It’s only then that I remember my earlier mistake. I had spoken to Jake, if just to tell him he shouldn’t be talking to me. It was a dumb move, but I liked how sweet his smile had been, and I didn’t want to see his teeth shattered.
Stupid.
Vin studies my face, lips twisting in a sneer as he watches the realization grow in my changed expression. He glances up at the rest of his crew still standing behind me.
“Hold her.”
One of them wraps a belt around my chest and pulls it hard so I’m pressed against the chair, although I can’t see which one of them is holding it. It doesn’t matter. None of them will touch me with their bare hands, though that doesn’t stop them from doing Vin’s dirty work.
I only have eyes for the demon terrorizing my life as he comes around the table. A switchblade appears in his hand as if it materialized from thin air. The edge is always sharp and clean, like he takes care to make sure it’s always ready to be used. I don’t know where on his body he hides the thing or how he manages to get it past the metal detectors, but that doesn’t matter either.
A ready blade has always been available when he needs it.
One of his hands holds down my wrist while the other presses the point against the sensitive skin on the inside of my upper arm, just below three rows of identical scars.
The pain is sharp and immediate, but I don’t make a sound. My skin parts like butter, and I can only watch as blood beads at the bottom of the cut and then trails downward. They release me as soon as it’s done, but I don’t move from the chair.
I used to fight them, but nothing good ever came of that.
There aren’t words to describe how I feel about Vincent Cortland.
Hate isn’t evocative enough, and fear is too shallow, although that’s usually the predominant emotion. Putting a name to any of the other things I feel would just give him more power over me than he already has.
Because it isn’t fear that keeps me in line.
The worst thing the Vice Lords can do to me is deliver a little pain. And killing me would just be putting me out of my misery, so there is little threat there. No, it isn’t fear or even hate that keeps me silent.
It’s guilt.
Three
Secondhand weed smoke fills the air like low-hanging fog. I inhale deeply as I lean back in my leather armchair and survey the room.
These weekend blow-out parties used to be something I did to annoy my parents. But the less they seem to give a shit, the more this all feels like a waste of time. There isn’t any point in rebelling when no one bothers to pay attention.
Neither of them so much as commented on it when I moved out to the pool house a few years ago. I don’t even make it back into the main house for meals most days.
My father has been preoccupied with some business deal lately, if all the time he spends locked in his office and speaking furtively into the phone is any indication. And my stepmother is as up her own ass as she has always been. I can only assume she likes the weather in there.
Chaos teems around me, and I sit at the center of it all like an indolent king on his throne. It isn’t an accident that my chair is raised slightly higher than the others and angled so I can see everything happening around me. Let them think the power is an accident, and not something that has been carefully cultivated for me since birth.
The Cortlands have ruled Deception since the beginning, nothing will change that.
And I’m the heir to this petty little empire.
Lights from the pool shine through the sliding glass doors and cast everything in surreal blue and purple lights. It makes the writhing and overheated bodies look like something out of a fever dream.
People who don’t get invites to these parties like to say it’s always an all-out orgy. They’re not entirely correct, but I let the rumor mill spin on its own. An invite to one of my parties is one of the most coveted things that exists at Deception High. Rumors abound about the secret society shit that must be happening here.
But the truth is that my friends like to get together and hang out with whatever girls they’re in the mood for that week, imbibing on recreational substances and getting laid without too many hang-ups about privacy.
I’ve never been more bored in my fucking life.
Shitty trance music blasts from the Bluetooth speaker, and I turn in my chair to glare at whoever has the balls to mess with my sound system. “What the hell, Elliot? Turn that crap off.”
One of my closest friends since middle school shrugs me off as he plays with the phone he has connected to the speakers. That asshole fancies himself a DJ and likes to force us to listen to dubstep, or whatever the fuck it is, whenever he gets the chance. With his long hair and Viking build, he looks like he should be into Norwegian death metal, not the electronic crap he puts on to assault our eardrums.
Someone’s hand slides along my jean-covered thigh, momentarily distracting me from the shitty music. I look down to see Sophia coiled between my spread legs while she kneels on the floor. As I stare down at her, I wonder if she realizes that she picked the wrong lighting to do her makeup. Under the glare of the lamp behind me, her face and her neck are completely different shades of white
