The Princess and the Bully (Goldsworthy University Book 1)

by Tiffany Ransier

  Mera’s parents both talked to me on the phone, thanking me for saving Mera’s life. They sounded so grateful and thankful, it made me realize how different they are from my own parents.

  Tonight will be the first time I’ve seen them since Tuesday. Both Mera and I were invited over. And while I don’t want to go, they’re insisting because they have something to tell us over dinner. Coll was invited too so it must be something important.

  The ride to my parents’ mansion is quiet. When Coll pulls up, the gate is wide open.

  “Do you need help getting out?” Wil asks from behind me.

  “I’m good.”

  She opens the door for me anyway, holding it open while I slide myself out, avoiding the side step.

  Both of my parents are waiting at each end of the table. There’s no food set out this time, which is fucking strange.

  There’s two seats on one side and one on the other so Coll sits alone on the other side.

  I stare at my father’s face, waiting for him to speak, but his eyes are on my mom, and my mom, doesn’t look like herself one bit.

  Never in my life have I seen her look this haggard. This worn down. Her mascara has run down her face. She’s always looked put together even when we were kids. Something isn’t right.

  “Go on, Antoure. Tell them,” she spits.

  My eyes are still on Dad as he looks between Coll and I.

  “Kids. I need you to understand…” he starts and pauses to glance at my mom who’s staring daggers at him.

  “Let’s start with the good news,” he says finally. “Jamie was caught on her way to Mexico. She confessed that she and her friends murdered Heath.”

  I only feel relieved for a second. While I love hearing that, the bad news is like an anvil hanging over my head.

  Underneath the table, I feel Wil’s hand over my fist. She forces me to open my hand, intertwining her fingers with mine. My other hand still remains in a fist.

  “How?” I ask. Since finding the blood on Wil’s hoodie, I’ve wondered if they stabbed him to death.

  It’d make sense if they did since that was what they were going to do to Wil.

  “How is it not important, Callan.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, looking between them. “Did Jamie still not confess to where his body is?”

  Coll leans back in her chair. “Yeah, I mean at this point, she’d want to divulge all the details for an easier sentence. So where is Heath’s body?”

  “You’re wasting your time. You both are,” Mom says in a low, disturbed tone. She sniffs and tears pour out of her eyes. “We’ll never get Heath’s body because your father is a selfish bastard.”

  “What the fuck?” I scream.

  Mera gasps next to murmuring, “Why?”

  Collette stands up out of her chair, and yells down the table, “We need to put Heath to rest.”

  Dad folds his hand together. “It’s in the best interest of this family that his body is not recovered.”

  What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I’m a thread away from dragging my dad out of his fancy chair and punching him bloody until he tells me what’s going on.

  “He’s had me locked up in this house since Sunday. But my contact at the police told me everything. Jamie was alone in the room with your father for a minute. She was on the verge of telling the police where his body was only minutes before their chat. Now? She won’t say. They’ve given up trying to find out.” Mom wipes her eyes.

  “What the fuck, Dad?” Coll yells.

  “I’m telling you all, we can put him to rest without his body,” Dad says calmly.

  “But that’s not the worst of it all. He didn’t realize it’d been recorded. What he said to Jamie. My contact watched that minute of footage and the only thing on that tape was him telling her not to talk about where his body is and her agreeing.” She turns to look at him. “That could only mean he’s known all this time where his body was.”

  In a flash, I’m out of my seat and pulling my dad up out of his chair. Fuck the soreness in my shoulder. I get right in this fucking face and yell, “Where the fuck is my brother’s body? Where is it?”

  I always knew my father, Antoure Goldsworthy, was a monster. But not this kind of monster. All this time I was scrambling to find Heath, looking for signs, clues, trying to find out if there was any chance of him still being alive. He was laughing at me. He knew. He fucking knew I’d never find talk to Heath again.

  “Let go of me, right now, son,” he says, staring at me with eyes too much like my own. But I don’t. I drag him to the wall behind him and throw him against it.

  Immediately, he wrenches my arm away, twisting it to the shoulder and causing me to cry out. The pain shocks me so I’m wide open when he backhands me. But not for long, because I finally get my shot in. I punch him right in the face and blood explodes from his lip.

  Distantly, I can hear Wil call my name, but I can’t hear it. My blood is pounding too hard. My heart is beating out of my chest. I want answers and I want them right fucking now.

  But with every punch I get in, he gets in one. They hurt like a bitch with the ring on his hand, but I accept that pain.

  “Stop!” I hear my mother yell, very close to me.

  A soft hand touches my shoulder, and then right in my ear, I hear Wil whisper, “Callan. Stop. We need him to be able to answer us.”

  My dad is slumped against the wall. His face red and turning purple with a black eye. My nose hurts like hell. I think it might be broken. I swipe at the blood dripping down and stare at him. “You’re going to tell us where his body is.” I turn around to Wil who’s right next to me and my mom a few feet away. Coll is sobbing at the table.

  “Callan,” Wil says in a stunned tone.

  “What?” I snap. But I can’t help it. The anger is still here, raging inside my body. She touches my cheek. “Pitchfork.”

