Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 131789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131789 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
“That depends,” I say, cocking a brow.
“Name your price.”
I love dumb rich pricks.
“Email me the name and background to this address.” I take the guy’s phone and give him a burner address that can’t be traced back to me. “I’ll be in touch.”
After they leave, Lucas is there staring at me, dumbstruck.
“Is that what it’s like?” he marvels. “You do this a lot?”
“When it suits me.” I shrug. “Information is good business.”
Like sex, drugs, and power, knowledge is one of the oldest commodities. My particular skill set tends to make me the resource of last resort for the petty and vengeful, but that’s hardly my concern. The first rule of the information economy is to maintain a firewall between myself and the messy stuff. I’m here for the what, not the why. When a transaction goes badly, it’s always the human element that fails.
Most of the time, the system works.
Then again, that’s the thing about picking locks and turning blind corners. Even when you’re careful, occasionally there’s a twenty-gauge shotgun waiting in the dark.
That night, I’m in the dorm, sitting on my bed doing some homework with my headphones on. I don’t hear the angry stomp of footsteps charging toward my room. Or the click of the handle turning. Only when the door flies open to bounce off the wall, do I look up from my laptop.
I see Duke lunge for me about a second before his right cross cracks against my jaw.
Chapter 26
RJ
My ears are ringing when I spit blood on the centuries-old hardwood floor. It lands in a thick, red glob, in which I watch the reflection of my bedside lamp topple to the ground as Duke shoves me against my nightstand and I stumble into the wall.
“You think I wouldn’t find out?” he shouts at me, pinning my back to the window with my shirt crumpled in his fists.
The drapes cradle my face and I wonder briefly in the haze of chaos screaming through my skull if they’re strong enough to catch me from falling three stories when the glass breaks.
The guys were right. I underestimated Duke.
I underestimated him big-time.
And yet even recognizing that, I can’t stop my own smartass nature any more than I can stop the sun from rising.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific,” I mumble through the blood still filling my mouth and the searing numbness in my jaw.
“I know where you were this weekend.” Duke catches me by the throat when I try squeezing past him. “Arrogant little fuck. Think you can use her to get to me?”
Sloane.
Shit.
“Ohh. That.” I can’t restrain a pained chuckle.
With everything else going on, I’d forgotten that nugget was bound to get back to him. Granted, I didn’t spend even a second considering his reaction, but this is worse than I would have imagined.
“Tough breakup?” I ask politely.
Duke throws me off the wall and I crash into the sofa.
“Stay the hell away from her.” He’s red and seething, full of rage and hormones. “Whatever your stupid plan is, it won’t work. I run shit on this campus. That’s the way it’s gonna stay.”
When you sit on a stolen throne, you see enemies everywhere.
“Duke, man. I don’t give a shit about your power trip or fucking prep school politics. You don’t factor in my world at all.”
“I don’t factor?” He cracks a malicious smile. “All right. I was polite before for Fenn’s sake. We could have worked something out. Now I’m done with diplomacy.”
I take advantage of the brief interlude where he doesn’t have his hands on me to readjust my jaw. “Not sure we agree on that definition.”
“I told you what would happen,” he reminds me, his tone icy.
“Yeah.” I pull myself upright and wipe the blood off my chin. “My first guidance counselor always said I needed to work on being more present.”
“You like being clever, don’t ya?”
“Eh.” I shrug. “It’s a living.”
“Smartest guy in the room, right?” He steps up to me, flaring his nostrils.
The thing about prep school bullies, they all think they have this righteous entitlement to take up space.
“So be smart now,” he continues, gaze deadly. “I want to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“You’re not going to see Sloane again. I don’t even want to hear her name’s been coming out of your mouth.”
“Oh. Yeah, no. I’m not going to do that.”
In any income bracket, a bully is still a big dumb animal. We don’t run to the fallout shelters for every escaped zoo hippo that goes charging through the town square, do we? No. We call out Fish and Wildlife to shoot its ass full of tranquilizers. I’m not scared of Duke or his threats.
“You realize you can agree now or after you’re picking your teeth up off the floor.” Duke’s barely contained anger pulses in the bulging vein in his forehead. “I’m giving you a chance to take the easy way out. What’s some chick worth against a broken nose?”