Not when he could be hurt.

Not when he could be …

I refuse to let my mind go to dark places. The world is already dark enough as it is.

“It’s the winter formal tomorrow,” Callum muses, and I look up at him like he’s insane. There’s no way I’m going to a fucking school dance when Aaron is missing. “We should probably check in there, see who shows up from the Charter Crew. We still have no idea if Hael’s work has yielded any results.”

“You’re kidding me, right?” I scoff, feeling stabby. Seems silly I felt that way over Aaron’s tight jeans just yesterday. Seems so stupid now, getting bitchy over the possibility of some girl hitting on him. All I want is to see his face again, kiss his sweet mouth, feel him hold me in his arms. This fucking blows.

“If someone in the Charter Crew has him, I’ll know,” Callum tells me, blue eyes dark and depthless. He looks terrifying right now. “Trust me, just one look, and I will know.”

I’m not sure how to respond to that. I believe him, but I’m not putting on a pink dress and going to some stupid ass dance. It isn’t happening.

I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and stand up, moving over to the big sofa where Cal is sitting, and curl up in his arms. He wraps me in his hoodie and covers my head with his own, protecting me, watching over me. Like always.

“Sleep, Bernie. I’ll wake you up if anything happens.”

I mean to protest Cal’s request, but instead, my heavy lids get the best of me and I conk out. When I wake up, it’s to a knock on the front door. My heart soars as I scramble up and out of Cal’s lap, but not before Victor sweeps across the living room and checks the peephole.

He frowns, slipping a pistol from his waistband before he cracks the door with caution.

“Yeah?” he quips, giving whoever it is on the other side a once-over.

There’s a man there, but he’s just a delivery guy. He looks freaked all the way out over Victor, and practically tosses a shimmery cream-colored envelope at him before booking it the fuck out of there.

“What the fuck is that?” I ask as Vic uses his shoulder to shut the door, slipping the flap on the envelope open with a fingernail. Purple petals fall to the floor with a sweet scent, and he scowls, like he already knows what’s going on. “Is this a wedding invitation?” I ask, supremely confused and slightly sick feeling. If there was any news about Aaron, any at all, one of the boys would’ve told me about it already.

Which means … nothing has happened in the last several hours that I’ve been asleep.

“This is from Ophelia, I’m sure of it,” Vic says, looking inside the envelope at what appears to be an invitation. He reads it over and then tosses it to me.

“How do you know that?” I ask, frowning at the small piece of cardstock. It’s lightly scented with perfume, a single purple petal still stuck to it. It reminds me of the ridiculous bridal shower invitations on the movie Bridesmaids, the ones with the live butterfly that flitters out. So over the top. “This is an invitation to an art show at a gallery in Oak Park.”

“And violets were my grandmother’s favorite flowers,” Vic says, crushing the petals with his boots. He points at the invitation, eyes blazing with dark fury. “This is from Ophelia. And it’s for Sunday evening. I don’t like that. I don’t like the timing of this shit at all.” Victor clenches his teeth and then flicks his attention over to Callum. “Call Hael and Oscar and tell them to get their asses back here.”

“Why?” I ask, looking up from the invitation in a panic. “We can’t stop the search.”

“We’re not,” Vic reassures me, putting a hand on my shoulder and looking me in the eyes. “We’re redirecting it. My mother never does anything on a whim. If she sent this invite, it’s for a reason.” He releases me and takes off down the hall to get dressed while I stand there in a sea of purple petals and the sweet scent of violets, missing Aaron and wishing Ophelia a nest of murder hornets in her perfect fucking hair.

If she has Aaron, Victor won’t get a chance to kill his mother.

Because I’ll do it. And I’ll do it with a smile on my motherfucking face.

Aaron Fadler

The next time I open my eyes, I’m in a large bedroom with soaring ceilings and log walls. The bed I’m lying on has a buffalo plaid canopy to go with the over-the-top rustic décor that seems to permeate the rest of the place. It’s very clearly an expensive house with expensive things, but I have a very hard time imagining that it belongs to Ophelia. More likely, it’s Tom’s.

Kali is sitting on the edge of the bed next to me, staring at the door like she’s expecting company. She doesn’t know I’m awake until I try to move, and the handcuffs on my wrists jangle. Her gaze flicks back to me, and she smiles. It’s not a tight smile either, or one full of hate. Instead, it’s almost disturbingly genuine. Of course, it looks grotesque with her swollen lips. I only wish we’d thought to sew her mouth shut before Stacy Langford did.

I remember Bernadette’s concern about Kali, about how she stared at us in the hallway that day. She told me that she thought Kali was obsessed with me. At the time, I thought it sounded fairly ridiculous. But sitting here now? I’m not so sure that Bernie wasn’t right.

“You’re awake,” she says, as if she was hoping that might be the case. “I was wondering how long you’d be out for.” Kali leans forward and strokes some of the hair from my forehead, frowning when I wince and try to turn my head away. “I can’t believe Tom hit you like that. There was no need for it.”

“Kali,” I start, my throat dry, my words husky. I would love a drink of water right about now, but I’m not about to ask this crazy bitch for anything. “What am I doing here?” She shrugs and turns away from me, still focused on the bedroom door.

“Ophelia can use you as a pawn to get Victor to do whatever she wants. I think she’s planning on asking him to commit a crime in plain sight, like so he can be charged for it and lose out on the trust that way.” Kali glances back at me, tucking green and black hair behind one of her ears. Her diamond-studded hoop earring sways with the motion. I’ve seen her wear those particular earrings before, but I just always assumed they were fake. Now I’m starting to wonder if they weren’t a gift from Ophelia. “Personally, I think we should just kill Bernadette.”

My jaw clenches, but I resist the urge to freak out on her. That’s not going to get me what I want. Instead, I wonder if I can’t play to her eccentricities? I mean, she clearly likes me; she wants to be a part of Havoc. I can see all of that written into her face. There must be some way to manipulate her into letting me go.

“Why kill her? If Ophelia can get Victor to do what you said, then there’s no point. She’ll get her money the easy way, no murder necessary, no loose ends to worry about.” Of course, neither Ophelia nor Kali know Vic very well. He’s not an idiot; he would know that complying with his mother’s demands would do nothing to actually guarantee that I’d be set free at any point. Likely, she’d kill me as soon as he did what she asked.