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“What the hell happened to you?” Cole asks.
Brady strides to the row of cabinets and starts rummaging through them. “Where is the damn aspirin?”
Nolan rushes into help him. “Let me get it for you.”
Cole walks over to peer at Brady’s face. “Did you get in a fistfight?”
Brady shakes his head, but then winces in pain. “I swear she got me drunk like this on purpose. I woke up this morning on the floor with this bruise on my face. I’ve never been drunk enough to pass out in my life.”
Nolan fills a glass with water and offers it to Brady. “That girl is a fucking menace. It’s time to take care of that bitch, once and for all.”
“I’d love to hear your suggestions about how to do that,” Brady responds drolly. “That girl is like Teflon, nothing sticks to her. I’d say that we should just leave well enough alone if the order to get her out of here wasn’t coming from the top.”
“What do you mean from the top?” I ask.
Brady looks at me in surprise, like he has only just realized I’m in the room. “I got a call from Richard Ashbridge himself, telling me to get out here and take care of this.”
Nolan lets out a low whistle. “Richard Ashbridge is basically the king of Havoc House.”
Richard Ashbridge is one of the oldest and most respected of all the alumni, particularly if you consider respect and fear to be the same thing. The man is pushing a hundred, but only a fool would assume that his old age might have made him soft.
He also happens to be Vaughn’s grandfather.
“Why would Richard Ashbridge waste his time getting involved in what we’re doing?” Cole asks, obviously confused.
Brady swallows the pills with a huge gulp of water and then lets out a loud burp. “I have no fucking idea.”
It still doesn’t make any sense that the Ashbridge family patriarch would get involved in the situation.
Unless Vaughn knows more than what he’s been telling me.
I haven’t seen much of him since he got out of the hospital. Brady had excused him from the remaining preparation for the Initiation and hazing pledges because of his injuries.
“Somebody should ask Vaughn if he knows anything,” I say casually.
Cole shoots me a surprised look. “He went home until classes start to rest up. He didn’t tell you?”
Fuck.
“Of course he did,” I respond quickly. “I meant that we should call him.”
What the hell is going on?
Brady sets his glass down loudly on the counter, distracting me. “It doesn’t matter why any of the alumni have gotten themselves involved. We need to focus on doing what we’re told. Your futures are on the line, remember?”
I say something agreeable while the conversation goes on without me. I’m still stuck on the sinking realization that Vaughn didn’t bother to tell me that he was going home. He is the only other person that knows Evangeline’s true identity, a secret that we cannot let get out.
I’d assured her that he couldn’t have had anything to do with what happened to Olivia. But now I’m wondering if trusting my closest friend had been a mistake.
I don’t understand any of this.
My attention returns to the conversation when I hear the words strip club.
“We’re not doing that,” I insist, raising my head to glare around the room.
“Don’t be such a pussy,” Nolan says. “We need a male bonding experience.”
“I’m always up for seeing naked women,” Cole adds in shrug. “But I’m not usually a fan of paying for it.”
