by Stella Hart
My brows shot up. “Wait, what? If you haven’t even started, then how are you giving me a tour?”
She stopped and waved one hand around. “I practically grew up on this campus. My full name is Melania Whitney Davenport. Sound familiar?”
“Oh! You’re the Dean’s daughter?”
“Yup.” She gave me a rueful smile and rolled her eyes. “Please don’t ever call me Melania, though. I prefer to be more casual than that, and I hate the idea of people knowing the Dean is my father, so… shh.” She put a finger to her lips.
“Your secret is safe with me.” I returned her smile. The Davenports were one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the state, but so far, Mellie seemed similar to Willa—cool and friendly. I guess I was lucky she’d been assigned to give me the tour.
“So, anyway,” she said, trudging onwards. “I’ll take you to the residential colleges. You’re in the same one as me. That’s why my dad roped me into showing you around.”
“Ah.”
We headed past several stunning buildings and courtyards. Mellie pointed out each one, telling me their names and functions as we went. “That’s the Law Library. Stay away from there unless you want to get into the most boring conversation of your life with whichever pompous ass you run into,” she said with a wicked grin. “Oh, and that is the best café on campus. Trust me,” she went on, pointing at another building. “Their hot lobster rolls are to die for.”
A few minutes later, we arrived at a large gray medieval-inspired building with an enormous courtyard to its right. “This is Bamford,” she said. “It’s our residential college. You have an idea of how it all works, right?”
I nodded. I’d read all about it online.
Roden was set up a little like a British boarding school, with all incoming students assigned to one of ten residential houses known as ‘colleges’. Whichever college you were assigned to would determine where you lived, which dining hall you ate in, and which intramural sports teams you’d pledge allegiance to, if you were into that sort of stuff. Each college had its own academic advisors and staff who took care of college-based organizations, clubs and social events.
The different colleges also had their own distinctive architectural style and private courtyards along with activity areas, a movie theater, dance studio, library and gym. A real home away from home for those who were used to having their own entertainment centers. For me, it brought on a sense of dizzy excitement and anticipation. Such lavishness, and in just a few months, I would have access to all of it.
Mellie punched a security code into a keypad on the lower left side of the front door, and then she swung it open with a flourish. “Here you go. Welcome to Bamford College.”
She gave me an extensive tour of the colossal building, and my mind whirled with the sheer opulence of it all. Most college students were given cramped dorms to share, but here, we were given our own private suites.
“Whoa,” I said, my eyes widening as Mellie opened the door to number eight on the third floor. The room beyond looked massive. “This is really a freshman suite?”
“Yup. Normally I wouldn’t be able to show you your suite this early, but the girl who was previously assigned to this one dropped out, so it’s been empty for a while. By the way, I’m going to be in number eleven, just down the hall from you. We’re floor buddies!”
“Cool.” I swallowed hard and took a few steps inside. “It’s really all for me? I won’t be sharing with anyone?”
“Yup. Comes with a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room,” Mellie said, breezing past so she could point everything out to me.
“Holy shit.” I looked around the suite, marveling at everything I saw. It was fully furnished and boasted a cream-colored carved stone fireplace in the living room along with wood-paneled walls. The little kitchen was stocked with all manner of appliances, including an espresso machine and a smoothie blender, and the bathroom was twice the size of the cramped one I shared with my parents at home. “I can’t believe we get all this to ourselves!”
Mellie sniffed. “Well, they have to do something for us with all the tuition we pay. Eighty grand a year is a lot.”
I felt my cheeks turning red. “I’m on a scholarship, so technically I’m not paying tuition.”
I waited for the judgmental stare and curling upper lip, but Mellie smiled instead. “Oh, that’s right. You’re getting all this for free! So cool.”
My shoulders relaxed. “Yeah. I guess I’m lucky,” I said softly.
