Page 20

‘Daisy?’

She sits up, not looking at any of us and grabs a bottle of water from her nightstand. I drop the pills into her hand, and she takes them before she lays back down and closes her eyes again.

‘Let me know when she’s feeling better,’ Shade says, his eyes hard. ‘We need to have a talk.’

He leaves the room with Mav in tow, and I sit slowly on the bed.

‘Are you o...’ I stop myself from asking the dumb question. Of course she’s not okay.

Her eyes are open and she’s back to staring at the wall.

‘He owns me, too,’ I whisper.

Her eyes cut to me.

I hold her gaze. ‘Novelle. He owns all of us.’

‘I thought it would be different.’ she whispers. ‘I thought being out here, out of The Heath, that I’d be free . But I’ve just traded their rules for his. He still gets to decide everything. I’d be failing English Lit right now if I hadn’t gone behind his back. He still doesn’t know I’ve changed majors.’

‘What will he do when he finds out?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, but it won’t be very nice. I can’t stay here.’

She says the last part so quietly I almost don’t hear her.

‘What did you lie to us about?’ I whisper, not wanting to know the answer, and yet not being able to stop myself from asking.

‘You’ll know soon enough,’ she says cryptically.

‘I’ll…leave you alone,’ I say, though it’s the last thing I want to do.

Her brow furrows a little and she curls in on herself. She doesn’t say anything.

I get up to go, but when I get to the door, I go back. I lean over her and give her a gentle kiss on the cheek.

‘Last night,’ I lower my voice. ‘We weren’t with anyone else... Not like we are with you. I promise.’

I leave quickly and grab my laptop from my room, intending on heading downstairs to do a little work. The data I pulled from the security system is garbled and I’m pretty sure it’s because of a virus. I’ve been going through it, but it’s taking a lot longer than I thought, which is probably the reason the virus was uploaded. But that means there’s something to find, so I’m going to keep looking until I discover it.

Mav and Shade are already hanging with the guys in the games room. We decided last night that we need to make sure we’re spending as much time with the other members of the frat as Marcus has been in case he’s putting ideas in the other guys’ heads. So far, he’s been laying pretty low since Mav beat the shit out of him, Rob, and Pete on Halloween. He’s been flaunting the fact that he’s fucking Laurie, but even that mostly stopped once he realized Shade doesn’t give a shit. I have a feeling this asshole is going to be like a hydra, though. Cut off his head and three more will appear.

I see Greg and Jayce and give them a nod for being decent to our girl this morning when we weren’t here. Both of them look half-surprised and half-afraid when Shade beckons them over to our couch at the back of the room.

‘We wanted to thank you for helping Daisy,’ Shade begins, but Greg puts up his hand.

‘Look, Admiral, we don’t need thanks for making sure she was okay.’ He glances at Jayce who nods. ‘We didn’t like all that shit with the hazing. I’ve– We’ve been wanting to say something about it, and I don’t care if I get in trouble for it. It was fucked up, dude. I didn’t sign up to terrorize a girl like that, you know?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Shade’s voice sounds like he’s a hair’s breadth from violence, which is exactly how I feel.

Greg’s gaze bounces between the three of us. ‘The spreadsheet.’

‘Spreadsheet?’ I snarl, glancing at the others.

But I know what they’re talking about. The spreadsheet Lu talked about on Halloween. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere, and the guys I’ve spoken to have denied its existence.

‘I asked you about it last week,’ I say very quietly and see them both practically cower in front of me.

‘We thought it was a test,’ Greg says. ‘We weren’t allowed to talk about it. Marcus, Rob, and Pete told all of us, the pledges, I mean, that you might ask, and that if we said anything about it, we failed. We had to...’ He trails off.

Jayce nudges him. ‘Send it to them.’

Greg nods and takes out his phone. I get a link a second later. I crack my laptop and bring it up. A document opens with a title that makes my eye twitch. ‘Fuck with the Retard’. There’s a list of all the pledges’ names down the first column and one along the top called ‘get your points’ with stuff like: ‘Follow for twenty minutes, five. Call a bitch, seven. Trip, twelve. Spread a rumor, two. Scare, four. Video in shower, twenty.’

I scan down to see if anyone got points for videoing Daisy naked. Luckily for everyone in this house, it’s zero. No one did it. But the list goes on and there are plenty of things the pledges did do.

I show the others, so angry I can barely move.

