Page 56

RYDER

My stomach had been growling for the last hour, and I had one thing in mind.

Moons Over My Hammy, my personal edition—cheddar, scrambled eggs, black forest ham, double toast, and a hit of hot sauce.

It was the bes t comfort food. The eggs were just starting to sizzle when the front door opened and the sound of half-laughed curses echoed down the hall.

Cade stepped into the kitchen first, tossing his keys on the counter, followed by Rook and Nick.

“Is she home?” I asked, flipping the eggs.

“Safe and sound,” Cade answered, grabbing a water from the fridge.

Nick leaned across the counter toward me. “You making just one, or is this a communal offering?”

I looked back at him, but didn’t stop what I was doing.

He grinned. “That's a yes?”

“Grab me some more bread.”

He was off the stool and back with the loaf in seconds, dropping it next to the stove.

I layered on the ham and cheese while the eggs finished, then toasted the bread just right, crisp on the edges, soft in the middle.

Cade posted up on the counter with a fork in one hand, his water in the other, and slid the pan toward himself, forking the leftover eggs straight out of it.

“You untrained savage,” I joked.

He laughed and kept eating despite the steam wafting through the air.

I dropped the first sandwich in front of Nick, who nodded his thanks. “Good look.”

I grabbed myself a water, cracking open the fridge again. “You guys want anything?”

Nick covered his mouth with a hand. “One of those Sunny D’s.”

“A Ghost,” Rook tacked on.

Nick slid him a look. “You know it’s almost midnight, right?”

He shrugged. “I have a paper to finish.”

I pushed their drinks across the counter before sitting between them at the breakfast bar. “Are we ready to see what Xan sent? I’ll mirror it to the TV.” I nodded to the flatscreen mounted between our cabinets. “Someone call him so he can listen in.”

Cade pulled his cell from his pocket, and two rings later came the sound of shifting water. “What are you doing?” he asked, scooping up another chunk of eggs.

“Ice bath.”

Nick made a face. “All y’all are fucking psychopaths.”

“Coming from you?” Cade deadpanned, flipping him off with one hand.

“We’re starting the footage,” Rook explained, popping the tab on his Ghost. “Try not to drown.”

Xander exhaled with a laugh. “Be ready.”

I mirrored the screen and hit play on the video file he’d sent.

The first thing that came up, in full HD resolution, was Layla and Alex .

They were inside the screened lanai of her house.

Late evening, judging by the porch light and the darkness around them.

The camera was positioned at an angle, steady from a good distance.

A timestamp was in the corner of the footage.

She wasn’t behaving like a girl who hated it.

She was pressed against a pillar, damn near riding him . Her arms looped around his neck. His hand braced low on her back, and her mouth was on his like she was trying to eat his face off.

Rook leaned forward with a thinly veiled look of disgust, voice quiet. “They were begging to be caught.”

“Bet you two grand her mom is passed out drunk inside,” Cade quipped.

“Bet you she’s out getting dicked down by someone else. Maybe the landlord,” Nick countered.

Rook lifted his drink. “Double it and I’ll bet you both her mom was the one behind the camera.”

“Goddamn,” Cade muttered, but nodded.

Nick raised his brows. “Yeah, alright. Fuck it, I’m in.”

They all shook on it like it was fantasy football and not a fucked-up real-life porno. I took another bite of my sandwich, chewing slower, my appetite was fleeing.

The video cuts to another.

Same girl. Different guy.

The locker room came into view, the Crowsfell logo stamped clearly on the wall behind them. This next guy was shirtless, his pants down around his ankles. She was in his lap, cheer skirt hiked, and riding him with abandon, with no condom in sight.

“Isn’t that Sydney Tran’s boyfriend?” Cade asked with a disbelieving laugh.

“Sure is,” Nick confirmed. “Shooting guard. He’s got Syd plastered all over his bio and social media.”

Layla clearly didn’t give a fuck.

“Syd thinks she and Layla are friends,” Rook stated.

Xander’s voice came through the speaker. “He’s a fool. Syn is cute and has a good head on her shoulders.”

Another cut, and there she was again with a different guy.

“These are all from the same week,” I pointed out, checking the timestamp.

“Damn, her PH is all outta order,” Nick remarked.

This one was theatrical as hell. Overacting. Groaning like it was an actual show for an audience. Layla had her hair in a ponytail and was attempting to talk dirty, coming across like she was reading off a teleprompter.