She cocked her head to the side. “Well, no. I’m the lucky one, really. My family can easily pay the tuition for me, plus I get a discount because my dad is the Dean. Getting a scholarship here takes a butt-load of work. So you aren’t lucky. You’re being rewarded. Right?”
I must’ve looked shocked, because Mellie dissolved into giggles. “Oh my god. You should see your face. Is it really that surprising to meet a Davenport who isn’t a complete stuck-up bitch?”
I knew I was beet red by now. “No, I’m so sorry. I didn’t….”
She waved her hand, cutting me off. “I’m just messing with you. But seriously, if you meet any snobby bitches here, just ignore them. Roden is teeming with them.”
I grinned. “So I’ve heard.”
“Don’t worry. Some of us are cool.” She winked, then headed for the door. “I’ll show you all the different lecture halls now.”
We headed out into the brisk cold. Mellie waved her hand across Bamford’s courtyard to a gargantuan sandstone building. “That’s another residential college—Marwick. It’s for grad school students only, so if you’re into older men, that’s where you’re most likely to run into them.” She winked.
We headed past Marwick on our way to the first lecture hall she wanted to show me, and she suddenly stopped short a few seconds later. “Hey, there’s your parents,” she said, pointing to the left.
I turned and looked. She was right. Mom and Dad hadn’t left campus to meet their client as I assumed they would. They were standing by a large marble fountain about fifty feet away, deep in conversation with a tall, well-dressed man. He had thick brown hair and a strong jawline. For some reason, he looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen him before.
I waved, and that caught my mother’s attention. She glanced over in our direction and briefly waved back, not meeting my eyes. My father did the same a few seconds later. Weird.
The stranger suddenly looked over at me as well. His lips were pursed, and he stared right at me for several seconds before returning to the conversation with my parents. I hadn’t noticed this before now, but they looked nervous, their shoulders taut and their hands fidgety.
“Hm. Looks like they’re busy,” I said, wondering why my mom and dad wouldn’t meet my eyes. It didn’t bother me too much, though. They were probably just trying their best to focus on this potential client, whoever he was.
“That’s okay. I have a ton of stuff to show you, and it’ll take a while,” Mellie said cheerfully. We started walking again, heading onto a stone path that led around the other side of Marwick College’s courtyard. “Anyway, are you starting in the fall?” she asked.
“Earlier,” I replied. Because Roden was so heavy on academics, they offered three study periods instead of two—a summer, fall, and spring trimester schedule rather than the usual fall and spring semesters that other colleges offered. “I’m gonna come straight here after I finish school and start with the summer trimester.”
“Me too!” Mellie said. “It makes sense. That way we can spread our courses out further, instead of cramming them all into two study periods. Less stressful.”
“Yeah, exactly. And if we do cram a lot of courses into each trimester, we can get enough credits to finish in under four years if we want to.”
“True. Sounds like you already can’t wait to get out of here,” Mellie said with a playful nudge.
I blushed again and smiled. “It’s not that. It’s more that I can’t wait
to have a degree and get a decent job.”
“Well, don’t worry, you won’t be staying here that long, anyway,” she replied.
I stiffened. “What do you mean?” I asked, my forehead wrinkling.
“Just that the four years will fly by,” she said. “Everyone in my family who’s been through college said the same thing: it goes faster than you think it will.”
“Oh, right.”
Mellie suddenly frowned and stopped short. “Hey, how do you know Elias King?”
“Sorry?”
She gestured to our right, back at the courtyard of Marwick College. “He’s staring right at you. I assumed you knew him.”
I turned to look and immediately swallowed hard. She was right. Elias was here at Roden. He was standing by a statue on the outer edge of the courtyard, a cell phone in one hand and his gaze fixed right on me. There was a hint of a smirk on his handsome face. Against my better judgment, I instantly wanted to run my hands through his perfect hair, touch his perfect skin, gaze into his perfect eyes.