‘What is this shit?’ Mav asks, his eyes narrowing as he goes through the list and the points.

‘They told us to mess with her,’ Jayce answers. ‘They said it was part of the hazing, that the Seamen okayed it.’

I’m too furious to even snigger at the nickname I came up with.

‘They said the ones with the most points at the end would get in,’ Greg adds.

I scan the list of names. Did one of these assholes throw coffee all over her? Is one of them responsible for the notes? For breaking into the security system in the name of becoming a full member of KIP?

‘There’s videos,’ Jayce mutters, nudging Greg again who nods, and I get a link to a folder a couple seconds later.

‘You...didn’t know about this?’ Greg asks, looking a little relieved.

Shade’s jaw ticks. ‘Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Greg. Jayce. You aren’t in any trouble. Keep this to yourselves for now.’

He waves them away.

‘Where are Marcus and the other two?’ he asks very quietly.

‘They haven’t been around,’ Mav says, just as low. ‘But when they are, I think it’s time for another talk followed by some violence.’

I nod and Shade does too, sitting back and rubbing his temples. ‘Why is that girl constantly in trouble?’

I glance at him. ‘She lives at the frat. She’s smart, but vulnerable. She’s a Novelle regardless of her legal last name. She has your dad for a guardian. We’re assholes. Take your pick.’

‘Jesus, how many people are we going to need to destroy before everyone gets the message that she’s ours?’ Mav snarls.

‘Maybe we need to start taking her out with us, show everyone that she’s with us. Untouchable,’ I say.

Mav begins to nod slowly. ‘But what about Sauvage? Things are just going to get worse until we can fix Envy.’

‘Agreed,’ Shade mutters, closing my laptop. ‘He’s going to start leveraging the things we care about if we don’t figure this out.’

Standing up, Shade levels us both with a look. ‘And I don’t know about you guys, but there’s one thing I really care about right now. It would be best if no one knows. That means doing the opposite.’

‘He’s going to figure it out sooner or later,’ I argue. ‘Maybe it’s best if we’re the ones who control the narrative.’

‘What do you propose?’ Mav asks.

‘Exactly what I said. We take her with us to the club, wherever else we can go where she won’t learn things about us that we don’t want her to know. We make sure the frat knows she’s protected, that they need to make sure she’s protected when she’s not with one of us. And we make sure people know what happens if they don’t treat her like the Novelle princess she is.’

‘I don’t think she’ll like that name,’ Shade says, crossing his sizeable arms. ‘I don’t either.’

‘I don’t care whether you or she likes it, or not. It’s protection,’ I retort. ‘Now, one of you grab her some food for when she feels better.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Shade asks suspiciously.

‘What I should have done a couple weeks ago.’

We go our separate ways. Mav and Shade, out to grab something for Daisy. Me, up to the second floor on the other side of the house where the juniors’ rooms are located. I see a couple of them leaving and they eye me warily. Then I see Samuel getting back from class.

‘Marcus here?’ I ask.

‘He went home for a few days,’ Samuel tells me then he looks from side to side and lowers his voice. ‘Pete’s here though. I’ll...go downstairs for a while.’

I smirk as he drops off his stuff in his room and then disappears down the stairs.

I burst into Pete’s room and have him by the throat up against the wall before he can do much more than blink. His face is still a mess from Mav’s beating, and I can’t help my smirk.

The idiot struggles under my arm at first but quickly goes limp when I put pressure on his windpipe.

‘What do you want?’ he rasps.

‘I heard about the spreadsheet,’ I snarl, and I’m gratified by the fear in his eyes. ‘So, you knew it didn’t come from us.’

His head jerks up and down a little. ‘It was Marcus. All the way.’

‘That was easy. You’re selling him out this quickly?’ I push on his throat a little more. ‘That’s disappointing. I thought I’d get to break something.’

He pulls my arm down and I let him go, stepping back.

‘Jesus! Fuck, Blake! I grew up down the street from you. We used to play together. I’m here on scholarship, same as you, and I’m real close to losing everything because of all that bullshit at Halloween. I don’t have my grant, and my mom is gonna kill me! I don’t need this shit. It’s okay for Marcus and fucking Rob. They have money. Their families have money. Their problems can go away if their daddies want them to, but not mine.’

‘Tell me what I want to know, then. Why is Marcus so interested in Daisy? He didn’t even know her before she got here.’

