Page 2 of The Villain's Beast

I swallowed, thinking of home. “I’m sure of it.”

“No one else here wants to be my friend,” Gideon said with a casual shrug. He pushed some hair behind his ear sending another rush of roses into the way too small space between us.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, they pretend they do, but they’re all just scared of me or they want something.”

“I’m not scared of you,” I said.

“Right. So, you must want something then. What do you want, Fletcher?”

Fuck Gideon North and the way he said my name.

I closed my eyes, turning my head toward the wall. Up until the North family had paid for library upgrades, it had been the second oldest part of the school. Barely outdating the administration building, which had started as the single classroom at Rose Hill Prep back in the 1700s or something. Now that building bore my surname in a plaque at the cornerstone, a hefty donation made by my grandfather years before I was born. There was a time when I knew the history of the school, when I remembered the name of the founding members, but they’d long been erased. If not with time, then with money.

The only names that mattered now were ours. North and Sinclair.

“I want you to go away.”

“Fletcher,” he said, almost pouting.

“That’s what I want,” I said again, even though it was the last thing I wanted.

And, fuck, Iwanted.

“What’s the motto?” he asked, no doubt changing course when he realized friendly camaraderie wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

“Sub rosa,” I murmured.

I knew it as well as I knew all the rules of my life. Some Latin meant to remind all of us that we had the things that were ours because of blood that had been shed for generations. Blood and money and war, and all it got anyone was me and Gideon sitting side by side in the library of a private school, one of us knowing the rules of the world far better than the other ever would.

Gideon was too good for this life. I knew that from the first time I saw him in the halls. My father had raised me to understand this life was luxurious, but never without cost. For my entire life, the Norths were always one step ahead of us, one more zero in their bank accounts than ours. Gideon’s father had been better at playing the game than mine had been, but my father had made certain the change in our family’s ranking would be a blip and not a constant. From the day I left my mother’s womb, he’d been positioning me to take back everything he’d lost.

Whether I liked it or not.

“I’m good at keeping secrets, Sin,” he said softly.

I didn’t know which was worse—the way his shortening of my name made something new and inexplicable tangle into a knot of thorns in the middle of my stomach, or the fact I knew Gideon North couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.

But I could.

“Leave me alone, Gideon,” I said, shoving my chair back so forcefully it fell onto the ground. He didn’t even flinch at the sudden movement, at the sound, and for what wouldn’t be the last time in our lives, I wondered if I’d underestimated him.

Fuck him for that too.

Chapter 2

Gideon

With the exception of our library run-in the second month of school, Fletcher Sinclair managed to avoid me and ignore me until the spring. An impressive feat considering how small the incoming class of freshman at Rose Hill was. The literal who’s who of society, from the kids of politicians to the bastards of billionaires, Rose Hill educated and trained some of the worst the world had to offer.

I didn’t want to be one of them.

“Mr. North.” My English teacher caught my attention and I pressed my fingernail against the sentence I’d been reading in my book.

“Yes, sir?”

“I asked you a question,” he said.