Riot House (Crooked Sinners Book 1)

by Callie Hart

  From the safety of the couch, I survey the room, waiting…no, dreading the moment when Doctor Fitzpatrick realizes no one’s going to participate in my debate topic. A book snaps closed on the other side of the room. Someone coughs.

  And then…

  A guy with black hair, wearing a ratty sweater, sitting by the fire says, “All language is constantly evolving. To claim the English language is dead because it’s changing and growing in a certain direction is like saying man became extinct when Homo Sapiens evolved from monkeys.”

  “Well.” Doctor Fitzpatrick clicks the cap back onto his red marker. There’s a huge, shit-eating grin on his face. “Anyone have anything to say to that?”

  Damiana pipes up. “You’re such a fucking moron, Andrew. Man isn’t extinct because Homo Sapiens evolved. We became something new. A different species or strain of hominid. The species that we evolved from became extinct when we changed. What you said doesn’t make any sense.”

  “So, you think the English language doesn’t evolve?” Doctor Fitzpatrick asks her.

  “Of course it does. Usually, when something evolves, it does so for the better, though. Our brains became larger and more complex because we learned how to speak and communicate using language. That was an improvement on the simpler, primitive versions of our minds. Text speak and slang isn’t a positive improvement on our language. It’s a lazy bastardization.”

  Doctor Fitzpatrick rubs his hands together. “This is getting good, guys. Anyone have anything to say to Damiana’s statement?”

  Wren slouches back into the leather sofa, spinning around so that his back is leaning against the arm. He kicks up his feet, lacing his fingers together and resting them on his chest. “Climb down from that high horse, Dami. You use text speak all the time. You’re far from a purist.”

  “I do not!”

  “Lol. Lmfao. Btw. NP. You text that shit to me all the time.”

  Ha. Why am I not surprised that Damiana and Wren are on texting terms? They’re both as vile as one another. They’re probably best fucking friends.

  “That’s not proper text-speak,” Damiana argues. “Those are just abbreviations.”

  Oh my god. She didn’t just say that. Seriously? I hide my smile behind my notepad, trapping my laughter behind my teeth and two hundred pages of blank ruled paper.

  “You look like you disagree, Elodie,” Doctor Fitzpatrick says.

  Oh, come on.

  His gaze is locked onto me, his eyes dancing with amusement. I might have refrained from snickering at Damiana’s comment, but I forgot about the parts of my face I didn’t cover; Levi always said I smiled with my eyes more than my mouth. Swiveling around in her chair, Damiana glares at me hatefully.

  “Come on, then, Stillwater. Out with it, if you think you’re so fucking smart.”

  All high schools are the same. Even the insanely expensive private boarding school kind. Regardless of wealth, parenting styles, opportunity or diversity, there’s always that one popular girl who thinks her shit don’t stink. It’s reassuring that I know what I can expect at Wolf Hall, but once, just once, it’d be nice if the whole mean girl bit wasn’t a thing. From past experience, shaking my head and keeping my mouth shut in this situation will bode worse for me than speaking my mind. Just like in the natural world, display any signs of weakness and the predators will home in on it and do their best to pick you off. They’re fucking relentless. Which is why I make sure my hands don’t shake as I lower my notepad and look her square in the eye.

  “Yes, they’re abbreviations, but LOL? BTW? Acronyms. Emojis. Initials. They’re all considered text-speak.” I know this very well. Colonel Stillwater despises all forms of slang so violently that he swore he’d break my fingers if I he ever caught me using it. And my father will break bones before he ever breaks a promise. I’ve never used an abbreviation in a text message in all my life.

  Damiana glowers at me from under her caked-on mascara. Some people might consider her heavy use of foundation and contouring pretty, but to me it looks like she’s wearing someone else’s face. “Why don’t you just shut the fuck up, anyway? You’ve been here five minutes and you think you own the place.”

  Wow. What is this bitch’s damage? I’ve barely blinked since I got here, and somehow Damiana already feels threatened by me. Powerplays are not my thing. I have zero interest in vying for her crown. All I want to do is complete my assignments, get good grades to appease Colonel Stillwater, and then get the fuck out of here the moment I’ve graduated. Beside me, Carina makes a disgusted sound.

