Broken Empire (Boys of Oak Park Prep 3)

There was only one person I could think of who hated me enough, and who had such wild disregard for my life, to try something like this.

“Adena,” I muttered.

She and her minions had jumped me during my first year at Oak Park, and after my return, she’d shoved me backward down the steps of Craydon Hall. Even though I’d escaped that incident with nothing more than some painful bruises and a traumatizing flashback, it could’ve been much worse than that.

“Yeah. Fucking Adena Davenport.”

Finn’s lips practically curled back from his teeth in a snarl, and Cole’s face had taken on the eerily blank expression it got when he was trying to control strong emotions.

“But—” I sucked in a breath. My tears were drying on my cheeks; I hadn’t even bothered to wipe them away. “That’s fucking crazy. Something like that—she had to have been trying to kill me. There’s no way she could’ve thought that was just a prank. Could she?”

“There’s not a single thing I’d put past her at this point,” Mason said darkly. “And it doesn’t matter what she thought would happen. What did happen was that you almost died. If she’s responsible for this, I’ll fucking bury her.”

An uncomfortable feeling stirred in my gut. I couldn’t really argue with his sentiment, but it struck too close to home, making me wonder what he’d said about me back when he’d somehow held me responsible for my mother’s cruelty toward his.

God. Would it ever stop?

This vicious cycle of attack and revenge, attack and revenge?

Or was it a one-way ticket, and once you hopped on the train, the only way off was death?

“We don’t know if it was her. You don’t know,” I whispered. When Mason moved to open his mouth, I overrode him, straining to lift my head off the bed despite the twinge in my neck. “You don’t know. We’re sure she made those copies of my notebook, so if you want to go after her for anything, let it be that. But don’t eye-for-an-eye this until you know for sure.”

He stared at me, dozens of emotions filtering through his bright green eyes. His jaw was clenched so hard he was probably about to crack a tooth, but I shook my head, holding his gaze.

My neck was starting to ache, but I wouldn’t let this go until I was sure he’d heard me.

“I’m not trying to protect Adena, Mason. I could give two shits about her. This is about you.”

There was a darkness inside the beautiful, aristocratic boy. Maybe it had sprung into being when he’d found his mother after her suicide, or maybe it had existed in him for longer than that. But however long it’d been inside him, there were only so many times he could feed the monster before it took over and swallowed him whole.

And I refused to let that happen if I could help it.

I hated Adena, but I cared about Mason more.

Too much to let him wreck himself trying to bring her down—at least until we knew for sure.

“Fine.” He bit out the word like he hated the way it tasted on his tongue. Then he tipped his head back, drawing in a deep breath. “But it’s not over. She attacked us, and now she’s”—he pressed his lips together—“we think she’s attacked you. We can’t just let it slide.”

“We can start digging for shit on her family,” Finn threw in, glancing across me at Mason. “It’ll probably be hard to find, but we can try.”

“Yeah.” Mason’s hands softened around mine a little as some of the intense anger drained from his face, replaced by thoughtful focus. “If we—”

Philip walked back through the door at that moment, and the brown-haired boy’s jaw snapped shut. His expression turned carefully impassive, and he glanced over his shoulder at my grandfather before looking back at me.

I shook my head. I hadn’t mentioned the brake failure to Philip yet. I knew I probably should, but I worried about what it might do to his heart. He looked worse than he had when I’d first seen him after coming back to Roseland last semester.

If I’d thought he could help, I would’ve been more inclined to risk his reaction to the news, but if there was no evidence my brakes had been tampered with, it really just came down to my word against Adena’s. There would be nothing Philip could do about it, especially considering her family was even wealthier and more connected than the Hildebrands.

If we could find actual evidence of her actions or get her to confess somehow, then even her family name wouldn’t be enough to save her. But until then, it wasn’t worth it.

“Doctor Garrett will be back to check on you in a couple hours,” Philip intoned as he came to stand near my feet. He sounded a little winded, and I wonder how long he’d berated the doctor for. Had they been speaking this whole time?

A surge of warmth toward my grandpa rose in my chest as I looked up into his wan face. Doctor Garrett wasn’t an awful person, and I didn’t doubt his surgical skills, but his bedside manner was crap. And having someone in my corner go to bat for me when I was too distraught to say anything felt nice.

The Princes stayed by my side for several more hours, and Philip stayed too—he hadn’t gone home once since I’d come out of surgery, as far as I knew—and with my grandpa listening in, our conversation turned to other topics.

I was tired, still doped up on a strong medley of painkillers, and strung-out from crying, so I didn’t add a whole lot to what was being said.