by Callie Rose
The night of the first Clarendon party, when Finn had taken me home and left the Aspirin and the note on my nightstand, I’d thought it meant I could trust them. But when I’d been passed out drunk, they’d used the chance to make me look like a slut.
And when all that wasn’t enough, they’d doctored the images of other girls to make them look like me, mixing them in with just enough real footage to sell all of it.
For the past three months, they’d pretended our war was over. But the whole time, they’d been carefully compiling a smear campaign against me. And now, somehow, they’d played it in front of half the school.
In front of my grandparents.
“Why?” I whispered, my throat working. “Why?”
“I told you, Idaho.” Mason’s expression looked harshly triumphant in the dim light. “I warned you that as long as you were at Oak Park, it would always be like this.”
“But what about…?”
Everything.
What about the protection they’d offered me from other bullies? What about Mason’s concession that my family legacy was just as good as theirs? What about the moments we’d shared—the looks, the little touches, the secret truths? Had all of that been bullshit? How was the possible?
He shrugged, a cruel smile tilting his lips. “Don’t you remember, Hildebrand? I also told you life in our world isn’t all sunshine and roses. But you chose to step into it. You said you could handle it. It’s not my fault you were wrong.”
Nausea turned my stomach as my world flipped abruptly on its axis for the second time this year.
“You made me trust you…” I whispered. “You made me… care about you.”
“We didn’t make you do anything,” he snapped, his voice going hard. He curled his lip, something almost manic gleaming in his green eyes. “You did it. You chose to believe what you wanted to believe. And it’s not surprising, considering who your mother was, that you were so easy to ruin. All we did was let you show your true fucking colors.”
Tears burned my eyes, making my vision blur as I stared at the four of them. Cole stood next to Mason with his arms crossed, feet spread wide and a completely blank expression on his face. Finn looked more serious than I’d ever seen him, and Elijah’s jaw was clenched tight, his hands fisted at his sides as his nostrils flared.
They looked like I’d seen them that first day—like a powerful, impenetrable wall, an unstoppable force.
“But why this?” I whispered. What they’d done was so elaborate. Convoluted and cruel on so many levels. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. “Why did you make me think… why were you ever nice to me?”
I knew they could be assholes. I’d known that all along. But the other sides to them that I’d seen—those couldn’t all have been a lie, could they?
Mason shrugged. “Because shit isn’t simple in our world. Wrongs don’t get forgiven, and the past doesn’t get swept under a rug. You wanted to play with us? Well, we were playing the long game. Sometimes it takes patience and strategy.”
A game.
Strategy.
That’s what I’d been to them. That’s what those moments of kindness and seeming openness had been. They had played me, played their game perfectly, breaking through the barriers my upbringing had taught me to keep around my heart.
And once they’d made it inside the walls, they had robbed me, taken everything they could and left me empty and hollow.
My mouth opened again, but I couldn’t force out any other words. My mind was numb, and my skin ached, like it was stretched too tight over my bones.
Mason stepped forward, and the other three moved with him as if they were a single, multi-headed monster. They stopped just a few feet away from me, so close we could’ve touched each other.
“You’re stubborn, Idaho.” His voice was back to its dangerous softness, his clear green eyes warming as he spoke. “And you’re a fighter. I knew you’d never just give up and leave. So we took away your choice. I’ll admit, fucking with your heart was just a side benefit.”
My body moved before my mind even processed it.
My hand connected with Mason’s face, and a shock of pain radiated up my arm. It hadn’t been a slap. It’d been a closed-fist punch, and the force of my knuckles connecting with his skull had hurt like a fucking bitch.
That didn’t mean I didn’t want to do it again and again though.
His head snapped back and to the side, and when he looked back at me, a bright red mark marred the skin below his eye.
“I’ll give you that one, Idaho,” he murmured, raising a hand to his cheek. His gaze moved over my shoulder, and a vicious smile tilted his lips. “Call it a parting gift.”
Before I could answer that, footsteps sounded behind me. Without a word, the Princes turned and walked away, disappearing like ghosts into the darkness.
“Talia.” Jacqueline’s voice cracked like a whip. “Come with me. Now.”
Chapter 27
The town car was painfully silent as we drove back to my grandparents’ house.
I existed in a quiet state of shock. I could feel breath entering and exiting my mouth, feel my heart throbbing dully in my chest—but it was like they belonged to someone else. Like my entire body was a stranger’s, and I was only sitting inside it, peering out at the strange, dark, dangerous world.
A world that had finally taught me, too late for the lesson to be of any use, not to trust anyone.
Philip sat stoically in the front seat, and beside me, Jacqueline’s face was a mask of stone, her fingers curling like claws as she rested her hands on her lap. When the car dropped us off, she walked quickly up the steps, and my feet felt like lead as I followed her, my grandfather behind me.
