by Bella King
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
More by Bella King
Hate You
A Dark High School Bully Romance
Bella King
Copyright © 2019 by Bella King
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Introduction
Bright blue eyes and jet black hair.
Pure, pale, and lovely.
What I wouldn’t do to get the chance to ruin her.
She was too good, so I made her bad.
She was too perfect, so I broke her.
She was too rich, so I stole something she could never get back.
She would regret the day she met me.
Break her, make her suffer.
Yes, that was the only way I could get my revenge.
Years ago, I cried myself to sleep.
Now, I was going to make her cry.
This time, I was the one holding the crown.
This time, she would be the one on her knees, begging for mercy.
Some things are unforgivable. This was one of them.
Chapter 1
Dylan
Black hair and blue eyes – an unusual combination. She walked with a slight sway to her hips. It was just enough to be sexy, but not enough that it looked like it was on purpose. Her lips were a soft pink, delicate and plump, with a rosy shimmer to them. Her uniform was always neatly pressed, the crisp whites shining against the deep blacks.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, but she was also my most hated enemy. The funny thing was, she had no idea who I was or why I hated her. I thought it best to keep it that way. I didn’t need her to discover my intentions just yet. She would get what was coming to her in due time.
I stood with my shoulder pressed against the side of my locker. It was cold against my arm, even through the fabric of my white linen school uniform shirt. My eyes danced across her body as she walked with her back to me, away from the throngs of senior students rushing to cram their belongings in their lockers and get home.
She wasn’t like them. She was calm and didn’t seem to be in any hurry at all. I assumed she came from a rich family with the way that she dressed. I would have liked to have my linens cleaned and pressed every morning before school, but my family couldn’t afford that. Hell, we could barely afford my tuition at Blackstone Academy even with me working every weekend at my uncle’s car repair shop.
I watched her walk until she disappeared through the double doors that separated us from freedom every weekday from nine to five. I knew where she was going, because I already knew where she lived. I knew a lot about her, in fact, and I was going to keep finding out more until I had enough to ruin her entirely.
Some may call me bitter, obsessed, and maybe even cruel, but after what she had done to me, I didn’t much care what people had to say. Scarlet Verity Porter was going to pay dearly for the role she had played in ruining my family.
I had to keep my head straight if I was going to pull this off. I couldn’t keep drifting off into fantasy every time I saw her. She would notice if I gazed at her lovely body for too long. She would realize that I had vested interest in her, and I didn’t want that. This had to be a secret.
Secrets, as it turned out, were hard to keep. My ex-girlfriend Maddie was always hovering around me, trying to figure out why I was so interested in Scarlet. She was obviously jealous, but she didn’t have enough information to piece together what was really going on. I wanted to keep it that way.
I stood straight, removing my shoulder form the locker and taking my eyes off the doorway that Scarlet had disappeared through. It would do me no good to stare through it all evening while everyone was heading home. I also had a home to go to, but not a nice one.
I opened my locker and threw some tattered books into it. The whole thing was a mess. Crumbled papers, receipts, empty cans, and last year’s homework all lay scattered around the locker, but it didn’t matter to me. My books had been bought secondhand, and they didn’t need special treatment. The cover had been ripped off one of them and several pages were missing. Sometimes I had to borrow other people’s books just so I knew what the homework was.
Thankfully, Maddie was very eager to please me after our breakup. She seemed to follow me around all the time, and she would always let me use her books if I needed them. She even offered to help me with my homework if I was having trouble with it, but I never accepted her help. I wasn’t stupid.
Maddie was a different issue that I didn’t care to address yet. I didn’t know why she was still skulking around me and popping out from around corners when I was trying to get to class, but it was distracting from my study of Scarlet. She was my target, and I wouldn’t let another woman distract me from her.
“Dylan,” a voice called from behind me.
Fuck, it was her.
I spun around, a frown covering my entire face when I saw Maddie. I didn’t want to have to deal with her now. I needed to go home and get started boarding up the storage house again after yet another break-in. I didn’t see why we didn’t just glue nails to the floor as a trap for any other bastard who thought it was okay to steal winter supplies from the poor. It frustrated me to no end.
“What is it?” I asked, my voice edged with irritation. I wanted her to hear it. She had to know how much she annoyed me.
“Why are you so stressed?” She asked, cocking her head to the side playfully, her bright blue eyes popping out of her tiny skull with exaggerated interest in my personal life.
Jesus, why had I ever dated that woman? She was strange, but it was her eyes that had lured me into commitment the first time. I was a sucker for blue eyes, but they wouldn’t get me again this time. I was done with dating women, for good. They were nothing but trouble. Sex was fine, but a relationship would do me no good. It never had in the past.
