Pride (The Elite Seven Book 2)

by J. D. Hollyfield

  More banging sounds, but it seems so far away. I lift my hand to my ear and draw back with blood on my fingertips. The gunshot. Whoever that motherfucker was shot out my eardrum. Trying to stand, I groan at the pain radiating from my knee. When I make it to my feet, my door splinters and flies open. Cops explode around me, screaming and pointing their weapons. Their voices are too muffled, but I can understand enough to know they’re telling me to freeze.

  “I didn’t do shit,” I say, my own voice seeming distant. My words fall on deaf ears as my arms are ripped behind me and placed into cuffs. “What the fuck!” I fight the officer, groaning at the pain in my head and knee.

  “Mason Blackwell, you’re under arrest for the assault of Lillian Griffin. You have the right to remain silent…” the officer starts reading me my rights, and I go buck wild under the restraints.

  “You’re kidding me. I didn’t touch that bitch! She’s fucking lying!” A baton hits my back, and memories of two years ago come flooding back. I’m seventeen all over again. Fighting to get to my sister. Away from Lillian.

  I’m being dragged out of my apartment when Sloth appears. “Don’t worry. I’ll have you out in an hour. Tight-lipped and quiet. One hour,” he says as I’m hauled out and thrown into the cop car.

  “Mr. Blackwell. What were you doing in Mrs. Griffin’s office?”

  Silence.

  “Did you know she was going to be working late?”

  More silence.

  “Mr. Blackwell. The security system has you on tape entering the building and assaulting Mrs. Griffin. We don’t need you to confess, we would just like some reasoning behind your attack.”

  “Bitch is lying. I didn’t fuckin’ touch her,” I snap, pulling the restraints and leaning over the table. My hard stare doesn’t faze the officer, and I don’t give a fuck.

  “Well, the bruises say something else. Can you tell me why you were there? Why you attacked her? She’s told us you’ve been stalking her since the beginning of school. Making unprofessional passes at her. She said she’s only tried to help you. Are you infatuated with your counselor, Mr. Blackwell?”

  I try to jump over the table in a fit of rage, but the cuffs locked to my chair stop me. “The only infatuation I have with Lillian Griffin is the lust inside me that craves her blood splattered all over fucking campus.”

  The door throws open and Sloth fills the entryway. “I thought I said tight-lipped and quiet?” He rolls his eyes, as if he’s just out for a stroll picking me up for study hour and not in an interrogation room being accused of the bullshit Lillian set me up for.

  “Officer Campbell, Mason at this time, is free to go,” says the officer who entered the room with Sloth. Officer Campbell’s lips purse as I stare at the throbbing vein in his forehead. He slams his fist on the table.

  “We’re not done here, Mr. Blackwell. Better not go far. With a threat like that, we’ll be watching you.”

  I want to spit in his face. The other officer unlocks my cuffs, and I shoot up and follow Sloth out of the police station.

  “What the fuck! I didn’t touch Lillian.”

  “Didn’t say you did, brother.” Sloth walks down the police department stairs to his car. “Get in. We’ve got some shit to take care of.”

  Fuck that. “No, I gotta find that cunt and fuckin’ do what I should’ve done in the beginning.”

  “Finding Lillian is not the key to unlocking this shitstorm, my brother. Plus, she’s smart. She’ll know you’re coming for her.” Good. ’Cause when I find her, she’s done for. “She’ll be one step ahead of you, man,” he says, strangely calm, then lights up a smoke as he pulls away from the station.

  I’m so blinded by hate and revenge, I don’t give a fuck. “Text Rhett. His girl will know where she’s hiding out.” I massage my fingers around my bruised wrists. I lean over to get a look at myself in the side mirror and wince. My right eye is swollen, and dried blood covers my face and my shirt.

  “Got Lust’s location,” Sloth says.

  “Let’s go.”

  I plow through the front door like a man on a mission. More like a beast ready to rip out the throats of his prey. I stop in the foyer when I’m met by Rhett.

  “Whoa! What happened to you? Why are you covered in blood?”