The second I entered the foyer, a stinging slap hit the side of my face.
I gasped, stumbling sideways slightly.
“How dare you?” Jacqueline kept her hand raised, her voice low and trembling with fury. “We have done nothing but provide for you since the moment you arrived, and I only asked for one thing. That you respect our family name. That you respect us.”
“I—”
“One. Rule. And you broke it so completely you went miles past the line!” She turned away from me, pacing across the large, echoing foyer. “Important people were at that school tonight. Connected people. And they all watched my granddaughter disgrace herself. Disgrace me. Disgrace her entire legacy.” Her hazel eyes were accusatory as she rounded on me again. “If you think everyone in Roseland won’t know about this by tomorrow, you’re dead wrong. You don’t think there are people who will be only too happy to see another Hildebrand self-destruct? Who’ve been just waiting for this to happen?”
My jaw tightened, and I bit my lip so hard it hurt. Did she think I’d wanted this to happen? That I’d done it on purpose to hurt her?
She stalked toward me again, her heels clicking like gunshots on the polished marble floor. “Those pictures. Those videos. It was like watching Charlotte all over again. I asked you, Talia. I asked you point blank if you were partying or drinking. And you fucking lied to me!”
I’d never heard her curse before, and it shocked me out of my stupor.
“So what?” I gestured wildly in Philip’s direction, my entire body buzzing with hurt and anger. “He drinks all the time!”
Another slap landed across my cheek, in the exact same place as the first. Then another. And another. Just like my dad had used to do. He’d hit the same spot over and over, using my own body against me, using each strike to make the next one feel worse.
When they finally stopped coming, my hand went to my cheek, shaking hard as I remained bent over sideways for a moment, trying to catch my breath. When I straightened, Philip had pulled Jacqueline a few feet away from me. He held her by the elbows, and her chest rose and fell as she stared at me. Anger flashed in his dull blue eyes too, along with something like regret.
I swallowed. “I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t matter what you
meant,” my grandmother interrupted coldly. “It matters what you did. And that can never be undone.”
“It wasn’t all me!” My voice rose as frustration and anger filled me like twin poisons. “The images were doctored. They made it look like—”
“Was that you screaming ‘fuck the Hildebrands’?” Jacqueline asked, lingering on the final words as her nostrils flared.
“Yes.” I met her eyes, squaring my shoulders. I had said that, and I didn’t particularly feel like taking it back at the moment. “But I didn’t know they were recording. I was just… mad. Letting off steam. No one was there. No one heard me!”
“Until tonight.” Her lips pressed into a line, and she tugged her arms out of Philip’s grasp, smoothing down her honey-brown hair. “You’re worse than your mother. For all her faults, at least she never set out to intentionally destroy our name.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do! And I am grateful for everything you’ve done, I just—”
“No.” She shook her head sharply, her expression growing cold as ice. “You obviously aren’t. I should’ve seen that sooner. We should never have brought you here.”
My throat tightened. “What?”
Philip’s brows drew together, but before he could say anything, Jacqueline stepped forward again, coming to stand in front of me. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll speak to the social worker in charge of your case. And I’ll buy you a plane ticket back to Idaho. But that is the last cent you’ll ever receive from us.”
I blinked, staring at her. “You’re… you’re kicking me out?”
Her expression twitched, pain flashing over her features for a second, then it hardened. Instead of answering, she said, “I’ll have someone go to your dorm to collect your things. Your car will be sold. There will be a plane ticket waiting for you tomorrow morning.”
Without another word, she turned and walked up the stairs. Philip and I gazed at each other for a long, silent moment, then he muttered something under his breath and shuffled slowly down the hall toward his office, his shoulders slumped.
I stood by myself in the large entry room, staring ahead blankly but not really seeing anything. Finally, I forced my body into motion, heading upstairs to the second-floor bedroom that had become mine.
As soon as I closed the door, everything seemed to rush at me all at once, the reality of the night slamming into me like a two-by-four to the head. My knees buckled, and I staggered toward the bed, barely making it before I collapsed. I crawled under the covers and pressed a pillow over my head as wracking sobs shook my body.
How had this happened? How had I let this happen?
My breath came in heaving gasps as I played through dozens of moments in my head, each one twisting like a knife in my heart. I should’ve known. I should’ve seen it coming.
But I’d believed them. I had believed all of it.
When Mason had found me in the bathroom at that party after I finally snapped, I’d thought things had shifted between us.
And they had.
Just not in the way I thought.
I had thought the battle was over, but all he’d done was change strategies. Instead of outright cruelty, they’d used kindness to disarm me, and when they’d found my most vulnerable spots, they’d struck. Again and again and again.
