Mad Love (Slateview High Book 3)

by Eva Ashwood

  He was younger than I’d expected, although maybe that made sense if he was an up-and-comer like Nathaniel had said. He had black hair and deeply tanned skin, and his arms were covered in tattoos too. He couldn’t have been older than late-twenties or mid-thirties—or maybe it was just that he had a slightly boyish face.

  Claudio looked up as we approached, raising his glass to his lips before looking at one of the men who’d escorted us.

  The man answered without even needing to hear the question. “Nathaniel Ward sent them. They say they’ve got a gift and a message.”

  “Well, I love gifts.” Claudio grinned broadly, jerking his head to gesture us all forward.

  The boys all took a seat on the barstools facing Claudio, keeping me close to them and slightly behind them, as if trying to put their bodies between me and the small-time crime boss.

  They needn’t have bothered. Claudio’s gaze passed over all of us, but his expression wasn’t hostile. In fact, he looked curious more than anything.

  The three boys launched into their explanation of why we were here. As he spoke, Misael reached across the bar and presented the small envelope Nathaniel had given him. Claudio cocked his head, studying Misael for a moment before taking the envelope. He ripped it open and peered inside, and his expression told me I’d been right—whatever was in there was worth a lot to him.

  Finally, he looked back up at all of us, picking up his drink again and taking another sip.

  “Tell Nathanial ‘thank you.’ I’m not willin’ to make any promises at this point, but I’d be open to discussing an alliance with him. I’ll need to think about it.” His gaze traveled over all of us again, then he nodded decisively. “Come back and see me again in a few weeks. We’ll talk more then.”

  Nine

  I couldn’t tell if “we’ll talk more then” was a good thing or a bad thing, but the boys seemed satisfied with it. They shot the shit with Claudio for several more minutes, although I noticed that after the initial conversation, everyone was careful to steer the conversation away from business. The business part would be important later, but for the moment, it was just two different factions of Baltimore’s underground getting to know each other.

  The boys seemed to have relaxed a bit by the time we left, and I assumed that meant they considered their mission a success.

  Reluctantly, Bishop pulled onto the freeway and cut across the city to where I’d parked my car the previous evening. I kissed each boy goodbye until we were all breathless and panting again, then finally pushed open my door and climbed out.

  I didn’t know how it was possible, but every time I said goodbye to the Lost Boys, it got harder and harder. My heart ached as I watched Bish’s car pull away down the street and round the corner, and I swore I had left three pieces of it in the beat-up convertible with them.

  My lips pressed together as I started the Aston Martin. The silence and emptiness inside the car seemed oppressive, so I cranked up the radio as I drove, trying to fill the space with something. When I pulled into the large garage and cut the engine, the sudden quiet seemed to echo around me, and I shook off a sudden wave of unease as I got out and walked toward the house.

  It was mid-afternoon by now, and I passed several members of the house staff, who shot me cursory glances before looking away. I was sure all of them could feel the tension throbbing under the surface in this house, and they all seemed to have resolved to do everything they could to keep their heads down and ignore it.

  I understood that impulse. My father could be an intimidating man, and he held their fates in his hands. They were probably worried about being in the wrong place at the wrong time and bearing the brunt of his anger, even if they weren’t the ones who deserved it.

  Keeping my footsteps light, I made my way through the great room on the first floor, heading for the stairs on the other side. But before I could reach them, voices in the distance caught my attention. The low sounds were coming from the direction of Dad’s office, and I slowed my steps as I craned my head to listen.

  “…shouldn’t let her stay out all night.”

  That was my father’s voice. His words were clipped, and annoyance filled his tone.

  “She’s finally spending time with her friends again. I thought you wanted that. After all, if she picks up her friendships with those girls, maybe their parents will finally take you back into their fold again,” Mom said sharply.

  “That’s not necessary. I’ve got everything in hand. What I don’t need—what we don’t need—is to have Cordelia thinking she can go wherever she wants and do whatever she pleases. She’s been spending far too much time out of the house lately.”

  “She’s still adjusting,” Mom murmured.

  I would’ve been grateful for her defense of me if I didn’t think she was saying it more to defend herself. After all, she’d been the one I had texted when I’d gone out with the boys the last two times, not Dad. And I’d chosen her for a reason.

  “She’s had enough time for that. She’s back home now. Things are back to normal. And it’s high time she started acting like it.”

  My father’s voice was firm, the kind of tone that left no room for argument. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out if Mom argued back anyway. Staying on the balls of my feet, I darted across the remainder of the great room and up the stairs, not stopping until I reached my bedroom.

  Fuck. I’d been right to worry about staying out so much.

  My parents were beginning to get suspicious.

  I didn’t see the Lost Boys at all for the next two weeks. We texted every day, and I clung to those short messages like a lifeline, but it barely felt like enough.

  Dad didn’t seem to know that I’d gone to spend time with the Lost Boys when I’d stayed out all night. Like my mother, he believed I’d been at a sleepover with my old friends from Highland Park.