  “Where the fuck is she!” I yell through the house.

  “Who, man?”

  “Lillian!” I grab for the first thing near me and smash it against the wall, blind with rage. When Chastity suddenly appears, I jump toward her. “Where the fuck is Lillian?” I demand. Rhett steps forward, bringing a scared Chastity to his side.

  “Where the fuck is Lillian!” I roar, not caring how fucking manic I look right now. Rhett becomes territorial over his girl, placing her behind him like I may attack her or some shit, but she pushes him away.

  “Babe, it’s fine. He wouldn’t hurt me. She’s at my uncle’s, why?”

  “Tell me what the fuck is going on,” Rhett demands. “Whose blood is that?”

  I don’t wait around to explain. I storm out, leaving Sloth behind. Before he has a chance to get back in the car, I jump in the driver’s seat and burn out. I need to do this alone. I can’t, and won’t, have another brother go down for me.

  I race through the streets, breaking speed limits left and right, until I pull up to the gates of the Benedict mansion. The gate is closed, so I slam on the intercom, waiting for someone to open it—to no avail. Getting back in the car, I put it in reverse, then hit the gas and slam into the gate. The steel rods bend, but don’t allow me access. I reverse again, then punch back down on the gas. Two more hits, and the gate opens.

  I speed up the long driveway, and once I pull up to the house, I jump out and race toward the door. That’s when it flies open. I’m about to haul myself at them when Megan fills the doorway.

  I halt before crashing into her. Her eyes are swollen and red. She’s been crying. Fuck.

  “Megan—”

  “How could you?”

  “Megan, listen to me—”

  She smacks me hard across my already bruised and broken face. “You’re sick, you know that? My aunt told me everything. I saw the bruises. How could I have been so blind?” She starts crying. I attempt to reach for her, but she swats my hand away as if my touch disgusts her. “Don’t you dare touch me. Don’t ever touch me again! I know your whole plan! I know everything!” she yells on a hoarse sob.

  “Megan, no you don’t. Lillian’s fucking lying to you.”

  “How dare you. You think I’m gonna believe you over my own aunt? A felon with a record a mile long. Drugs, theft, abuse? You’re not even eighteen. All this time…”

  “Those charges were years ago when I was a fucking kid. That abuse allegation came from Lillian herself. I didn’t do shit! It was her way of keeping her claws in me—”

  “Stop lying! I know everything, you sick bastard. Your obsession with her. How you were stalking her. She told me you weren’t even a student at St. Augustine. I looked into you. And there are no records of a Mason Blackwell registered.”

  The fuck? “Listen, that was all her.”

  “Get out of here, or I’m going to call the police.”

  “Babe—”

  “GET OUT! I want you gone. I thought we…I thought…” She begins to sob harder. I take a step toward her, but she throws her hand out to stop me. “I’ve been so foolish with you. Little did I know I was just part of your plan to blackmail my aunt.”

  “What are you talking about? No! What we have is—”

  “I saw the photos. The night at the motel. The ones you gave to Aunt Lillian, saying you’d expose me if she didn’t give you what you wanted.”

  That fucking bitch.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  My heart is pounding viciously.

  My lungs squeeze, and I start to panic. I’m losing her. I may already have. “Megan, no. Please, you have to listen to me.”

  “I said get out.”
r />   “No, she’s fucking lying. LILLIAN!” I yell her name. “LILLIAN!” Megan blocks me.

  “That’s it, I’m calling the police!”

  Two hands reach behind me, and I’m about to go apeshit when I hear Sloth’s voice. “We gotta go. NOW.”

  “No, wait. Megan, please! You gotta fucking believe me!” But the door is already slamming in my face and Sloth is dragging me to his car.

  Mason

  Two Days later…

  “Mason?” I hear my sister’s voice from the dark room of Micah’s apartment. I’ve been holed up here the last two days trying to heal, mentally and physically. Sadly, only the physical stuff is mending. Lillian officially won. She fucked me. I tried to cross her, and she did exactly what she promised she would do: ruin me.