Since Willa’s party, I’d thought of him several times—well, thought of the strange effect he had on me, really—but I hadn’t wondered if I’d see him again. I figured I wouldn’t, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to, either, given how rude he was. I guess I was in two minds, though. On the one hand, he made me melt like candlewax and also saved me from a potentially deadly situation. On the other hand, he said he hadn’t done it for me, and he’d spent the better part of the evening glaring at me like I’d kicked someone’s beloved dog.
I shrugged and turned my attention back to Mellie. “I don’t know him. Not really,” I said. “I mean, I met him for about five seconds at a party last week, but I don’t know anything about him. I didn’t even know his last name until you said it, and I still don’t know who he is.”
Her blue eyes widened. “Really? You haven’t heard of the Kings?” she said in a tone which suggested I might’ve lived under a rock for the last eighteen years.
A penny slowly rolled in from deep in the back of my mind. Then it finally dropped. “Wait, he’s one of those Kings?” I asked. I’d heard of them, all right. Who hadn’t?
“Yes, and that was his father your parents were talking to when we saw them near the fountain. Tobias King. I figured maybe you were family friends or something.”
“Nope.”
There was no way they were family friends of ours. The Kings were icons here; the closest thing our country had to royalty, and their family name was a constant reminder of that. Sometimes I wondered if they’d changed it from something else hundreds of years ago just to remind everyone how filthy rich and powerful they were.
After amassing their wealth during the nineteenth century via oil and petroleum businesses, they possessed the largest private fortune in the world. They weren’t part of the one percent, they were part of the point-zero-zero-one percent. More money than God. The fortune was divided among various descendants, and they had a piece of nearly every pie you could think of—financial services, real estate, mining, energy, farming, and pharmaceuticals.
Even though everyone knew of the family’s existence, they tended to shy away from media attention as much as they could, so I suppose it wasn’t completely abnormal that I’d never seen Elias before the other night. But to someone like Mellie, who came from a mega-rich family herself, it probably seemed rather odd, hence her confusion.
“He can be a bit of a jerk,” Mellie said, rolling her eyes. “Elias, I mean.”
“Yeah, I know. He practically glared at me for that entire party. No idea why.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Weird. Was that Willa Van der Veer’s party?”
“Uh-huh. You know her?” Probably a dumb question. Of course she did. All of the elite families here knew each other.
She nodded. “Willa and I went to prep school together. I was busy on the night of the masquerade, but I heard it was wild.” She lowered her voice. “Is it true someone tried to kill everyone? And someone got shot?”
“Not exactly.”
I told her the real story, not counting the weird stuff I’d seen upstairs before all the drama happened. I was happy to keep that juicy tidbit to myself for now.
“So Elias helped you? That’s sweet. I guess he’s not always a jerk.”
“Hm. Sweet isn’t the word I’d use to describe the way it went down,” I mumbled, remembering the vicious expression on his face when he stared at me down on the floor.
It made so much sense that he was a King. The arrogance, the self-assuredness, the way he behaved as if he owned the whole world. His family practically did own it. Unlike me, he had every possible advantage: wealth beyond belief, a name that could open any door, striking looks, impeccable taste that only a lifetime of luxury could instill in a man, and all the networks and connections a person could dream of. He held all of that privilege in one perfect hand.
Compared to him, I was nothing. No one.
I frowned and briefly shook my head, trying to stop myself from going down that pity-party road again. Mellie was right earlier. People like her and Elias were simply lucky to be born into the particular families they ended up in. Just because they subsequently had more than me didn’t mean they were better than me.
So screw Elias King and his strange, shitty attitude toward me. He didn’t even know me.
I turned and looked over my shoulder for a second. He was still watching me, his features arranged in a disdainful scowl. I rolled my eyes, not caring anymore, and I swept away with Mellie, trying to ignore the faint prickling on my skin as I felt his eyes on my back.
My dreams were going to come true at Roden, and nothing, no one, could take that away.
