I groaned, but that was better than the alternative.
As I left her behind, I kept thinking about Nervosa. His hand on my wrist, his gaze moving down my body.
And the fact that my uncle was alive and lived nearby.
These things had to be connected. My uncle was too rich and powerful not to be involved with the Oligarchs somehow. If I was going to make my move, I needed to understand the players involved, and that included Nervosa.
The bastard wanted to follow me, and maybe I’d let him.
Chapter 3
Nervosa
Playing student was fun.
I sat alone on a bench and watched the college kids walk past. I wasn’t much older than most of them, but I’d lived more life than all of their petty existences combined. I felt like a stranger in their midst, which only underscored how out of place I must’ve seemed. I caught looks from girls and stares from boys, and none of it mattered.
I leaned back and thought about Melanie before I paged through her notebook.
Not the composition book. I wished I’d grabbed that, but it wasn’t in reach. This was a black spiral-bound thing with her cramped, messy handwriting. I wondered who the hell taught her printing. Probably a blind, drunk monkey.
Her notes were interesting, though partly unintelligible. There were names I recognized—her mother, her grandfather, and her uncle—and names I didn’t. Addresses, phone numbers, and lists of last known locations were scattered haphazardly around sentence fragments that didn’t make sense without context.
What was she studying?
I smiled as I ran my fingers over the notebook.
When I was eight years old, my mother drove me into a busy part of downtown LA and pointed at all the rich, fabulous people walking around like the world would never touch them. My mom squeezed my shoulders and knelt down beside me. “I’m going to teach you how to steal,” she’d said, and at the time it seemed like a fantasy game. She showed me how to pick pockets and how to get away with it, and what to do when shit went wrong. Shit always went wrong for her. We ran a lot.
Now that memory was tainted. It was fun then, but I could see those sunny afternoons spent stealing from rich people for what they were: a junkie mom taking advantage of her little boy. She was getting me to steal her drug money because if I got caught, I was less likely to get in trouble.
Mom was gone now. Had been for a long time. I barely thought of her anymore, and rarely with anything resembling nostalgia. I’d given that life up and gone elsewhere, moved up in the world, but my roots were still firmly planted in that life. Drugs and violence. Crime and neglect. It was in my bones, no matter how hard my adopted parents tried to give me more.
It sank into me and stayed there like a cancer or a burr.
I ran my finger down the spiral spine. Melanie’s uncle appeared in her notes more often than the others, and I’d caught her looking up his address in public records. So dear old Uncle Cedric was part of her mission, whatever that was. I smiled to myself, knee jostling.
I hadn’t been this fascinated by a person in a long time.
She walked across the quad with her head down. She looked uncomfortable in the crowds of between-class students. I understood what she was feeling—I’d met people like her before. Sheltered girls and boys that grew up in the Oligarch households but were kept away from the world. This was her first experience with life without guardrails, and she was finding it difficult.
I liked that she was trying. It meant she cared.
She headed in my direction and didn’t see me until she was nearly in my lap. She came to a stop, glaring hard, like she wanted to make me disappear with a look. I smiled, tilted my head, and waved the notebook in the air.
Her mouth dropped open.
“You bastard,” she said. “You rotten bastard!”
A couple sitting nearby looked over in alarm. Her cheeks turned pink and I plastered my most charming smile on my lips. I loved the way her jaw clenched and her nostrils flared like she was preparing to attack and savagely tear me to pieces with her teeth.
“Found this on the floor in the library,” I said casually. “You should be more careful.”
“I was looking everywhere for that.” She snatched it from my hand.
“You’re welcome.”
“You stole it. Don’t act like this is charity.” She flipped through the pages before jamming it into her bag.
“Why do you have such a low opinion of me?” I feigned innocence, even though she was completely right.
“Because you haven’t given me a reason to think otherwise yet.”
“Then there’s a chance.”
I stood and joined her as she stormed away.