  But it didn’t change the fact that he knew about the boys’ visit to our house, and what we’d done in the pool house.

  And it didn’t change the fact that he was now watching me like a hawk.

  I’d started having nightly dreams of running away, of leaving this life behind and fleeing with the Lost Boys to someplace my father would never find us. To someplace Barrett King would never find me.

  But half the time, those dreams turned into nightmares, horrible scenarios where my father found us anyway—and when that happened, it never ended well.

  I woke from those dreams in a cold sweat, panic beating against my ribs until they ached. Then I would flop back onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling, thoughts whirling around in my head.

  Could I ever leave this life behind? Was that even an option? Or would I be putting the boys I loved at risk if I even tried?

  My father wasn’t a man who was used to being denied anything he wanted. And with his insistence that I marry Barrett King, he had proved to me beyond any shadow of doubt that he was willing to put his own self-interests before anyone else’s. Even his daughter’s.

  When I got home from school on the Friday after Valentine’s Day, Mom caught me before I could slip upstairs to my room.

  “Cordelia, I’ll be sending Poppy upstairs soon to help you dress and get ready. We’ll be going out to dinner with the King family this evening.”

  “What?” I blurted, my stomach twisting.

  I hadn’t spoken to Barrett once since the day I had caught him with his hand up that girl’s skirt. Since the day he had proved himself to be as callous and self-serving as my father. And I had absolutely no desire to sit next to him in a fancy restaurant and pretend not to hate him. I had missed spending Valentine’s day with the boys I loved, and that had been bad enough. This would just be adding insult to injury.

  “You heard me,” she said dismissively, turning away. “Be ready by seven-thirty sharp.”

  I gritted my teeth as I stared at her retreating back. Tension still bubbled between her and my father, and I was starting to think this was going to be the new normal.
As hypocritical as it was, considering his reaction when I’d told him about Barrett, my father would never forgive her for cheating on him with Mark Jemison while he was in prison.

  And of course they wouldn’t divorce each other. She needed his money, and he needed to maintain the illusion that we were a functional family. That everything under his roof was perfect.

  It’s not though. It’s all falling apart.

  Poppy came up to my room just as Mom had promised she would, and spent over an hour arranging my hair into an elaborate updo and doing my makeup. Then she helped me into a dress that’d been picked out and left in the closet for me.

  It was a routine that was so familiar I knew every step by heart—but it still felt utterly wrong. It felt like putting on a costume for a role I no longer wanted to play, and I tugged uncomfortably at the strapless dress as I stepped out of my room.

  A driver took us to the restaurant, an exclusive establishment located on the top floor of one of the buildings downtown. I was sure my father had chosen it to prove that he could afford the best of the best again. My parents were both dressed to the nines too, and everything about this evening seemed designed to impress.

  This was a calculated power play, and once again, I was being used as a pawn by my father as he negotiated with Sebastian King. I was sure they were still working out the details of the marriage arrangement; that was the point of this dinner, not a celebration of “young love.”

  As we stepped into the space, which was surrounded on all sides by floor to ceiling windows that allowed diners to overlook Baltimore below, something shifted between my parents. They stepped closer together, and instead of the tight, strained expressions they wore around each other at home, they both put on easy smiles.

  Barrett and his parents had already arrived, and all three of them rose to greet us. His mother took my hands and kissed both of my cheeks, and I had to work hard not to jerk away from her touch. Sebastian’s gaze flicked over me before moving to Dad, and Barrett caught my gaze and gave a smile that made my skin crawl.

  “Shall we?” Sebastian gestured to the chairs around the table.

  I ended up sitting between my father and Barrett, and I couldn’t help but wonder if Dad had chosen a seat next to me on purpose. It felt like he was keeping a close watch on me as the adults settled into bland conversation and the waitress came by to take our order.

  My stomach clenched, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, a flush of heat creeping up my chest. Between the way Barrett kept intentionally brushing up against me and the sidelong glances my dad kept shooting me, I felt like I was under a microscope.

  Trapped.

  Pinned.

  Helpless.

  Our food was delivered, and I tried to force down a few bites, but it turned to sawdust in my mouth. Something was building up under my skin, an agitation I couldn’t shake off or tamp down.

  “I’m thinking early July for the wedding,” my father was saying, smiling jovially at Sebastian King. “I know it’s young to be getting married by today’s standards, but I see no reason to delay.” He glanced at Mom with such an adoring look that even I almost believed it. “After all, we were married young. When it’s right, it’s right. There’s no fighting it.”

  “Yeah, and how’s that working out for you now?” I muttered, scoffing a little.

  Dad stiffened beside me, his reaction immediate.

  Fuck. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. I hadn’t meant to speak any of my angry, bitter thoughts aloud. The words had slipped off my tongue before I could stop them.

  And the entire table had heard.

  Mr. and Mrs. King gazed at me with expressions that looked torn between curiosity and shock, and Barrett had narrowed his eyes. Maybe he was wondering if this was the sort of back-talk he was in for when he became my husband.

