AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Living like this would literally drive me insane.
The woman, who I assume is Anton’s mother, gestures toward the back of the house. “Anton’s room is the last door on the right. Let me know when you’re leaving so I can lock up.”
The door of the room is closed, but not latched. I push it slowly open as I knock. “Hello?”
I barely recognize the guy sitting at a computer desk covered in food wrappers and empty soda cans.
Anton has gained weight, and his hair is longer. He looks more like someone who spends all day eating junk food and surfing the Internet than the preppy playboy he had been at St. Bart’s.
What the hell happened to him?
He doesn’t look surprised when I enter the room. “Hey, Drake. Long time no see.”
“Yeah, it’s been over a year.” I take another step into the room and something soft squishes beneath my shoe. A shudder moves through me, but I keep walking. I decide that I probably don’t want to know what it is. “How you been?”
“Living the dream,” he replies, tone mildly sardonic. “Can’t you tell?”
I don’t miss the obvious reference to his circumstances, but I have no idea how to address the elephant in the room. The guy is practically living in filth, alongside his wild-eyed mother who has to suffer from something psychiatric, whether it’s hoarding, paranoia or both.
This is about as far as you can get from the lives most Havoc Boys will have after graduation and still be in the same country.
I look around for a place to sit, but Anton is sitting in the only chair and the bed is covered in laundry that I can only hope is clean. The floor is absolutely out of the question for reasons that should be obvious.
Instead, I lean against the wallpaper stained with cigarette smoke. “You’re probably wondering why I’m here.”
He leans back far enough that the office chair responds with a loud creak. “I’m sure I could guess if I tried, but I’ll wait for you to say it.”
There isn’t a good way to go about this and I don’t have the time to run around in circles. “I know that you didn’t get Initiated last year, didn’t even graduate, but nobody seems to know why. So I thought I’d ask you myself.”
“You came all the way out here for that?”
“I would have called, but your number’s not listed.”
“That’s because of Mom,” Anton grunts, rolling his eyes. “She is absolutely convinced that cellphones cause brain cancer and that hackers will steal her social security check if she gives her information to the telephone company. All the utilities have to be in my name.”
Paranoia it is, then. “She isn’t worried about hackers stealing from you?”
“I don’t have anything for them to take. What you see around here is what you get.”
I refuse to look around the room as he gestures at the surroundings. More detail isn’t going to make the picture in my mind any better, and I want to be able to eat again at some point. “You aren’t working?”
“Havoc House was supposed to be my ticket out, the shooting star that would rocket out of my ass and fly me all the way to the moon. I should be sitting in a corner office overlooking the New York city skyline right now, not stuck in this rat nest.” Anton glares around the room. “I can’t even get a job at the local insurance agency. Things are worse for me than if I’d never gone to St. Bart’s at all.”
I don’t remember Anton as a particularly angry guy, but the rage simmering under the surface is impossible to ignore.
“What happened?” I ask.
But Anton keeps talking like he doesn’t even hear the question. “I figured that the Initiation would be some weird sex thing. It always is with these rich boy secret societies, right? The girl seemed willing enough at the time so I wasn’t going to refuse to take my turn, but then…” He trails off, gaze suddenly returning to me. His eyes intently search my face. “You have your Initiation yet.”
“Soon.”
“Better hope that it goes better than mine did.”
My hands ball into fists at my sides. It’s taking every ounce of willpower I have not to shake the answers out of him. “Did you refuse to take part in the Initiation? Is that what got you kicked out?”
“Oh, I did the deed. We all did,” he chuckles, the sound more mocking than amused. “It was only after that when everything got fucked up.”
“Tell me what happened,” I command.
