Oh, right. The whole reason I was at St. Mary’s.
I huffed out a sarcastic laugh, annoyed at how my blood pressure was spiking. My hand squeezed around the apple so hard juice began to seep out of the sides. “Can’t just let me be until I graduate, eh?”
“I can’t have you acting like a fucking immature fool, especially with Bain there.”
My gaze shifted from Gemma, who was smiling shyly at something Sloane had said with her head barely even visible from the shelter of her hair, over to Bain.
Bain was the bane of my existence—no pun intended. Our fathers were rivals in the gun-trafficking business. They were both competitive, always trying to beat each other out of sales. They were shady as fuck. Both domineering. Both living up to the legacy that their fathers, and their fathers before them, and so on, left to carry out—thus Bain and I being forced to fall into line to carry the legacy out once the time came.
But the difference between Bain and me was that I wanted no fucking part in what my father did for a living, and Bain was the exact opposite. He was already a miniature clone of Callum.
And Callum was a shitty human being. I had my eye on Bain—and not only because that was what my father not so subtly demanded when he thrust me into this godforsaken boarding school.
“You have a choice to make, Isaiah.” He couldn’t be serious. I’d never had a fucking choice. “You can join the business as a snake. Or you can join as a lion.” My jaw clenched tightly as I suddenly became very focused on the conversation with my father. “Stay unknown to Bain, fly under the radar, and knock him on his ass when you two meet again in the future. Or I can rip you out of that school and throw you into the Covens where you’ll come out more lethal than I am.”
A deep chuckle left my chest as I rose from the table and began striding through the dining hall with my phone pressed to my ear. Once I was away from wandering eyes, I gritted through my teeth. “You won’t rip me out of this school because you want me here to spy on Bain.” I was too valuable.
My father laughed in the most narcissistic of ways. “You might not give me a choice. Your uncle says the committee is ready to throw you on your ass.” He paused, and a hot sensation of dread crept over my shoulder. I glanced behind me, only to see th
e long, dark hallway with shiny white and black tiles along the floor and nothing else. “I want you to listen very closely to me,” he snarled. I swallowed, clenching my fist tightly with my ears perked. “Get your head out of your fucking ass, boy. This is real life. This is a real business. You’re right. The last thing I want to do is send you to the Covens. Not because I necessarily care where you are until it’s time for you take over—because, frankly, you probably need the discipline that comes with the Covens—but more so because you need to do your fucking job.”
I was shaking with anger. My limbs vibrated as I held tightly onto the phone, wanting to smash it into tiny little pieces.
My father’s voice sunk into my bones as the words came through the line, “Clean your act up and figure out how to dazzle the committee so they don’t expel you. Fuck, just do your goddamn job. If not, you won’t be the only one going to the Covens.”
I stilled. “What does that mean?”
“Jack could use some discipline too, I guess. Think of this as a bargaining chip. Fuck up, and you both will be shipped off until the time comes that I need you. Do you understand that?”
Fucking piece of shit. My throat clogged, and I clenched my eyes. “Yes.”
“Yes what?” I noted the uptick in his voice.
I swallowed my pride because I was quickly brought back down to reality when he brought up my little brother. “Yes, sir.”
Then, the line went dead, and I quickly shoved my phone into the side pocket of my blazer. My fist reared back quickly, and I pounded into the wall, feeling pain rip up from my fingers all the way to my neck.
Fucking Jacobi. It wasn’t fair to blame my older brother for wanting out and leaving me behind, but I did. I fucking did.
My swollen knuckles still ached a little as I tore off my white button down and flung it back into my bag. Lockers were being shut all around me, and for a moment, it felt like I was back in my old high school, surrounded by precious trust-fund babies with their biggest worry being what kind of car their mommy and daddy were going to give them for their birthday, only to wreck it hours later.
A low growl came from me as I scanned the locker room. It was the only modern part of St. Mary's. Everything else was dark and dreary. Old and primeval. Even the weather was uncanny as rain seemed to constantly fall from the clouds.
“What did you do to your hand?” Shiner stood beside me as he whipped on his lacrosse shirt, nodding to my hand.
“Nothing,” I snapped as he shot me a wary look, but with his usual easygoing personality, he brushed me off quickly.
Shiner’s real name was Nash, but he refused to be called that, so he went by Shiner. Actually, mostly everyone called him One-Liner-Shiner. He gained that nickname his freshman year when it only took him one line to get the entire female senior class in his bed. The legacy had stuck, too. Shiner was a bit of a manwhore, but most of us were. After all, what were we supposed to do while attending a boarding school that didn’t even allow us to have cell phones during class hours?
As soon as we were all geared up for lacrosse practice, Cade rushed out in between our warm-up laps. “Where’re we getting the booze for tomorrow?” he asked, bending down to touch his toes in a stretch. I held my lacrosse stick tightly in my hand, glancing at the dark clouds above our heads, wondering when it was going to start raining—because it always did. “Some of the girls have some shit stashed.” I cracked my neck, looking out along the field and over the grassy hills that laid behind the bleachers. St. Mary’s stood in the distance, appearing like a castle—a broken castle for broken princes and princesses was more like it.
“Nice,” Cade muttered before sticking a foot out and tripping Shiner as he ran another lap.
Cade cackled as Shiner fell to the ground, his brown hair flopping on his head. “What the fuck, Cade.”
“Payback’s a bitch, Shiner.”
“Payback for what?” I asked, staring at my two friends. Cade was towering over Shiner, who had made himself comfortable on the grassy land beneath his back. He even went as far as bringing his hands up behind his head and crossing his ankles. “Fucker claimed the new girl for the party before I could.”