“I had to speed through this one,” Xander confessed.

Nick frowned. “I feel like I’m watching a casting call for a parody.”

Cade laughed. “I saw a skit where the delivery guy got tipped with pussy. That had more soul than this.”

I raised a brow. “A skit, huh?”

We all laughed, the sound tapering off fast when the next clip started.

Sarah’s car came into the lens this time.

The back windows were fogged, but the cameraman still managed to get a view inside. Layla was on top again, her cheer skirt hiked up around her waist, knees planted on either side of Sarah’s hips. Not the first time we’d seen that particular angle. She could at least mix it up a bit.

“This girl doesn’t give it a break?” Nick sat back and adjusted his ball cap. “That’s two days apart.”

Xander, ever the Devil’s Advisor. “Let’s not act brand new. Most of us have had sex more than once in a week. Days apart. Sometimes hours.”

Rook scowled. “Not a whole procession. She’s building a totem pole.”

Nick nodded. “I mean, I’m a self-proclaimed freak, and even I’m not running through multiples in the same week. That’s wild.”

“I’m a one-woman man,” Cade added, deadpan.

I laughed as Nick sucked his teeth and fixed him with a look. “Don’t even start with that bullshit. You had a girl and her best friend back-to-back a few months ago.”

“Still one at a time.”

We watched Sarah put her mouth on Layla’s neck, her hand sliding up the inside of her thigh like they’d done it a hundred times before. I wasn’t all that surprised by this. I knew Sarah went either way, and I was convinced Layla would fuck anything that moved.

“Right corner,” Rook pointed out.

We all looked.

Barely visible, in the curve of the side panel, was a reflection. Someone was standing just beyond the driver’s side with a mask on, recording.

Nick shook his head. “How the hell do you not notice that? I know you can get caught in the moment, but I’d know if Jason Voorhees was sitting front row.”

“Get ready for the finale,” Xander warned, tone flat.

The screen shifted.

Layla came up again. She was kneeling this time. Another familiar voice said something off-screen. A second later, their back came into frame, and a stream of piss hit Layla’s chest and face.

Full HD. Uncensored. Crystal fucking clear.

“Aw, what the fuck, man.” Nick shoved his plate away.

Rook fucking cackled.

I sat there trying to process what I was seeing.

Watching Layla Vargas get a golden shower was not on any of our bingo cards, but now it was burned into our retinas.

I couldn’t care less about that or all the bodies she racked up in a week.

I cared that my girl still thought of her as a friend.

Layla wasn’t like us, who wore our polished disguises in public and stored them neatly away at home.

We might’ve had secrets that could never see the light of day, but those who mattered never had to worry that we were someone else entirely.

Layla was a stranger in her own skin.

She’d built a persona around being timid.

Moody. Fragile in a deliberately disarming way.

Always speaking like she was unsure, always acting like the room was too loud, and everyone was one wrong look away from breaking her.

Sanjana walked on eggshells around this girl most of the time.

Roxxi had caught on to her weeks ago, followed by Cloe, who had never been a fan and tolerated her for Sanj’s sake.

Ari started noticing things around the same time.

Body language, tone shifts, and the subtle guilt games Layla liked to play.

I knew they were planning to talk to Sanj about it, but none of them knew this side of her.

There was a slight chance Layla was all the things she pretended to be.

But she was also a big fan of her stepfather, indulged in golden showers, and was perfectly comfortable fucking someone new every day of the week.

Raw, mind you. This wasn’t just deceit, it was dangerous.

Sanj would never see anything like it coming.

Nick sighed, “We really had to watch this in front of my Hammy?” He gestured to his sandwich.

I didn’t look away from the TV. “All these videos are on the cloud?”

“Uh-huh,” Xander said. We could hear him shifting in his ice bath, unfazed.

“Not sure what the Huntsmen plan to do with them. There’s more coming, and not all of them are our star of the night.

It’s going to take me a bit longer to sort through everything and match clips with the Marked that they correspond to. ”

Rook leaned back, stretching out his legs. “I think this is going to be fun.”

I agreed.

The Huntsmen were doing half the work for us. We’d barely gotten started.

Cade looked over at Rook, arms folded. “What did you get out of Fey?”

“Everything.” He took a drink, then added flatly. “Minus a theatrical debut.”

I chuckled