“I’m stressed because you keep running up on me and asking me stupid questions,” I said, slamming my locker shut. “So, could you please go away?”
“Temper, temper,” she said with a mock frown. She wagged a finger in front of me. “You should really spend some time relaxing instead of stressing yourself out over insignificant things.”
Insignificant. That was right. That was all Maddie was, just an insignificant annoyance. Not like Scarlet. No, Scarlet was much worse, and needed to be dealt with accordingly.
“What do you want?” I asked Maddie, unsure of if she had just come to check up on me or if there was something further that she needed.
“I wanted to know if you wanted to hang out at the creek on Saturday. A couple of other people are going,” s
he said, trying to make it sound like she wasn’t just doing it to have time alone with me.
I shook my head. “I have work.”
“Ugh, you always have work,” she said, stomping a foot.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to snap at her in the hallway at school. The less attention I drew to myself, the better. I needed to be like smoke, slipping through the air without bounds. I couldn’t help but shoot Maddie a resentful glare. “I don’t have a choice. My family doesn’t have enough money for me to fuck around at the creek every weekend. Not everyone is rich, you know,” I replied, trying to keep my voice down.
She pouted. “I’m sorry. I just thought that because Scarlet would be there, you might want to go.”
Oh, now she was going to bring Scarlet into this. She had no idea why I was watching Scarlet all the time, but I knew she didn’t like it. Maddie was clever though. I would give her that much. She knew that she could use my interest in Scarlet to get me to go with her to the creek.
I raised an eyebrow at Maddie. “Why do you think I would be interested in going just because Scarlet is there?”
“You’re always looking at her,” Maddie said, rolling her eyes. “It’s kind of creepy, actually.”
“I don’t care what it is. I don’t have any interest in her,” I said, but I knew Maddie wouldn’t buy it. Regardless, I had to stick to my story. Repeat something enough, and eventually it becomes the truth.
Maddie, of course, looked like she didn’t believe me. She titled her head to the side and stared at me, not saying anything.
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. “What?” I asked, throwing my hands up.
“Are you going to go to the creek with me or not?” She asked, as though I hadn’t answered her the first time.
“No,” I replied, slinging my book bag over my shoulder and starting to walk away.
“But it’ll be fun,” she called out as I walked toward the school exit.
I shook my head, not responding to her. I didn’t care if everyone else was having a blast at the creek. My life wasn’t about having fun. It was about surviving and getting revenge on Scarlet. Those were the only two things that mattered to me now.
I stepped out into the warm rays of the evening sun, heading toward the parking lot where my beat-up car was parked. It was held together with a mechanic’s hands a little love. I needed it to last for the rest of the school year, because I couldn’t afford a new one, no matter how old it was. I was paying for school and trying to save money to put me through college.
That was no easy task, and rich girls like Maddie and Scarlet would never understand the life that I lived. They saw the world as though it were a giant playground, responsibility and proper spending habits be damned. They were on this earth to have fun, and that was it. Not everyone could afford such pompous lifestyles. I had to work for my bread.
I pulled open the door to my car and threw my bag in the backseat. The door never locked because it was broken. For some reason, the locking mechanism cost a hundred bucks to replace, and there was nothing of value in the car to justify locking it up at night. If someone broke in, I wouldn’t have even noticed. We had removed the radio from it a while back to put it in another car that we had sold. There was literally nothing valuable in this car anymore.
I cranked the manual windows down to get some fresh air flowing in the car. I had no working A/C, so I was eager to get out on the road and wash out the hot air that had been steeping inside of it all day. The sun was hot this time of year, boiling the rubber inside of people’s cars and melting anything the dared leave inside during the course of the day. You were better off turning your oven to high and leaving your personal belonging there for eight hours. They would be in better condition when you finally retrieved them.
I turned the key in the starter twice before the car turned on. I could never figure out why I had to do it twice, but it was like that every time. I wasn’t the best mechanic in the world, merely an assistant to my uncle. Sure, I could change a tire and replace the oil, but everyone knew how to do that. Fixing starters wasn’t my business.
I rolled the car out onto the street, moving slowly so as not to run into any of the other students eager to leave in their fancy sports cars. One hit to one of those and I would lose everything I had worked so hard to save over the last two years. I wasn’t driving with insurance because I couldn’t afford it, so I would never see the end of it if I hit another student’s car.
I pulled out on the road, following another car with a generous amount of distance between us. I wasn’t normally this careful of a driver, but at school, there was no running from an accident. Everyone here already recognized my car. It stood out like a sore thumb among the rich student’s vehicles.
