney went to see them the next day to pretend she wanted back in—but they didn’t know for sure. However, the note saying ‘Tell Laney to drop the investigation or else’ made it sound like the attacker knew for an absolute fact that she was looking into something that they desperately wanted to keep hidden.
Also, when Laney accused the Medusa girls of leaving the notes, they firmly denied it and only admitted to dropping a letter in her locker. Laney said they all seemed genuinely confused by the issue, too, and the FBI had the exact same experience when they asked Camila about it.
Maybe the Medusa girls were just good actresses. Maybe not.
In the end, I had to admit that it was more likely than not that they were responsible for the whole thing, but something about it still bothered me anyway, playing right on the hazy outer edges of my mind. I just couldn’t shake this feeling that something else was going on, right under my fucking nose.
I took a deep breath and straightened my shoulders. I was probably just being paranoid. After all the shit I’d gone through in the last year, I was so used to having problems in my life and things I needed to protect my loved ones from that I couldn’t get used to safety and normalcy when it showed up.
I couldn’t live like that anymore. I had to accept that things were finally good so we could start trying to move on from our shitty pasts.
I smiled and looked down at Laney. “You’re right,” I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tight. “Everything’s finally okay.�
�
14
Laney
Royal Falls had erupted in chaos.
Over the last two weeks, the Network-Medusa scandal had blown up in the media and the public eye. It started with the news of the shocking mass arrests, which immediately led to everyone speculating about what had happened.
At first it was assumed that the fifty-four men dragged off by the FBI were involved in some sort of white-collar crime. Then the news came out that Headmaster Sanders and several other people with ties to RFA had been arrested too. After that, the rumor mill went into overdrive, and the very next day, an investigative journalist published a piece about the issue in the country’s biggest newspaper, exposing the festering rot at the heart of America’s wealthiest community.
Things snowballed from there. Journalists swarmed the town for days, along with the investigating FBI agents and police officers. Entire families packed up and left, not wanting to be associated with the place anymore, and houses, hotel rooms and offices were emptied out by agents searching for more evidence.
The Connery mansion was one of those swept for evidence. It took a whole week, so while that was going on, Hunter had to come and stay with me in my dorm while Adam stayed at Trina’s house. They were allowed back home now, but things would never be the same for them.
Their father—along with all of the other Network men—was in prison awaiting trial. It probably wouldn’t start for at least a year, given the length of time it took for the government to build such a big case against them, but they were still off the streets and no longer able to drug, coerce, or force young girls and women into doing their bidding. That was all that mattered, really.
The Medusa girls had all left town after they’d done their part with the investigation and told the FBI everything they knew. No charges were laid against any of them, but once the scandal broke and everyone learned of their involvement, they couldn’t bear to show their faces at school anymore. They were humiliated, ashamed, and riddled with guilt over everything they’d been a part of.
I wasn’t angry at them anymore.
As far as I was concerned, they were victims—even the supposedly-brainwashed ones who genuinely seemed to believe in the cause. Like Camila Valmont. In the past, she seemed intensely passionate about the secret society… but when the FBI took her in, she cracked like an egg, cried for days, and gave them everything they wanted.
She was able to call me after all the arrests were made, and she gave me a heartfelt apology through teary sniffles. I could tell she meant every word, and I forgave her. We would never be friends, not after all the shit that went down, but I understood what she’d been through. She was drugged and coerced into participating in the society just like every other girl who’d ever been involved in the whole scheme. She just got sucked in a little deeper than most.
Kiri Tamagi had also contacted me recently. She told me via email that she and Hazel were so bitchy to me when I went to the Medusas to ask for a second chance because they were trying to drive me away for my own sake. Apparently they’d successfully driven away a few other girls in the past. It was their way of trying to sabotage the society from within and assuage the constant guilt and powerlessness they felt while they were trapped under the thumbs of the Network men.
I understood, and I forgave her too.
On top of the Medusa girls leaving RFA, at least sixty other students had been pulled out of the academy by their parents. Some of those parents were the wives of the men who were arrested, and they didn’t want their children to be bullied over that by other students. The others just no longer felt safe sending their kids to the school.
I couldn’t blame them, considering what had happened recently.
I was staying, though. RFA still had the best teachers in the country, and it was actually safe now that Sanders and the other guilty parties were gone. The deputy head—who had no idea about the secret society—had been promoted to headmaster by the remaining members of the school board, and Ms. Flores had been hired as the replacement deputy.
The school would never have the same shining reputation that it enjoyed in the past, but with decent people in charge, it wouldn’t sink too far, and I was happy to stay.
In fact, for once in my life, I was actually happy in general.
Now that the shock and horror of the recent events had started to wear off, I was able to be a totally normal girl who did totally normal things. My main worries were no longer vicious bullies, amateur murder investigations, and secretive schoolgirl sex trafficking rings. They were blissfully-average worries like keeping my grades up, getting to rowing practice on time, and getting all of my assignments done by their due dates.