  What the hell is she talking about? This isn’t the time for this. I’m about to pull her hand away from my face when she pulls it away, covering her mouth. She glances around me, staring at my father.

  “It was you,” she says.

  “Him what, Wil?” I blurt, staring at my father who narrows his eyes at us.

  She turns her head and locks eyes with me, speaking softly, “The pitchfork, Callan.” She points to the ring on my father’s finger. “That marked your face. And it marked Heath’s chest. The night before he died, remember how I told you he had those marks on him?”

  What? But his ring, it’s not a pitchfork. In my head, I picture his ring. An A and G inside of a circle. But the A and G are intertwined in a way that if put together, faintly if you see it from the side, it might…

  “So I hit him, what does that matter?” he spits.

  For as long as I’ve been alive, and old enough to understand, I’ve known that Heath was my dad’s pride and joy. Always comparing us and forever making me feel like second best. Like I was never good enough.

  For the first time, I don’t understand. “What did Heath and you argue about that day, Dad? What was so horrible that you had to punch him like that?”

  A disgusting smile forms across his face and right as he opens his mouth to respond, I hear the pounding of shoes.

  Our butler bursts into the room. “Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt but there’s an uninvited guest that is only minutes away from entering. We tried to stop him but he’s holding a gun. The other servants and I are going to hide.” He runs off with fear in his eyes, yelling for the maids and other butlers.

  What the fuck?

  “What kind of business dealings are you doing, Dad?” I yell and turn away to ask my mother when I notice the strangest fucking thing.

  My mom’s face doesn’t look worried one bit. In fact, if I had to say, she looks relieved. She might be happy to die, but I’m not. And I’m not going through this with Wil again. She will be protected this time along with my sister.

  I grab Wil’s hand and fast walk to my sister and push them un
der the table. Wil’s eyes are shiny as she tugs on my hand. “Please, get under the table with us.”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m sorry.” I need to know what my dad has going on.

  “Callan, don’t be stubborn, there’s plenty of room,” my sister snaps. “You don’t know what kind of psycho is going to walk through that door.”

  “Just call 911,” I respond, putting the tablecloth down and hiding them completely.

  Moments later, the sound of one of the front doors banging open echoes throughout the whole house. I straighten quickly, ready to face whoever comes through that door. The footsteps are light. This person is running.

  I don’t expect to know the face that runs through the doorway. Part of me pictured it being some foreigner looking for money that my dad owes them. Somebody else. Not him.

  He stops as he enters the room, glancing across the long table at me, moving his eyes around the room until they lock on my father with my mother in the corner near him.

  “Antoure,” he says in a low, dangerous tone, ignoring me completely.

  “Legis,” my father says, smiling with blood stained teeth.

  “Your son did a number on you, already I see.” In his left hand at his side, he’s holding a pistol.

  From behind him, I hear the sound of feet hitting the tile once again. Did he bring someone with him?

  And there in the hall, my greatest enemy appears. He steps forward, staring right at me. Does he have a gun too?

  “What the fuck is this Kane?” I ask, having to use his name so his father doesn’t think I’m talking to him.

  He grits his teeth. “I told him not to come.”

  Ignoring the both of us, Mr. Silverstone steps forward. “Marguerite told me that you won’t be putting Heath’s body to rest.”

  My father stares at him and bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard, he holds his stomach, with one hand back, holding him up against the wall.

  “So you’re here to convince me with that gun?”

  “Where’s his body?” Mr. Silverstone asks quietly. “I won’t ask again.”

  I glance from Mr. Silverstone to my dad. Back and forth, back and forth. The wheels start turning in my head.

  My dad looks him straight in the eye. “I will not tell you or anyone else.”

  “Oh my God,” I hear Wil say under the table. I hear a quiet, “What?” from Collette.

  And it all clicks in my head, sliding into place. I stagger back at the realization and stare at Kane Silverstone.

  Kane Silverstone has hated me since the moment he met me. He’s known since then. He’s known this whole time.

  “What?” he barks out, but by the way he dodges my eyes, I know that he knows I’ve figured it out.

  “You’ll tell me,” Mr. Silverstone says, pressing the gun against my dad’s chest, “and you’ll tell me right now, unless you want to die.”

  My dad laughs. “You won’t shoot me. You don’t have the balls to, Legis.”

  Mr. Silverstone backs up and rubs his hand down his face. “That’s my son, Antoure. He needs to be put to rest. His mother and I want his body put to rest.”

  “What the fuck?” Collette shrieks underneath the table, causing everyone to look over for one second.

  How long has my dad known? Did Heath know?

  Mr. Silverstone shakes his head. “You think you’re invincible, Goldsworthy. But you should know that a father’s love for their child eclipses everything else, even for a coward like me.”

  Far away, I hear the sounds of police sirens and an ambulance. But they’re too late.

  All I can do is watch as my dad suffers at his own making. No one moves to stop Mr. Silverstone as he steps back and in slow motion, raises the gun and fires. I turn away as I hear my dad’s body hit the wall.

  “What did you do, Dad?” I hear Kane shout.

  Under the table, I hear Collette sobbing. Wil moves the tablecloth away as she jumps out from under it and grabs me, pulling me into her arms.

