King of Bullies (Wild Men 5.50)

Oh fuck me.

Octavia.

And behind her Gigi and Merc.

My rage flares again. “You slut.” I turn back around and advance on her, my hands clenching into fists. “Why don’t you run back to your mommy, huh? Go on. Get.”

“Leave that boy alone.” Her voic

e shakes a little. She even dares to raise a finger at me. “He did nothing to you. Stop harassing him.”

“Or what? What will you do?” She doesn’t look anything like me, I think, while my mouth keeps prodding at her defenses. Because she’s nothing like me. “Fight me? Go on, try.”

Octavia Watson has dark hair and blue eyes and looks like her mom. Unlike her sister Gigi and brother Merc, who look like me. But nobody has ever seemed to notice this similarity.

Hell, not even Octavia and her siblings have. Why would they? Nobody knows the truth. Nobody but Dad and me.

It doesn’t do anything to appease me. On the contrary, it pisses me off even more. Why shouldn’t they know? Little fuckers, little shits. Having it all and not being able to appreciate it, the stupid fucking idiots.

Jonas shouts something as the boy takes the opportunity of our distraction to make a run for it, pushing his glasses up his nose and holding his backpack under one arm, hair sticking up.

Oh well...

“You know, Ross, karma is a bitch,” Octavia informs me haughtily, the emotion betrayed by the spark of fear in her eyes, “and one day you’ll get paid in your own currency and won’t like it one bit.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?” I laugh in her face, honestly amused.

Does she think karma is something that comes after you’ve done something wrong? Karma found me first, before I knew my own name, knocked me down and danced all over me. Made me into who I am.

She shakes her head at me and walks away, followed by her siblings who shoot me baleful glares. The boy, Merc, looks just like me, dammit... Like I did when I was a kid, in old pictures where I’m sitting together with Mom, smiling at the camera, looking so happy...

“What’s your beef with them anyway?” Ed asks, appearing by my side, startling me.

His brother Jonas joins us, rubbing his jaw. “Yeah, what’s the deal?”

“No deal.” I shrug. "She’s a goody two-shoes, and they’re fucking idiots, all three of them. They keep on getting on my goddamn nerves.”

“Cool with me.” Ed has no problem accepting my assholery.

Nobody does. It’s who I am, how I act day in and day out. A bastard, a devil walking the school hallways, ruling over a court of cowardly, scared kids and a gang of aggressive fuckwits.

What he doesn’t know is that Octavia, Gigi, Merc are my dad’s bastards. They’re fucking bastards, and dare to live in the same town I am, with their mother, a happy cozy little family in their stupid cozy little house with its trim garden and white lace curtains at the windows.

Rubbing it in my face.

It makes me so fucking mad. And nothing helps. I call the girl names, I trip her up, I shove her around. She’s almost my age, did you know? That Dad fucked her mom at the same time he fucked mine?

I have my gang write stuff on her locker, open it and throw out her books. I watch and watch, hoping to catch the gleam of desperate tears in her eyes, to see... if she’s finally as miserable as I am.

But it’s not happening. She won’t do it. Won’t break down. She’s made of steel, my half-sister. My bastard almost-twin. Is it her mother’s love that makes her so strong? That confidence, that happy glow in her gaze, is it a gift from her family, that support she has from loving siblings and a mom who cooks her dinner and mends her clothes, who hugs her when she returns home from school?

I’ve seen it. I’ve followed her a couple of times, hidden in shadows like a creep. I’m a goddamn masochist, standing there in the shadows, watching all that family affection and warmth, all of them sitting around the table laughing and talking, leaning close to each other without fear.

It fucks me up. Makes me shake.

I’ll break her. I’ll make her afraid. I’ll make her flinch away from touches and words, like I do sometimes. I’ll turn her into a version of me.

It’s only fair. Jasper is her dad, too, so why should she be spared?