  “Easy, Dee. You wanna take it down a notch? Elodie’s just—”

  Damiana’s face contorts in disgust. “And what kind of name is Elodie, anyway? She sounds like she’s some sort of French whore.”

  “Ha! La petite pute française,” Pax says, from his spot on the floor by the window. “You charge in euros, Stillwater? Or will a couple of greenbacks put you on your back? The exchange rate’s murder right now.”

  “All right, all right. Enough,” Doctor Fitzpatrick says mildly, holding up his hand. He doesn’t sound shocked or even remotely bothered by what Damiana said, nor Pax’s shitty comments for that matter. Everyone falls silent the second he speaks, though, obeying his lazy command. Pax still winks at me suggestively, biting the tip of his tongue. Obviously, he’s scrolling through a number of lewd scenarios in his head.

  “Hate to break it to you, Dee, but if you use those terms when you message Wren, you are using text speak,” Doctor Fitzpatrick confirms. “If you—”

  “Like I’d text that pervert anyway!” she cries.

  Wren smirks, closing his eyes. “She does. Usually after midnight. And yes. DTF is considered text speak, too.”

  Damiana explodes from her seat, stabbing a finger at Wren, who can’t see her outrage with his eyes closed. “You’re a piece of shit, Wren Jacobi. I’d never fuck you in a million years. I’d sure as hell never ask you for it.”

  “Okay, okay, sit down. Wren, stop fucking talking before I boot you over to Harcourt’s office. You guys know I love a lively debate, but we’re getting a little off topic here. What do you think ol’ Bill Shakespeare would say about all of the new words we’re creating to express ourselves, guys?”

  The debate continues. Every time the class somehow veers towards the topic of sex, Doctor Fitzpatrick manages to wrangle us back into order. I sit quietly, unable to take my eyes off Wren, unhappy about the way my eyes keep gravitating back to him the moment I forget to actively not look at him. The old adage is true: it’s impossible to look away from a car crash. And I already know that Wren Jacobi isn’t just a metaphorical car crash. He’s a fifteen-car pile-up, and there are already people dead at the scene. I’m headed straight for him, though, and I can’t steer myself away. Worst of all, I’m not wearing a seatbelt, and motherfucker’s cut my brake lines.

  He’s brutal, and he’s mean, and he’s rotten down to his very core. I can’t escape him, though. There’s a very real danger that he’ll hold his cup to my lips, and I’ll drink down his poison like I’m dying and he’s the cure.

  All I can do now is brace myself and hope that the end will be quick.

  A sharp, shrill bell drowns out Pres, the redhead I met earlier, and the students all shuffle out of the classroom, groaning and complaining loudly about the assignment that Doctor Fitzpatrick says he’ll email us all later on this afternoon.

  In the hallway, Carina sags with relief. “God, I’m so glad that’s over.”

  I don’t think she means the English class itself.

  I think she means the close proximity to Wren and his crew.

  At the foot of a steep, winding stone stairway, Carina gives me a quick hug. “This is where I leave you, I’m afraid. I need to get to Spanish. Your biology class is up there. Don’t worry. Everyone should be nice.”

  About halfway up the stairs, my cell phone chimes in my back pocket. Excited, I scramble to pull it out and read the message that’s just come through. With the
crazy time differences, it feels like I’ve been waiting for this moment for a week. It’s weird that I haven’t heard a peep out of Levi and the others until now, but at least—

  Oh.

  Wait.

  The message isn’t from one of my friends back in Tel Aviv. The unknown number is American, with a 929 area code that isn’t familiar to me.

  The message is short and to the point.

  “Be less obvious, Stillwater. Desperation’s an ugly look.”

  4

  WREN

  Dead mother.

  Only child.

  Small, like a porcelain doll.

  Pretty blonde hair.

  Pouty mouth I wouldn’t mind wrapped around my dick.