At least I had been to one to buy my car. Everyone else had their parents buy theirs for them. My single mother not only wouldn’t be able to afford that, but she would laugh at me if I ever suggested that she help me out. According to her, driving was a luxury. If I wanted to save more money, then I would walk to school.
Of course, the school was a two-hour walk from the house, and in this heat, I would be little more than a dried-up pile of leather by the time I arrived. I would never make it that far in the heat while on foot.
I shifted gears in my car as I got out on the main road. The cracked asphalt was clear of any other cars on the way home from school since I took a different direction than the other students. I lived in a trailer park on the far side of town, not in the elite settlement that others got to enjoy. I wasn’t bitter about it, but I didn’t want to think about what I was missing out on either.
I sped up, letting the wind cool down the interior of the car as I escaped into freedom for a few minutes before I arrived home. This was my favorite part of the day, but it didn’t last nearly as long as I would have liked. If I ever had money to burn, I would spend hours cruising around the city, just letting the wind blow through my disheveled blonde hair. That would be the dream.
Chapter 2
Scarlet
My father was a businessman, but not one that I admired. He was obsessed with money, throwing everything else out the window in order to chase the next big deal that his company would make to take it to the next level. I had nice clothes, a maid, a brand new car, and more handbags than I could find the time to use, but I would give all that up in an instant if it meant I could have a life where my family actually cared about each other.
I rushed down the stairs to the dining room after school, glancing at myself one last time in an oak-framed mirror in the hallway before I graced the dinner guests with my presence. My father had invited yet another couple over for dinner, hoping to charm them into a favorable deal with their company by the end of the night.
I only attended for appearance's sake. My father made me dress up for dinner so that we could appear like one big happy family, which was so far from the truth. I had to make sure that I ate with the utmost manners, only spoke if I was spoken to, and laughed at all the lame jokes that were made during the course of the evening.
I loathed these sorts of dinners, but they came often. My father was dead set on moving the company at speeds that would boggle the minds of even the top-performing businesses in the area. He was a madman, but one that my mother went along with.
She had her own issues with substance abuse, but that was apparently none of my business, as I had been told when I tried to bring it up last year to both of my parents. Popping pills every night to get to sleep wasn’t a problem, my mother had said, since they were prescribed by her egregiously expensive doctor. I didn’t agree, but I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut about it.
All I wanted for us to be normal, but I doubted that would ever happen. My father only seemed to grow madder by the day, and my mother kept using substances to fight insomnia and stress that she suffered from. Being a rich and healthy nineteen-year-old with a bright future ahead of me, I should be complaining, bu
t it was in my nature to try to help people. It was a gift and a curse.
Right now, all I wanted to do was to help myself by getting the hell out of the dining room and retiring to bed early. Lord knew these dinners stretched on for far too long, burning the midnight oil just to get business down. It must have been a shrewd manipulation tactic used by my father to wear out the person he was trying to make a deal with, so that they wouldn’t be playing with a full deck when they laid out their hand. It was clever, but immoral. That was the path my father had chosen, though, and it was the reason why my napkin was silk instead of paper.
I slipped into my seat, eying the mashing potatoes as a server poured wine into all the glasses. They even poured wine into mine, but I never drank. Everything in this house was for appearances though, so I had to accept it anyway. It didn’t matter that I was wasting eighty dollars’ worth of cabernet, so long as it looked nice next to my plate.
I watched my father slice into his steak at the end of the long table, taking his time to poke his silver fork into it and raise it to his mouth. His first bite was my signal to begin eating, as was the tradition at formal dinners such as these. I wished for once to eat a bowl of macaroni and cheese in my bedroom instead of wasting three hours at the dinner table eating steak and vegetables.
I scooped the mashed potatoes on my plate into my mouth, trying not to make too much of a mess with them. My father would scold me after dinner if I looked messy. I dabbed my puckered mouth with a napkin once I had a mouthful, hiding how much I had crammed into my mouth all at once. It wasn’t my fault that I was so hungry. The school always served such small lunches, and dinner was usually quite late at night.
“I heard that your company managed to finish the pipeline in under six months. That’s a new record for you, isn’t it?” My father said to the guests from his position at the head of the table. He always started with flattery.
The man that we had over was much older than my father, with white hair and a suit that probably cost as much as a middle-class house. His wife was a short woman, much younger than him, with blonde hair and lips that were far too puffy to be natural. They were considerably richer than our family, and that was saying a lot. Our family was absolutely loaded with cash.