‘I don’t know.’

I lunge forward and he cringes back, slamming himself into the wall.

‘I don’t know! Really. I...’ He shrugs, his eyes pleading. ‘He was told to make things hard for her.’

‘Who told him?’ I snarl.

‘I think it was something to do with the Novelles.’

No way it was Shade.

‘Why would the Novelles want to make things hard for her?’ I say through my clenched jaw. ‘She is a Novelle!’

‘He never said, and I never asked!’ Pete swallows hard. ‘But he was smug about it. Sure of himself. Like there was something else going on and I... I don’t know for sure, but…’

‘You think John Novelle told him to do it?’ I ask when he trials off.

‘Yeah. Marcus... You know all those rich assholes are in each other’s pockets. He had a meeting in September. He didn’t tell us with who, but... A guy like Marcus, you gotta stay one step ahead. So, I followed him. He went to some ritzy restaurant in nice Richmond. He met Novelle there for lunch. Marcus’ brother and his dad were there, too. I saw them.’

My eyes narrow. ‘That doesn’t make sense. John Novelle is a petty bastard, but he’s not going to waste effort making his step kid miserable. He literally has a thousand better things to do with his time. And he brought her back here. He decided she’d be staying. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Look, Blake, what happened on Halloween. It just got out of hand. Marcus said?—’

I punch Pete square in the face, rebreaking his nose with a sickening crunch. He squeals, falling to all fours, blood dripping down and staining the beige carpet.

‘Fuck! My nose!’ he yowls.

‘It’s Captain to you,’ I say.

I lean in close. ‘Your mom was a great lady, Pete. That’s the only reason you’re still here. Better start making better alliances or Marcus and Rob are gonna take you down with them when their boat starts sinking. I’d keep it to yourself that I was here, too.’

I see him nod.

‘Great. See you later, buddy.’

I leave his room quietly and make my way back across the house with a pep in my step though it falters a little when I think about John Novelle and the reasons he might have for tormenting his stepdaughter. Why does he hate her so much? And why bring Marcus in? That isn’t like Shade’s father at all. He keeps his cards very close, and he doesn’t trust outsiders.

I wonder if he could be behind the notes Daisy’s been getting, and the infiltration of the security system. He easily has the resources. But, again, why? Despite everything else that’s going on, we need to tell Shade and Mav everything. I know that. He and Daisy are going to that happy family dinner on Friday and I’m thinking they probably shouldn’t go in blind. I have a bad feeling that it’s some kind of trap.

I sneak into Daisy’s room and find her sound asleep. Sighing, I brush her hair back from her face gently.

‘Please don’t be mad at me,’ I whisper. ‘I hate it.’

I straighten. I need to get back to the security data, but I don’t want to leave her alone, so I grab my laptop from downstairs, but while I’m down there, one of the sophomores hands me a white envelope.

‘What’s this?’

He shrugs. ‘It was by the front door when I came back from class a few minutes ago. Don’t know who left it. Might want to flip it over, Captain.’

Looking at him in confusion, I do as he says and my body tenses as I see who it’s addressed to.

To the dumb bitch on the top floor

‘You didn’t see anyone?’

He shakes his head. ‘Sorry.’

I grit my teeth. ‘Any of the guys see any strangers lurking around the house, tell me or one of the other seniors. Make sure everyone knows.’

‘Sure thing, Cap.’

I go back upstairs, staring at it.

Fuck it.

I tear it open.

So, you drove out to where mommy died gasping in the dark.

Where did Daisy go? Frowning, I read the rest.

Maybe you do have what it takes to find her killer after all. Hope it doesn’t hit too close to home when you do, retard.

P.S. I prefer the black lace set.

My lips curl into a sneer as I stop in my tracks, my heart lurching in my chest. He can still see her. Who the fuck is this? And how is he still able to access the cameras?

He could be watching her right now.

I take the stairs two at a time, bursting into my room. I grab the Duct Tape from my duffle bag and tear a small piece off. I walk with purpose across the hallway and into Daisy’s room where she’s still sleeping in her bed, unaware that some sick fuck is still watching her.

I told her it was safe. I am a liar.

I go to the corner where the tiny camera lens glints in the light. I put the silver tape over it.

‘I’m cutting you off, motherfucker,’ I say, hoping the asshole is listening. ‘When I find you, I’m going to rip off your dick and feed it to you.’