Page 1 of Entwined

CHAPTER ONE

felicity

“This is your final chance, Felicity.”

Her words are so sharp they practically have teeth, leaping across the back seat of the luxury sedan. I feel them grazing my skin with a devouring hunger, latching on wherever they can reach—sucking out any life left after weeks stuck with only her for company.

I press my knees together, tugging at the hem of my skirt. It’s gray and tight, a size too small, but something she’d basically blackmailed me into.

Elizabeth Hamilton—socialite, piranha,mother.

“Felicity,” she snaps, reaching out to pinch me. I flinch away, refusing to even look at her. She craves the reaction, and I’m petty enough not to deliver.

“Yes, Mother,” I intone dully.

“I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation,” she hisses viciously. “Your grandfather has had quite enough of your antics. If you don’t pull your grades up this semester, you’ll lose access to your trust fund.”

Translation:she’lllose access to my trust fund.

Expectation fills the air as she waits for aresponse, her eyes burning into the side of my face. When it becomes clear she won’t get her way, my mother turns away with a loud huff.

The driver slows the car down. I turn to look out the window, peering up at the intimidating stone gargoyle standing alert on a carved column. Wings are tucked in tightly to its body, its stare is blank and fixed ahead as it stands guard over the wrought-iron gate.

I keep my eyes fixed on the gargoyle as we wait for the gate to open, the metal protesting loudly with the movement. As soon as it’s open, the car eases forward and up the curving driveway, leaving dappled sunlight for gloomy shadows.

A shiver works its way down my spine, uneasiness tightening my chest as the castle comes into view. Towering spires stretch up into the stormy clouds overhead, atop walls of black brick so dark the structure seems like a blight on the mountainous landscape.

Bartholomew University.The school for the rich, the elite, and the supernatural. Or, as I liked to dub it,Purgatory.

After I’d been pulled out in the middle of the semester, I was so sure I wasn’t going to have to come back. However, my grandfather had set me straight quickly, getting all my coursework from my professors to complete at home so I wouldn’t be behind when I returned.

“I’ve spoken with the dean,” my mother tells me, tone shrewd. I glance over at her, just in time to catch the derisive glare she flicks over me. “You’ll have the dorm room to yourself this semester. We all felt it was for the best after…Well, after your recent proclivities.”

The corner of my mouth twitches with amusement. We both know she’s talking about the fact that Dizzy—myprevious roommate—and I were fucking every chance we got.

Thinking about my friend makes my heart ache, but it isn’t because we loved each other. If anything, she was a port in a storm, a physical comfort against the iciness that permeated every other aspect of my life.

After we were caught inflagrante delicto,Dizzy’s family pulled her from the college. But I had no doubt that it was my family that had orchestrated it.

Apparently, there was a lot my grandfather would overlook as the patriarch of our fucked-up little family, but his granddaughter engaging in obscene relations with another woman was not on that list. The lectures I’ve heard over the last few weeks were about keeping my indiscretions behind locked doors.

Except Idid.

No one seemed to want to ask many questions about what Connor Thornton was doing when he picked the lock to my dorm room. But the look of shock on his face when he’d thrust the door open was imprinted permanently on my mind. His high cheekbones had filled with a deep slash of color, his bright green eyes taking in the way I’d been lounging back against my bed, naked with my legs splayed. Dizzy had been lying on her stomach between my thighs, her blonde hair trailing over my pale skin.

The memory of it alone has a secret smile dancing across my lips, remembering how his eyes had flared, darkening with murderous rage as they’d locked on mine—right as Dizzy’s tongue had pushed me into euphoria.

Bold fucker should’ve knocked.

Still, that was the moment everything had gone downhill. I haven’t spoken to Dizzy since. Every message has gone unread, every call straight to voicemail. Not that Iblame her. I just wish she’d give me the chance to explain, to apologize…to say goodbye.

“Felicity,” my mother starts again, softening her tone. I slide a look her way just as something sly flashes through her watery blue eyes. “You need to make nice with Connor. Your grandfather is in talks with his father, and it’s imperative that the deal goes through.”

I blink in bemusement. “What does that have to do with me?”

She sighs, her eyes tightening at the corners. “It haseverythingto do with you, Felicity.”

Before she can say anything else, the car comes to a stop at the bottom of the front steps. The driver gets out, pulling my two large cases from the trunk. He sets them on the ground and comes to stand at my door, hands clasped at his back.