The dares. The drinking. The parties.
Even my birthday.
All designed to help them gather evidence against me, to paint a picture that told the story they wanted the world to see.
That I was trash.
A whore.
A disgrace to my family name.
Worse than my mother.
And the broken trust? My broken fucking heart? That was just a side benefit, like Mason had said. One more way for them to hurt me. Maybe they hadn’t even expected that part.
Wrapped up under the blankets, I cried until my eyes were swollen and puffy, my nose clogged, and my throat raw. And even when the tears stopped, the memories continued, refusing to be pushed aside.
I wished I could call Leah, but what would I say to her? She’d been right. She’d warned me. Why would she have any sympathy for me now?
The Princes had drawn me into their orbit, and like a moth drawn by bright light, I had flown too close. And holy fuck, had I gotten burned.
Was it all a lie?
…does it even matter?
I didn’t sleep, and as the sun began to warm the sky outside, I slipped out of bed. My school uniform was wrinkled, my hair a mess, but I didn’t bother trying to fix them as I padded barefoot down the stairs and out through the back garden. The sand under my feet was cool, and the rushing sound of the tide greeted me like an old friend.
Wading into the foamy waves, I let the water lap at my calves as I stared out at the vast beauty before me, trying to absorb its peace and violent strength into my soul.
I wouldn’t let my last memory of the ocean have the Princes it in.
I wouldn’t let them take this from me too.
By mid-morning, a plane ticket waited for me on the small table near the door in the foyer. The two bags I’d brought with me when I’d arrived from Sand Valley were there too, packed and ready to go.
My grandparents were nowhere to be seen.
I took two steps toward the hallway to Philip’s office, then stopped. There was nothing to say, really, was there? And if my grandpa had been locked in that room drinking all night, he wouldn’t be in any shape to hear whatever apologies or condemnations might fly out of my mouth.
So I just grabbed my bags and left.
The town car took me back to LAX. We drove past Oak Park thirty minutes after we left Roseland, and I found myself craning my neck to peer through the imposing black metal gates, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of the Princes beyond. But the school grounds were empty, quiet—deceptively peaceful.
Just like the Princes themselves, there was no outward sign of the ugliness that lived within.
The flight back to Idaho was long and bumpy, but I finally fell asleep, my body wrung out and exhausted. When we touched down, I found the social worker, Janet Pelletier, waiting for me. Her expression clouded when she took in my puffy face and rumpled uniform, and she shook her head regretfully.
“I’m so sorry your situation with your grandparents didn’t work out,” she told me as she escorted me to her car.
“Yeah. Me too,” I said dully.
“Your grandmother has advised me that you… had some discipline problems while you were there. I’ll want to talk to you about it as well, of course, and hear your side of the story, but we may need to place you in a home better equipped to give you the support you need.”
“I don’t need any support.”
She shot me a glance as we climbed inside her beat-up Honda. “Those who claim they don’t need help are very often the ones who need it most. Please, trust me, Talia. I’m trying to do what’s best for you. I’ll do everything I can to make sure you end up in a good foster home. But you have to work with me, not against me.”
I bit my lower lip so hard it stung, turning to watch the ugly browns and grays of the landscape drift by.
For just a little while, my world had been painted in vivid color. I hadn’t known those shades were missing from my life until I saw them for the first time, and now that they were gone, I felt their absence acutely.
I hadn’t thought I fit in at Oak Park, or in Roseland. But my time there had changed me so completely that now I no longer fit in here either. I had seen another version of my life, had gotten a glimpse of it, and even though it hadn’t been perfect, it’d had something my old life never really did.
Hope.
As we drove in silence, listening to the droning voices of public radio announcers, I rested my forehead against the window as a new thought began to grow in my mind, spreading and expanding until it was all I could focus on.
The Princes had lied to me.
They’d spent half the year making an effort to get close to me, all so
they could dig up dirt on me, could find my weaknesses and exploit them.
But they should’ve been more careful.
Because I had dirt on them too now, and I knew there was plenty more hidden beneath the surface, just waiting for someone cunning and determined enough to dig it up.
They’d shown me how to play the game.
How to wear two faces.
How to lie, manipulate, and strategize.
And even if they thought the game was over, I wasn’t done playing yet.
Maybe they’d stopped thinking about me the minute they’d thrown me back in the gutter where they thought I belonged, but I would never stop thinking about them. Somehow, even across all the miles that separated us, I’d find a way to make them pay.
For the next round of this twisted, fucked up game, I’d go in with my eyes wide open and my heart sealed tight.
And I’d fucking win.
To Be Continued…
Secrets. Lies. Heartbreak. Revenge.
Talia Hildebrand is a one-woman army, and the Princes had better watch out...
Defiant Princess is coming soon!
Pre-order:
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