  Stunned, I lay my head on top of her hers, anchoring myself to her like my very own safe harbor. I stay locked in place as the chaos around us unfolds.

  It’s only later, after I’m home, at my own house do I hear everything from my mother on the phone.

  Wil and I listen together with Collette as she tells us that he’s known since a car accident happened when I was younger. It was only my dad and Heath in the car and Heath was hurt badly.

  He needed a blood transfusion and my dad offered. They found out that way that there’s no way Heath was my dad’s son.

  My mother had an affair with Mr. Silverstone. It turns out she’s always loved Mr. Silverstone, but her parents wanted her to marry the more “worthy” person, my dad.

  Ever since he found out, she’s worked extra hard to keep my father happy, but she’s been miserable for years.

  The next thing she tells me shocks me to my core. Since he found out, my father has secretly despised Heath. Forcing him to push himself and make himself better so I’ll get frustrated and motivated enough to beat him, becoming better.

  My father never hated me. He only wanted to push me, and make me into a mirror image of himself.

  She thinks he’d been beating Heath for years, taking his paternity out on his body.

  But did he know for sure? No one knows.

  If he did, how could he never tell me any of this? How could he suffer so fucking bad silently?

  And how could his life be snuffed out like that?

  My brother didn’t have the perfect life I thought he did.

  After the phone call, Collette finds a guest room to hole herself up in. She’s furious at our father and inconsolable because the whereabouts of Heath’s body are still unknown.

  My dad is in a coma, and because he’s the only one who knows where Heath’s body is, we won’t be able to ask again until he wakes up. The bullet went right through his chest, narrowly missing his heart. He still had internal bleeding that had to be corrected during surgery.

  Wil and I are walking upstairs to my room when I get a call from Noel. Shit. I forgot to tell them. This is probably all over the news by now.

  I click answer as we walk through the doorway. “What’s up Noel?”

  “Dude! What’s going on? It says your dad got shot and he’s fighting for his life in the hospital.”

  “He’s not exactly fighting for his life. Yeah, he did get shot though.”

  “What the hell happened?” he explodes.

  “It’s a long story. If you come over tomorrow–” I start when he grunts and says, “Hold on.”

  There’s a few muffled voices in the background that gradually get louder. Vin and Ty must be with him.

  The voice on the other end changes, and it’s Ty. “Hey, do you guys need anything? F-food maybe?”

  I clutch my stomach and realize that we both never did get to eat. I place my hand over the phone and ask, “Are you hungry, princess?”

  She holds a thumbs up in the air.

  Eventually one of us would have realized and we would’ve ordered something.

  But if they’re fucking offering, I can’t turn that down. So much has happened, I just want to lay in bed with my princess and try to relax.

  “Yeah, In n Out sounds good. I’ll reimburse you when you get here.”

  I already know Wil’s order to which she cracks a smile that I know it, and they know me well enough to know mine, so I hang up and wait for them to get here.

  When they show up with the food, Gemma, Ashlynn, and Luella pop up, tagging along with them, bringing food for Collette too. And what ensues is a night full of retelling and talking.

  All nine of us in my huge living room. Not all of it is about my dad or Silverstone.

  Some of it is about nothing at all. Noel cracking jokes. Vin encouraging him. Ty sitting quietly.

  And some of it is about spring break which is only about a week away.

  Over those few hours, though I try to escape from thinking abou
t him, I do. I think about Heath and it sinks in that I’ll never fucking see my brother again.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Callan

  It’s a cool March morning, but the sun is out. Two days after my dad went into his coma, my mom decided that we should move forward and have a funeral for Heath. I argued against it, but my mother believes my dad, even when he wakes up, will never tell us where his body is.

  And because of how fucked up my dad is, I’ll never know why he’s holding on to this secret so hard.

  So today, here we are, burying an empty coffin today.

  It’s the first day of spring. The birds are chirping. Everything is growing back. Around this time last year, Heath and I decided to go to the Bahamas for spring break.

  Not this year.

  As his coffin sinks into the ground, I feel the tears well up in my eyes. Wil clutches my arm, wrapping her arm around mine and leaning into my shoulder.

  I turn away first, striding past my mom and Mr. Silverstone, Kane, Collette, and the rest of our friends and family.

  Dane and his father, my uncle showed up, as well as Sophie and her father, my oldest uncle.

  I appreciate that they came despite the fact that Heath isn’t actually related to any of them. But I don’t feel like talking to them or anyone else. I want to be left alone with Wil.

  Both of us still have school work to finish online before spring break starts. So we work our asses off the next two days, finishing our work at the end of the day on Friday. She groans, leaning back against the couch. “Finally we’re done.”

  “Yeah, finally.” I shut my fucking laptop and relax back into my bed.

  I hear the sound of her moving off the couch, and eventually feel the bed move as she gets on top of the covers with me. She lays her head on my good arm, and I play with the pieces of hair around her face.

  Through all of this, I never got to tell her again.

  “I’m sorry, Wil.”

  She tilts her head up to look at me and we lock eyes.

  “Thank you for not leaving me. For not giving up on me and us.”