  Envy hacked into the school records, and low and behold, there’s no record of me ever attending St. Augustine. She set me up. At the least, deleted me before she went off on her bullshit assault story. He swore the security cameras were down, and they’re lying about having me in the building. But there’s no doubt she somehow knew I was there. And framed me. She came out with bruises around her neck and cheek, but they sure as fuck weren’t from me. Self-inflicted, if I had a say in it, but no matter what, it still showed up in the local university news that an imposter student attacked a well-known counselor on campus. The one thing she hasn’t done is give my name to the press, which makes me super fucking wary. That just tells me she’s not done with me yet. But I’m done with her. Megan won’t talk to me. She thinks so low of me, and knowing what I could have done to her, I deserve her hate.

  “Mason, can I come in?”

  “Not a good time, Evie,” I say, and roll on my side, offering her my back. Besides getting up to grab a new bottle of any sort of booze Micah has at his place, I haven’t left the extra spare bedroom or even bothered to turn on a fucking light.

  I feel the bed dip behind me. “Remember when we were kids? Before the Griffins?”

  “Evie, just don’t—”

  “No, listen. Remember when I would get scared all the time and want you to sleep with me, but they felt it was inappropriate since you were older, so instead of sleeping in the bed with me, you built a fort in my room and slept on the floor for almost a month until I wasn’t so scared of the dark anymore?”

  “Yeah, I remember. You finally kicked me out ’cause my snoring was overpowering your fear of the dark.” We both chuckle at the memory.

  “Remember when we were living with the Kellers and they would force me to eat carrots? I swore I was allergic to them, but they made me eat double ’cause they said I was lying.”

  Even in the dark, I sense the sadness. “Yeah.” What fucking foster parents force a ten-year-old to eat a food that was causing rashes all over her skin and her throat to swell?

  “And remember eating them off my plate every time she would take a drink of her beer?”

  I laugh. “I thought I was going to turn into a carrot myself, I’d eaten so many.”

  Her hand settles on my shoulder. “My point is you’ve always taken care of me. And I just wanted to thank you for that.”

  At that, I roll over. I find her face in the darkness and brush the back of my still scabbed knuckles down her cheek. “Evelyn, I failed at keeping you safe. I should’ve done more to keep you away from whatever the hell you lived through while I was away.” My heart bleeds at the possibilities of what she endured.

  “He didn’t touch me, you know. Mr. Griffin. He never touched me. He would come into my room at night drunk and sit on my bed and just talk. As if I wasn’t even there. As if he was confessing all the bad things he had done.” I sit up and grab for her hand, offering her the strength to continue. “He was a sick man. He confessed he wasn’t going to touch me because I didn’t look like her and that’s who he loved the most. He said every bad deed he’d done was their fault because they looked like her.”

  “Like who?” I ask.

  “I assumed Chastity. It was the night he confessed that, Lillian walked in. She started yelling, accusing him of everything under the sun. But then there was this odd calmness that struck her. And then she turned on me. Before I knew it, the police were there, Mr. Griffin was nowhere to be seen, and you and I were being separated.”

  “Evelyn, I’m so sorry. I should’ve been there.”

  “Mason, there was nothing you could’ve done. I’m not telling you this to make you feel shitty or take blame. I’m telling you this to make a point.”

  “And that is?”

  “It’s my turn to take care of you.”

  “Evie—”

  “Mason, no. You’ve been taking care of me your whole life. It’s my turn. And right now, you need me. I’m not going to let you sit back and let her win. By doing nothing, she is.”

  “And what the fuck should I be doing, Evie? She’s taken everything away from me. I have nothing.” I wound her with my words. “Shit, I’m sorry. I have you. I only need you.”

  “You have me. But you also have your brothers.”

  “And I have faith if Megan hears the truth, you’ll have her again too.”

  The mention of Megan opens the deepest wound of all. I bleed the most from the hurt and pain of losing her. “It’s over, Evelyn. Let it be.”

  “Is it, though? Since when have you been the guy to just roll over and allow someone like Lillian Griffin to call the shots?”