Oh, and one more thing—possibly getting caught screwing my boyfriend in the library.
Now that I didn’t have anything major to worry about, it was like a switch had flipped in my body, turning me into a sex-crazed maniac. I couldn’t get enough of Hunter’s body. Even when we had classes, we couldn’t stop groping each other under the desk, and between periods we sneaked around like we were having an affair, hooking up in darkened stairwells and nooks in storage closets.
Right now, I was on the rolling ladder that lay against the tall shelves at the very back of the enormous library, running my fingers along the spines of the books as I searched for a novel I needed for an upcoming English assignment. Hunter’s hand was up my pleated tartan skirt, cupping my ass with his palm, and I didn’t need to turn my head over my shoulder to know that he was smirking.
My stomach fluttered like crazy, the way it always did when he touched me, and I gripped the side of the ladder with one hand and swatted him away with the other.
“Stop,” I said with a soft giggle. “I need to get this book.”
“Get it after,” Hunter said, putting his hand straight back up my skirt.
“After what?”
He answered me by sliding his fingers farther up my thigh and pressing them right against my entrance. I knew I was already wet, just from the slightest touch of his fingertips.
“What if someone sees us?” I said, looking over my shoulder. There was no one around, but that could change soon.
Hunter simply shrugged and leaned closer, pressing his lips to one side of my neck.
“Seriously, Hunter, someone could walk past at any second,” I said, looking to my left to check the other side of the aisle.
“Good. I want them to see us,” he muttered against my ear, teasing my dripping entrance with his fingertips.
“We really shouldn’t,” I whispered, but I arched my back anyway, letting him slip a finger inside me.
He grinned. “If you didn’t want to do this, why did you forget to wear your school stockings when it’s only forty-five degrees outside?” he asked. His thumb teased my clit, sending jolts of arousal through my body, and I gasped as he murmured against the shell of my ear again. “You skipped your panties, too. I think you did that for me.”
“Maybe I was just in a rush to get dressed this morning,” I said breathlessly.
“Maybe from now on you should skip them every day,” he replied, sliding a second finger inside me.
I closed my eyes and bit my lip to stop a loud moan from spilling out. Hunter suddenly pulled his hand away, leaving me aching from the absence of his touch.
My eyes flew open. “Why did you stop?”
He grabbed me by the arms and flipped me around so that I was facing him. The steps of the ladder dug into my back, but I barely registered the slight pain. I was too preoccupied by the way Hunter was looking at me, eyes clouded with lust.
“You said you were worried about someone seeing us,” he said, lifting his brows.
I groaned inwardly. He knew exactly what he was doing to me; tormenting me by turning me on and then pulling away to make me beg for it.
Two can play at that game.
“You’re right,” I said. “We really shouldn’t do anything.”
One hand slipped up my shirt and into
my bra, stroking my erect nipples. “You sure about that?” Hunter asked, lips hooking upward on one side.
“Yes,” I said stubbornly. “I don’t want to get caught.”
He moved even closer to me, pressing his hardness against my inner thigh. I was so wet I wanted to scream. “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked in a low murmur.
I had to give him that one. The worst had already happened to me in my life so far. Getting caught hooking up in a library was nothing.
“Okay, you win,” I said breathlessly. “Fuck me. Now.”
He smirked and pulled a condom out of his pocket. Then he commanded me to put my arms around his neck and wrap my legs around his hips. The ladder dug into my back even more as he guided his cock inside me, but I was so overcome by pleasure that I couldn’t focus on the pain. In fact, the pain actually seemed to be intensifying the pleasure.
I clung to Hunter, gasping as he drove into me in hard, insistent thrusts. At one point, the ladder moved a half-inch along its track, making a loud creaking sound, but we didn’t stop. We couldn’t. The thought of getting caught made the pleasure that much more intense.
I clenched around Hunter as an orgasm swept over me like a molten tidal wave, filling every inch of me with glowing warmth. Another jolt suddenly hit me, and I couldn’t stop a loud moan from bubbling up to my lips and spilling out. Hunter moved to support my weight with just one arm and covered my mouth with his free hand, smirking as he drove into me again and again.
His chest began to heave, and then he shuddered and let out a groan, gripping me tightly as he found his own release.
My legs felt like jelly as he finally let me off the ladder and onto the floor. He leaned forward to kiss me, and then he grabbed the book I needed and handed it to me with a smug smile. “Go and check this out while I clean up,” he said, nodding toward the nearest bathroom sign.
“I don’t think I can walk,” I murmured, sinking to the carpet.
He grinned. “Well, I hope you can, because we need to get back to your dorm for round two,” he said, reaching out to help me back up.
Shattered Kingdom: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 2) Page 17
