The other boys join the circle and a few of them take up forks of their own to ravage that goddamn cake. Nobody speaks. Magic is too thick in the air for words. Instead, I drop my chin back down so that I can see everyone, adjusting my sore and sweat-slicked body to be more comfortable.

As I do, my fingers bump against the pocket of Callum’s discarded hoodie and knock against something hard inside. His knife. The thought comes to me before I even reach inside the garment to find out for myself. Removing the blade, I stare at it for a long moment before setting the sheath aside.

“Bernadette?” Victor asks as I crawl over to him. I look up at his assumptive, godlike face before I take his hand and slice a thin, sharp line along the faded white edge of a repeated scar. He makes no sound as I do it, doesn’t even shift the slightest bit. His breathing remains even, his eyes fixated on my face.

I slice my hand next, pressing our palms together with an abrupt inhale of pain.

“Blood in,” I reconfirm, squeezing hard. “Blood out.”

I move onto Hael next, slicing his palm, pressing our hands together. His honey-almond eyes are soft, pupils thick and irises darkened with affection as we share blood. Callum is next, and I wonder for a brief minute if this isn’t going to be too much for him, considering he’s already got a body covered in scars. But when I hesitate, he takes the wrist of the hand holding the knife and moves it so that the blade is pressed into his skin.

“Do it,” he tells me, so I slice into his pale flesh and make him bleed. Again, we share blood, looking into each other’s eyes. Oscar is next, and I don’t need to ask if he wants this; I can feel it. It’d be obvious to anyone that walked into this room, that this is all he craves. Belonging. Family. And most especially if all that belonging and all that family was drenched in blood.

Our fingers tangle together, blood smearing between our palms. And then it’s Aaron’s turn.

It’s fitting that he’d be last in the circle today, since he was my first romantic love. He was always first, and nobody can ever take that away from us.

“Hello Bernie,” he whispers as I sit in his lap and we press our foreheads together. I cut him and we squeeze our hands together at the same time that we shut our eyes. Once we’re done, Aaron reaches out his palm and presses it against Victor’s.

A shudder passes through me just as one of the boards on the back window shifts and adjusts itself, letting a breeze blow into the room and extinguishing all of the candles in one, single breath.

“Blood in,” I repeat, shivering as Oscar and Callum get up to check the window, just to make sure that it really was just a side effect of an old house shifting and not a member of the GMP sneaking up on all of us, naked and sated and covered in blood. “Blood out.”

Aaron lies down with me in the blankets and we pass out.

Several hours later, I wake up to find the boys eating the last of the cake and digging into the remaining takeout. Scooting up to join them, I take another swig of whisky, dress myself, and then dig into a cake slice of my own while Aaron relights all the candles with Hael’s help.

Afterward, with just my pink jacket and my panties on but nothing else, I kneel in front of the fireplace on the old wooden floors. Sucking one finger into my mouth, I make it wet and then I draw a word on the hearth of the fireplace, tracing the letters H-A-V-O-C into the dust. Somebody puts the crown on my head, but I’m not paying attention to them right now.

In this moment, with the candles’ flames dancing and writhing around me, I take that tube of Penelope’s pink lipstick and I cross out the final name on my list.

7. the mom

With a quick swipe, I apply the lipstick to my own mouth and then kiss the bottom of the page, leaving the imprint of my lips like a signature.

“Goodbye, Mom,” I say, my mouth in a sharp frown but my eyes dry. “Good night.”

I set the envelope aflame with a single flick of my lighter and then I toss the remainder of it into Victor’s grandmother’s fireplace to burn.

“So it’s done then,” Victor says from behind me, but I know he isn’t really asking. He’s just stating a fact. Even so, I reply because we all need to know for sure.

“It’s done,” I agree, and then he sweeps me into his arms and fucks me into the floor.

Things are different after that night. Better. Blissful, almost. Every day that I wake up surrounded by Havoc, every day that I attend that snooty ass school and sleep in that fancy ass apartment, is a blessing I never expected to count.

Something changes between us all—as you might think, considering the orgy and the bloodletting—but in the best possible way. We’re connected, intertwined, bound and twisted together. It makes it easier to pass the time as we wait out the end of school, a year of marriage, all the steps that will bring us that much closer to Victor’s inheritance and all the power that money will bring to our fingertips.

For now, that’s all we’ve got. Our planning for Ophelia and Maxwell isn’t making much progress otherwise. But time, we can definitely pass some time here. I’m thrilled to be able to do it. Life gets so easy for a while that I start to remember some of my old hobbies. Besides working on my poetry, I’ve been catching up on binge-worthy shows, reading romance novels in the bath, and perfecting the gossip and social intel skills that every Prescott ho excels at.

Oak Valley Prep is so much more twisted than I expected. There are serpentine games being played in every classroom, barbs thrown with every pretty smile shared in the hallway. Right now, I’m watching the daughter of an oil tycoon whisper secrets into the ear of a girl—a hotel heiress, to be exact—she sabotaged just yesterday by stealing her PE uniform. The hotel heiress chick got a write-up since this is the fifth time that’s happened, putting her at risk of suspension.

Oil Tycoon Girl was tricksy, but I saw her take the uniform. She stuffed it into a trash can just outside the girls’ dormitory. There are other things going on, worse things. Rich people are sick, nefarious fucks.

“I expected this place to be as dry as the Sahara,” I admit, sitting up at the outdoor table where we’re eating. Victor is smoking, even though he gets written-up almost daily for it. Our connections to the schoolboard hold strong. Guess it’s pretty big news when you can out someone for being a pedophile—with undeniable proof, too. “But this is a wet, juicy miasma of backstabbing, theft, and fucking. These Oak Valley kids could give Prescott ones a run for their money in the bullshit and drama department.”

“Fuller High is where all the normal kids go,” Hael says, chewing his food absently. He looks down at his plate like he misses his mom’s food immensely. Like, the grub here is good, but it’s the kind of good that only money can buy. And I mean that in the most negative way possible. Back in Prescott, there’s nothing money can buy. It’s all about the skill and ingenuity of the people.

This food is as soulless as the fancy coffee.

“So says the man who allowed Brittany Burr to worm her way into our lives,” Oscar deadpans, and Hael sighs, setting his fork down on the side of his plate before lifting those honey-brown eyes up.

“Brittany is a naïve idiot, and a spoiled, demanding bitch. But she isn’t Trinity Jade. And she isn’t Kali Rose-Kennedy. That’s all I’m saying.” He glances my way, as if to apologize for defending his ex. “She’ll get hers eventually—don’t worry about it. As soon as that baby comes out, she’ll know he belongs to Rich Pratt.”