My family was wealthy and throughout the years, I’d learned how to take care of myself. I had to. Without it, I’d have been dead in the water long ago.
The English teacher came in. It was Mr. Bucati, who had replaced the previous teacher two years ago. The one before him had been caught sleeping with a student, and seeing as he was supposed to be teaching all the fine arts of literature, and the girl in question was supposed to remain a virgin until her precious wedding night, the previous English teacher was now lying dead in an unmarked grave, at the bottom of the lake, or just plain dead. No one knew, and the girl had also disappeared. This was another precious little detail in our world. We weren’t just shipped off to some foreign place until the scandal died down. Nope, sometimes the girls or the guys were never seen or heard from again.
Keeping your nose clean was more important in this world.
I licked my dry lips, keeping a close eye on the door as one by one, students filed in. To the outside world, we were set up like every other school. Like in the cafeteria, jocks, cheerleaders, the rebels, the nerds, and me, the loner. But the truth was, lower your guard for even a second, and we were all dead.
It was odd to think how many of us actually went here. I don’t have an exact number, but we filled a rather prestigious school. The crooks’ kids. Criminals. Taking over from our families when the time was right.
Since I was a female, my only role, according to my dad, was to get my education so I could marry. I was sure he already had a man who I would hate lined up. Unlike some of the more exclusive mafia types who liked to keep their daughters virginal and completely cut off from the rest of the world, there were those who wanted us to be prepared. For my dad, I was potentially a spy. With a daughter in high school, right in the middle, he could find out who was who. It gave him an excuse to come to my parent-teacher nights. Those were fucking fake. I knew he was fucking my art teacher. I was shit at drawing or painting, but yet, it was a subject I had to take. My mom never came to my parent-teacher nights. She always had to stay home.
Father’s rules.
I hated him more than I hated anything else. If I had the courage to do one thing in my miserable life, it would be to take a blade to his fucking neck, slice him open, and watch as the blood leaked from his useless, pathetic body. He was a scary piece of shit.
All of our families were. There were rarely any coward’s kids, but it did happen. There were bastard kids as well. Drake, one of those kinds of kids, came in. He had short hair, a torn shirt, and ink completely covered his arms. He took one look at Bucati and went in for a pretend attack.
Bucati was used to this and didn’t even flinch. On the first day, he did and went running to the principal. From that day forward, he had to learn to grow a spine. I imagined the teachers here got paid a fortune. Money always changed hands when they were told to look the other way.
Drake dropped down into a chair, spreading his legs out. He was the bastard of one of the English family’s gangs. His father owned part of London or something, and he was the one who kept the streets clean. Drake was a loose cannon. Rumor had it he came from a rapist father, and he wasn’t used to being told no.
He was one of the few guys I steered well away from. Catching him on a bad day led to bad things.
The activity in the room paused. There was no need for me to see who had actually entered. For all of Drake’s craziness, it didn’t take the whole Monster Crew to create tension. It only needed one, and right now, Caleb Falls had entered the classroom.
The girls were all fawning over him. Me, I stayed perfectly still, used to keeping to myself. It was the only way to survive in hell.
****
Caleb
“Dude, Bucati is a pussy. You remember what happened to him on the first day of school?” River asked. He bent down, grabbed a stone, and launched it across the parking lot toward the English teacher.
I smirked. There was nothing else to do.
Watching Bucati wander the school halls as if he was better than all of us pissed me off. It got on all of our nerves. Mr. English could keep his dick in his pants, but I’d been present when my father finally decided to pay a visit, and it hadn’t been pretty. Bucati pissed himself. Begged for his life. Then actually got down on his hands and knees and offered his body for personal use. Anything. My father had turned to me and told me this was what weak looked like.
I’d never forget it.
Since then, Bucati was paid, not well. The other teachers made sure they got a good deal out of it. Every now and then, he’d turn up at my father’s house to do what needed to be done. If it was a deal that needed to be sealed with a nice fuck, Bucati was there.
I didn’t like him.
Bucati acted the part of authority, like he was above all of us, but I saw the way he looked at some of the girls who came to this school. While my father believed he had Bucati made, I knew men like him would use an opportunity to screw up a bigger deal. Virginal girls were still a huge prize