  I don’t know much about Elodie Stillwater, but I can already feel that familiar old spark of intrigue at the back of my head, an itch just begging to be scratched. In fairness, I felt the dirty, sick need long before I laid eyes on the girl. Her file had been sitting there, open and asking to be flicked through, the last time I got called into Harcourt’s office. The photo clipped to the top of Elodie’s paperwork had caught my eye—I’ve always been attracted to shiny, pretty things—and my pulse had quickened, stirring from a steady, slow thrum to a far more urgent, interested clip.

  In the picture, she was wearing a white sailor’s uniform—a particularly unkind school uniform, I later learned, after a bit of digging. The smile on her face was genuine. She was laughing at someone or something off camera, and her eyes were alive with energy. Innocent. That’s what it was about her. She looked innocent, dressed in white, with all of that long blonde hair flowing down past her shoulders, every part of her singing with life. I’d immediately wanted to sully her.

  I took the photo. Denied taking it when Harcourt asked me if I knew where it was. For two weeks prior to Elodie Stillwater’s arrival, I spent a lot of time looking at that photo, jerking off to it but then refusing to let myself come, enjoying the anger that pooled in my stomach whenever I stared at Elodie’s pretty face. I’ve loved conditioning myself ever since I was a kid. Exposing myself to some kind of stimulus and then training myself to expect a certain outcome. I love nothing more than mastering myself, both mind and body, and my first thought when I saw that girl’s smiling face, was that I wanted to make myself hate her.

  Why, you ask?

  Why the hell not?

  Just for the fun of it.

  For a way to pass the time.

  Mediocrity is the curse of the weak minded. I’ve made damn sure nothing about me is mediocre, half-assed, or middle of the road, and that includes my emotions. It takes a lot to make me feel alive these days, but a dark obsession? A healthy bit of intrigue, colored with a splash of hate? Yeah, that’ll wake me from this dull, trite existence better than anything else.

  So, yeah. I waited up for her to arrive. I volunteered, which should have been a pretty glaring warning to the Wolf Hall administration, since I’ve never volunteered for anything in my entire fucking life. I wanted to test out my theory and see if the time I spent torturing myself had had its desired effect, though, and there was only one way to do that. I had to see her face-to-face, even if it meant burning my way through my last pack of smokes while standing out in the freezing cold for two and a half hours.

  When I watched her getting out of that Town Car, angrily pulling at the straps on her backpack, my body knew exactly what to do. My dick responded beautifully, roaring to life, blood surging to transform soft flesh to rigid steel. At the same time, my brain was obliterated by a need to see the girl cry, so fierce and intense that I could barely breathe around it.

  Fuck her.

  Hurt her.

  Soothe her.

  Ruin her.

  I was so perfectly balanced on that invisible tight rope that it felt like Christmas fucking morning. After all, there’s nothing like a little internal warfare to perk up a shitty mood. And now, after two weeks of waiting, trawling through her social media accounts and clicking through all of her photos on Facebook—who doesn’t make their shit private these days?—I feel like I’ve got a solid grasp on who the newest student at Wolf Hall is.

  She’s a walking contradiction.

  I like this about her.

  I asked a friend out in Tel Aviv to do some digging on her home life, which seems to be taking a lot longer than expected, but in the meantime, I’ve already concocted fifteen different ways to tear Elodie into a million little pieces. I’ve subsequently discounted each and every one of them. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, my last chance to condition someone else and bend them to my will. I need to be careful how I go about it. Make her crawl for my approval right away and it’ll all be over too soon. I’ll tire of her and be left having to find new ways to entertain myself until graduation. Give her too much free rein, though, and she could slip out of my grasp. There’s a happy medium somewhere in the middle, and now I need to work out exactly where it is. All part of the adventure.

  “You broke the rules anyway,” Pax says, tearing off a huge hunk of bread from his sandwich with his teeth. The man’s a complete heathen. No fucking manners whatsoever. During the summer, he models for Calvin Klein, strutting up and down runways in tight grey underwear. Aside from his shaved head, he looks clean in those photos. He looks well-constructed, like a fucking G.I. Joe—American made, only the best parts and labor. His fancy agent, and his fancy friends, and the fancy fucking idiots who stare at his image and wish they were him…none of them get to see who he really is: this ruthless, simple creature that likes to break things and tear them apart with his teeth.