4
Elias
It was the night before Christmas, but I wasn’t exactly in the most festive mood. I already knew I wouldn’t be receiving the one and only gift I craved from the world this year.
Tatum Marris.
No, I couldn’t have her just yet, as much as I craved her soft curves under my hard grip and her plump lips under my teeth. As much as the thought of her echoing screams sent a heady rush down my spine.
There was a protocol in our society, and we had to stick to it, as fucking wild as it drove me in the meantime.
I clenched my jaw and strode over to the fireplace in my father’s study at our winter house in Aspen. Striking a match, I set the kindling alight, watching the obedient flames flicker and grow, transforming the wood to charcoal at my command.
Faint voices drifted through the open door. Outside, my father, uncles, aunts, cousins and other distant relatives were drinking mulled wine and cozying up on the wooden deck around the outdoor heater as if they were a totally normal family. The staff were busying themselves downstairs in the kitchen, doing all the prep work for tomorrow’s Yuletide spread.
And here I was, all alone on the second floor.
I preferred it this way. The East Coast and all its problems should’ve been left behind when we all came out here, but as usual, they hadn’t, and they were playing on my mind with increasing frequency. I couldn’t be bothered socializing with my preppy little mean-girl cousins or my overly-Botoxed aunts who coasted through life on our family’s dime. Not when I had so much shit on my mind.
A moment later, a gravelly sound from somewhere to my right drew my eye to the door. My father was standing there, clearing his throat. He didn’t look pleased. “What is it?” I asked.
There was a short, twisting silence. “I just heard from your cousin that you attended a little party a few weeks ago in Greenwich. Tatum Marris was there, and rumor has it you spent some time with her. May I ask what you were doing, getting involved with her months ahead of time?”
The mention of her name sent a hot red sensation crawling up my neck. My upper lip curled slightly. “I wasn’t getting involved with her. She just happened to be there. I had no idea she’d be invited to a party like that.”
Dad’s eyes turned dark. He despised Tatum as mu
ch as me. I could feel the hatred rising off him like cold off ice whenever he spoke about her. “I heard you saved her from that gun-toting lunatic. Not getting soft, are you?” he asked, his voice crisp and dangerous.
I scoffed. “I didn’t do it for her sake. I did it for ours. What if that girl lost it and shot Tatum in the face? I had to protect our investment, didn’t I?”
“Hm. I suppose that makes sense,” he said slowly. “Why did she go to the party, anyway?” He crossed the room as he spoke, heading for his desk. He opened a drawer, then raised his eyes to mine in an expectant gaze.
“How the fuck should I know? I don’t care about her or why she does what she does.”
That wasn’t exactly true, but somehow, it was a satisfying enough answer. Dad smiled and pulled something out of the drawer. A black folder. “I know you’re feeling impatient, so I’ve been saving this for you. Merry Christmas.”
“Not gonna wait for tomorrow when it’s actually Christmas?” I asked with an arched brow. I was deeply curious about whatever was in the folder, but I didn’t want to give my father the satisfaction of knowing that just yet. He loved being right about absolutely everything, and it drove me up the fucking wall.
He let out a short bark of laughter. “I can hardly show you this in front of your aunts and young cousins,” he said. “Take it.”
My curiosity finally won out, and I strode over to him and opened the folder. It was filled with photos of Tatum, each one obviously taken without her knowledge. There were some of her during her campus tour of Roden a couple of weeks ago, a few of her going for a jog through a wooded area in tight yoga pants, and even a few taken through a window of the little house she shared with her parents, stripping off her winter clothing in a steamy bathroom before stepping into a grimy-tiled shower and scrubbing away at her tight body.
The rest of the photos were taken during other mundane activities in her life: walking around shops with a friend, driving through town with her parents, reading a book in her local library, studying at her rundown school. She never did anything risky, and to a casual observer, she probably came across as dreary and dull.
