Page 62 of River of Deceit

“All of you fuckfaces, strip down to your underwear,” Zayden announces. “Anybody who refuses is out.”

There’s only one small hesitation before all the pledges start undressing. I spot Franklin’s lip wibble, but he pulls his shirt off all the same.

He’s not going to last, but then, if his daddy was a part of Chaos, he might get through it anyway through loopholes somewhere in the system.

I strip down, tossing my clothes down onto my sleeping bag, then I glance between Blaze and Asch — then at the paddles they’re carrying. I’ve dealt with worse. I can handle worse.

“You,” Zayden says, pointing to one of the guys on the mattress. “What year was the fraternity founded?”

The guy’s eyes go wide. “Nineteen… nineteen twenty-five. No, six.”

“Well, which is it?” A frat brother asks, tapping his paddle against his hand. “Get it wrong, and you have to present your ass for the paddle.”

“Nineteen twenty-six!” the pledge announces.

The frat brothers all shake their heads. “Nope. Ass up, buddy, unless you want to fail immediately.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before the pledge turns around and presents his ass. The guy closest to him swats him hard, and the pledge howls in pain.

I’m not sure whether to be disgusted by his lack of composure or sympathetic to his plight. Of course, I’ve never been paddled, but it can’t be much worse than a fist to a broken rib.

Given that we ultimately hadn’t had much time to study, I’ll probably find out soon.

Zayden goes around the room, asking everybody questions. A few of them answer correctly, and their relief is palpable. The ones who screw up whimper through the pain of the paddling.

Blaze looks at me. “Name three of the founding members,” he says, smirking widely.

“Xavier Kingsford III, Mason Bouchard, and Benedict Preston,” I reply promptly with a smirk of my own.

Take that, fucker.

Blaze’s eyes narrow. “Good job,” he mutters, but the disappointment is palpable. He wanted to hurt me.

The impromptu quiz continues, until Zayden claps his hands and declares, “All right. Time for the ice breaker portion of the game.”

Only one guy except for me has managed to avoid getting paddled so far. Franklin got all three questions they threw at him wrong, and he’s visibly sweating and shaking now.

“You need to share a humiliating secret,” Zayden declares. “Prove that you trust your brothers. If we don’t deem it good enough, there’s going to be more pain.”

I grit my teeth. I still haven’t come up with a good enough supposed secret.

I listen as the other guys go through their mortifying secrets. One of them claims to have wet the bed until he was thirteen, which takes away the one idea I did have, and the others are all mild.

It seems like only I have the real secrets, the ones that are beyond humiliating and downright dangerous.

I guess I’m going to find out what it’s like tobe paddled after all.

“So, River, what’s your secret?” Blaze asks. Asch stands behind him, stroking the paddle menacingly.

I wish I could say I wasn’t feeling anything about it, but what if I do embarrass myself? There’s one secret I can share, though somehow I think they’re going to think I’m being flippant. “I came in three seconds the first time I had sex,” I tell them, shrugging.

It’s not even a lie.

Pandora had been fucking furious, and I’d been beyond humiliated.

Asch snorts, and he eyes me, probably trying to figure out if I’m being serious or if I’m dodging the question.

“You and most of the guys here,” Blaze says with a cruel laugh. “That’s way too tame. Turn around and take your paddling.”