  The insane, reckless urge to show him that he’d be in for that and much worse rose up inside me, and unbidden, my mouth opened again.

  “But then again, I guess there’s no harm in making a commitment so young, as long as you know you can always sample other flavors later,” I said with a lazy shrug of my shoulders.

  Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth, a hand clamped around my arm.

  “Excuse us, please.”

  Dad flashed a tight smile at the rest of the table as everyone’s gazes flicked from him to me. Without bothering to give any further explanation or excuse, he escorted me away, keeping his grip firm on my upper arm. He pulled me toward a small nook off to one side of the restaurant, and as soon as we were out of view of everyone, he released me, straightening to his full height and glaring down at me.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Cordelia?”

  His harsh curse brought to mind the conversation where he’d promised he would no longer treat me like a child, but like an adult in all of this. That he would no longer coddle me or play nice because I was too young to understand.

  He’d obviously meant it. Anger filled every line of his body, and he dipped his head, bringing it closer to my eye level.

  “You don’t think I know what you’re trying to do? That you’re trying to humiliate me in front of a man who’s about to become my business partner? That you’re trying to devalue the name Van Rensselaer? That’s enough, Cora. I’ve allowed you some freedom, some leeway, hoping that if I let you have that space, you would eventually come around to accept this marriage arrangement. Instead, for every inch I’ve given you, you’ve taken a mile and thrown it back in my face.”

  He stepped closer to me, his lips pressing together as anger vibrated from him.

  “That ends now. You are going to marry Barrett King, and until you learn to accept that and be pleasant about it, to respect your mother and me, the privileges that you’ve grown so used to are revoked.” His gaze darkened, flicking toward the table before landing on me again. “This is too important to risk, Cordelia. You will obey me.”

  Ten

  My father hadn’t been kidding.

  He hadn’t been bluffing.

  After our little conversation in the alcove at the restaurant, he had re-affixed the charming smile to his face and brought me back to the table. He and Sebastian King had come to an agreement that the wedding would take place in July, and the entire evening had continued with an air of forced joviality as I had sat silent and wooden in my chair.

  And as soon as we had returned home, Dad had taken the keys to the Aston Martin.

  My heart had nearly dropped into my stomach at the sight of him pocketing the keys. That car had felt like my one piece of freedom, and losing it felt like watching the walls of my prison tighten around me.

  I had expected him to declare that a driver would take me to school every day, but apparently, I’d pissed him off with my backtalk more than I had realized. Because my father went one step further and pulled me from classes at Highland Park.

  He called on Monday to make arrangements with the school, blaming stress and bad health, and a private tutor was hired to come teach me at home.

  If he thought he was punishing me by refusing to let me attend the private academy full of the children of the elite, he was dead fucking wrong about that. I had never re-adjusted to that place, and I really didn’t have any friends left inside those walls.

  But what did hurt—what shredded my soul—was that I could no longer sneak out to see the Lost Boys. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house for any reason, so I couldn’t even take a bus across town.

  I texted them as soon as I found out what my father had planned, and then deleted our entire text thread. He hadn’t confiscated my phone yet, but if he did, I didn’t want to give him access to everything my boys and I had sent each other.

  My finger shook as I tapped the delete button, and my heart ached. They were just texts, hundreds of little messages sent back and forth, but they felt like keepsakes somehow. Like little pieces of the Lost Boys I had managed to carry with me all this time.

  I still had their numbers
, but I deleted every new text I received after reading it, keeping my phone clean of evidence in case my father decided to take my grounding one step further and confiscate my cell phone too.

  The first few days of my forced isolation felt like hell. The woman Dad had hired to tutor me arrived every morning at nine o’clock sharp, and I went through several mind-numbing hours of studying with her. But that wasn’t the worst part. At least during the days, I had something to keep me busy.

  At night though, an acute sense of loneliness and isolation crept in.

  The Lost Boys did what they could to keep my spirits up, but even through text, I could read the worry hidden behind their words. This wasn’t good, and we all knew it.

  By the fourth day of my father’s punishment, I woke up feeling almost numb. As I stared at myself in the foggy bathroom mirror after stepping out of the shower, I realized I had to do something while I was locked up like this, or I really would go mad. I’d lose hope entirely, and I couldn’t afford to do that.

  So that evening, I went to my father’s office after dinner.

  He was behind his desk as usual, talking on the phone in an urgent voice. He looked up as I entered and held up a finger, and I waited until he’d wrapped up his phone call to step forward.

  “Yes, Cordelia?” He set the phone down, fixing me with a wary look, as if wondering how I was going to cause him trouble this time.

  “I just wanted to…” I hesitated, then forced myself to continue. “I wanted to say I’m sorry. What I did was wrong.”

  He lifted one brow skeptically. “Well, that’s very nice of you to say. But if you think it’s going to get you out of facing the consequences of your—”

  “No, that’s not it at all,” I said quickly. “I’m not trying to get out of anything. I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I was out of sorts that night, but it won’t happen again.”

  “I hope not, Cora.” Dad’s expression was stern. “I won’t tolerate it.”