“It’s your pride talking now.” Papa fingered his beard, contemplating my reaction. “I want to speak to my daughter—my bright, talented daughter—not to her wounded ego. It’s a golden opportunity. Don’t let it go to waste.”

“I’m not—” I started.

“Please.” He scooped my hands in his, squeezing them like he was trying to drain the defiance out of me.

We had the same blue eyes—dark, big, exploring—with the same golden rings around them. Everything else, Poppy and I took from Mum. The pint-sized figure, fair hair, and the splotchy, pasty skin.

“It could open so many doors for you, working as an assistant intern at Carlisle Prep. It is a solid, paid gig. You will get to work alongside me, Harry, Alma, and so many other great artists. You will get a salary, a room with a drafting table and all the equipment, and a fantastic start to your portfolio. I’ve been to high school once, too, Lenora. Believe it or not, I know boys like Vaughn can be trying.”

“Climbing a volcano is trying,” I interjected. “Working alongside Vaughn Spencer is downright impossible.”

“Yes, and still. Would you have turned down this internship for a boy you’d met and fell in love with here in America?”

I stared at him with wild shock. First of all, he knew damn well I wasn’t in the business of falling in love. I’d been very vocal about it since Mum had died and I watched him deteriorate emotionally to the point that he was only half-human now. Second, I would never pass up an opportunity for a guy.

“Of course not.”

“Then why would you give up a position that could make or break your career for a boy you fell in hate with?” He clicked his teeth, a triumphed smile on his face.

Ugh. He was right.

He was right, and I wished I could take the merits of his argument and shove them up Vaughn’s arse.

Taking the assistant’s job was a blow to my ego, but still a win for the rest of me. Another six months of Vaughn playing his silly mind games wasn’t going to kill me. For all his power play, Vaughn had never physically hurt me.

Yet, anyway.

In England, though, he’d be a no one, just like me. No, worse than me. Because I still had the prestige of being an almost-Carlisle Prep alum—I’d only studied my last year of high school in California—and my father owned the bloody school.

Plus, Pope would be there, working alongside me. Putting Vaughn’s so-called genius work to shame.

The rules would be different.

I’d fight him harder.

He is just a boy.

Not a god, a boy.

And you’re not the same girl trembling under her mother’s quilt.

You made him bleed, and he did, human that he is.

Now. Now you can make him break.

“I’ll think about it.” I massaged my temples. I’d completely forgotten about my sister, who was probably filling a fresh bucket of tears downstairs. I’d selfishly dwelled on my own drama and forgotten all about her heartbreak.

“That’s all I’m asking.” Papa squeezed my shoulders.

I went straight to Poppy’s room, but she wasn’t there. I paused, hearing her and Papa chatting and eating in the kitchen downstairs. It sounded like a pleasant conversation about the college she’d applied and gotten in to back home—the London School of Economics. She sounded excited and hopeful. I just hoped she wasn’t faking it, that she really was happy.

Grabbing a Polaroid photo of Knight from her nightstand, I took a Sharpie and quickly drew a ballsack over his chiseled, dimpled chin, peppered with wrinkles and hair, added an elaborate moustache, and gave him a unibrow, signing the picture and writing under his face:

Stay away from the heater, Cole. Plastic melts.

I slid it under her pillow and went into my room, inching toward my window, planning to close the shutters and curl in bed with “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” playing in my earbuds and a good fantasy book. Then I noticed Vaughn’s truck parked in front of my window.

What is he still doing here?

He flashed his lights twice, causing me to squint and lift my hand to block the light. Feeling the rush of anger pouring back into my stomach, I slid into my boots and ran downstairs, flinging the front door open, about to congratulate him on the internship with a spit to the face. I never made it past the threshold.

I skated over something slick and rancid. It smelled like all the armpits in the neighborhood had been lit on fire, but I didn’t have the chance to contemplate that as I dove headfirst into a white plastic bag.

He’d left a rotten pile of rubbish at my door, and I fell right into it. Slumped on the bag of trash, I wiped a yellow Post-it note from my cheek, scowling as I read it.

For your future project. - V

It was all the invitation I needed to make Vaughn’s life the hell he’d made mine.

He thought he’d won the war.

But the internship was just the battle.

He was going to raise the white flag.

Right before I burned it.

The quietest man in the room is also the deadliest.

I learned that from a young age, observing my father. People milled around him like homeless puppies, tongues flapping, eager to please. I became a man of few words as well. Not a fucking challenge, if I may say so myself. Words meant nothing to me. They had no shape or weight or price. You couldn’t mold them in your hands, measure them on a scale, put a chisel to them, carve them to perfection. On my list of ways to express myself, sculpting was number one, fucking someone’s mouth was number two, and talking sat comfortably somewhere at the bottom between smoke signals and dancing for rain.

My dad wasn’t big on words, no, but his actions spoke volumes. He crushed his business opponents with an iron fist, without a blink or a worry.

He’d showed my mother he loved her a million times—by planting a pink, cherry-blossom garden in the backyard.

By tattooing her name on his heart.

By fixing her with a look that said, I’m yours.

The less you said, the more you were feared. The simplest trick in the book, yet for some reason, men were hell-bent on running their mouths to prove something.

I had nothing to prove.

I’d showed Edgar Astalis a piece that was maybe twenty-percent done, submitted it to the board of Carlisle Prep, and bagged the internship without breaking a sweat.

It was embarrassingly easy. Pathetically so. Yes, I manipulated the board. Especially Edgar, who had a dog in this fight, and Harry, who owed me a solid. And yes, if Lenora was ever to find out, she’d kill me, her father, and her uncle.

Then again, I would beat her to it, just as I had with the internship.

Everyone on the board had agreed I needed the full six months of the internship to complete something as complex as this sculpture.

I had time.

I had a plan.

I was ready to put things in motion and finally savor the sweet, poignant taste of fresh blood.

And it looked like I was also going to have a stubborn, feisty assistant to put up with my shit—one I could keep an eye on, to make sure my secret was intact.

Taunting her with a pile of garbage was not my finest moment, but the message had hit home.

Mercy was not on the menu.

She would fight for her place next to me. Always.

After Edgar broke the news to his baby daughter, I drove around her block, playing the CDs I’d shamelessly taken from her room when she wasn’t there one day—Kinky Machine, The Stone Roses.