  “Since I ran out of options.”

  “Stop. Don’t give up. That night, think. Did you get a chance to look around? Anything that struck you as odd while being in her office? Was there anything that could help—”

  “Wait…” I hadn’t put much thought to that night except for the painful beatdown I received, then being framed. But having Evelyn talk about it, I remember… “My phone.” But then I remember the crunching sound of the screen being shattered. “Never mind. I took some photos and fuck, now that I think about it, I’d found some strange documents, but my phone was smashed, along with my face when some asshole jumped me.” My mood sinks again. I watch my sister, preparing for the disappointment in her eyes. She’s stone still. “Evelyn. I know I failed you—”

  She jumps off the bed, and a few seconds pass before the lights flicker on and I shield my eyes. “What? What’s wrong now?”

  “Oh brother, nothing yet.” She smiles which confuses me. “Your phone, it’s the one Lillian gave you, right?”

  I nod. “Yeah, why?”

  “And you told me before she was tracking you, right?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Your phone. If she was tracking you, she’d have to have had you connected to some sort of cloud. If that’s the case, there’s a good chance whatever was on your phone saved to that cloud. We don’t need your phone. We just need someone who’s tech savvy.”

  I watch her eyes light up, still reeling in what she’s saying. “If we can find someone who can hack into the Apple system and pull the data from the cloud, we’re in. We’d have what we need!” She beams, but her smile instantly falls. “But I don’t know how to find that person without tipping off Lillian.”

  I sit up and throw my legs off the bed. “I’ve got a guy.”

  “Anything yet?” I tap my fingers on the frame of Envy’s bedroom door.

  “Almost, man,” he says, not pulling his attention away from his computer screen. Whatever he’s doing, he’s been at it for a while.

  “How does he know how to do this?” I spin around at my sister’s presence, her focus on Envy’s screen.

  When I turn back, I see line after line of numbers, letters, numeric symbols all cluttered together. “No idea. Not askin’ questions.”

  “Do you think he can get in? What if he can’t—?”

  “He will.”

  “But what if—?”

  “In.”

  Envy’s voice grabs our attention, and we both twist to see him facing us and wearing a shit eatin’ grin. I push through the doorway with Evie right
behind me. Envy swivels back around to face his computer and starts jamming on his keys.

  “What the fuck is this? All I see is mumbo jumbo.”

  “It’s the backdoor of her account.”

  “Yeah, and I can’t read any of this shit,” I reply, annoyed. This better not have been a waste of our time.

  “And it’s your lucky day, ’cause I can.”

  This time, Evie chimes in. “Why do you have all this stuff? How do you know how to do all this?”

  Envy swivels back to face my sister, a lazy smile on his face. “Why are you asking to hack into the Master Counselor’s private cloud account? Hmmm?” He smiles wider once my sister fails to come up with a quick response. “Exactly. Let’s keep our curiosity to ourselves.” He turns back to the screen. Evie takes a step back, offering me an uncomfortable look. I nod for her to brush it off and bring my attention back to the screen. He continues to punch in numbers as I watch, confused.

  “Seems you’re in luck. Naughty Headmaster Counselor Griffin was definitely tracking you. This code right here?” He points. “That’s you. These coordinates? All your locations. Anytime you took a shit, she knew about it.”

  I move closer to the screen, trying to decipher what he’s looking at. “Any chance you can access the phone’s pictures?”

  “Yep.” He’s back at it, until a bunch of thumbnails appear. I peer closer, and sure enough, the photos I took of the documents are there.

  “Hey, can we get a minute?” I ask.

  Envy is already popping up from his chair. “Have at it. No peeking at any other tabs, though. Would hate for you to get more than you bargained for by snoopin’.” He looks at my sister and winks. Then he’s gone.

  “Why—?”

  “Forget him. Look.” I take his seat and use the cursor to click on the first thumbnail. The photo enlarges, and I’m reading the screenshot document. My eyes widen at the bold titles. Misconduct. Sexual abuse to a minor. Test result: positive.