  “By rights, she’s mine,” he says around his mouthful of food. “You had Damiana. Dash got Carina. I’m next up to bat.”

  Growling, I type even faster, spewing a thousand words a minute into the Word document, determined to get my re-write of Fitz’s dumb Victorian morality assignment completed before the fun for the evening kicks off. “You know I hate sports metaphors,” I snarl. “Shut the fuck up and stop whining. You’re a grown ass man. If you want to go after the girl, then fucking do it. Doesn’t mean my plans will change.”

  Do I care that Pax wants Elodie as his new mark? Sure I do. He’s a good-looking guy. Calvin Klein approved. He’s screwed plenty of girls here at Wolf Hall, and a million beyond the walls of our desperately boring little ecosystem, too. He’s dangerously charming when the mood takes him, and I’ve seen plenty of intelligent women fall for his bullshit. No reason why Elodie wouldn’t be the same.

  To be a complete punk about it, though…I saw her first.

  I’ve researched her. I chanted her full name inside my head—Elodie Francine Jemimah Stillwater—until it felt like a mantra, a pebble worn smooth by constant rubbing, and now she feels like she’s mine. I do not share my toys well with others.

  We have our rules for a reason, naturally. Riot House wouldn’t exist without some kind of code or system by which its inhabitants were required to operate. There may only three of us here, but each of our personalities are such that we’d all wind up dead if we didn’t honor a line drawn in the sand from time to time.

  Pax grunts, screwing up his Subway wrapper and lobbing it at the trash can on the other side of my bedroom. He shouldn’t even be in here while I’m trying to work, but trying to keep Pax out of anywhere is like trying to stop water leaking from a holey bucket. You learn to give up pretty quickly. Pax is quiet for a while. This means he’s thinking deeply about something. I manage to cram in three hundred words before he eventually says, “How about…a trade?”

  I stop typing.

  Turn around in my chair.

  There’s a worrying look on Pax’s face.

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Explain.” From time to time, he’s been known to be a little tricksy. Not as tricksy as me, but it’s wise to be on guard.

  He pouts, staring up at the ceiling. He’s being far too nonchalant right now. He wants something big. Bigger than Elodie, which means he’s about to try and pass whatever this is
off as a fair exchange. “The boat,” he says airily. “You have it while it’s still in Corsica. Trade me the boat over spring break and I won’t lay a finger on the girl.”

  Hah. He talks about ‘The Contessa’ like it’s a fucking schooner, not a forty-foot long, seven-bedroomed luxury super yacht. She’s my father’s pride and joy. If I let Pax stay there unsupervised during the spring break, the damn thing’ll probably end up at the bottom of the Mediterranean. My father would tar and feather me, then disinherit me.

  “A week,” I counter.

  Pax folds his arms across his chest, the casual, carefree expression he was just sporting vanishing as he settles in for negotiations. “Two weeks, man. The whole break. I’m not flying across the world for one fucking week.”

  “Ten days. Final offer.”

  “No deal. I guess you’re gonna have to stand down.”

  He could make me stand down. If he wanted to, he could involve Dash, and the two of them could vote that I stay away from Elodie until the end of fucking time. House rules. We try to avoid forcing each other to do anything most of the time, it only winds up with someone getting hurt, but it wouldn’t be an unprecedented move. Pax really must like the look of Elodie, which makes me want her even more.

  She already is mine, though, and this claim he’s trying to make on her is boiling my fucking blood. “Ten days, Pax. Go see your Mom in Prague afterward.”

  He looks horrified. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  “All right. Fine. You get the boat. Two weeks in June. But I so much as hear you’ve been making Molotov cocktails again and I’ll call in the fucking gendarmerie.”

  If anything, this only seems to make the smile on the piece of shit’s face spread even wider. God, what the fuck am I doing? This is going to be an unmitigated disaster. I can already feel it in my bones. “Stop crowing. I can hear the laughter bouncing around the inside of your thick skull from here,” I grumble, spinning back around to face my desk. I won’t be able to write anymore. I know I won’t. I’m relieved that ownership of Elodie Stillwater has been cleared up, but there’s a rank taste in my mouth that I can’t shake now.