Page 218 of Lessons in Cruelty

I’m frowning as I whip my head around to glare at him. “The fuck you on about?”

He dusts the sleeves of his tux and tugs them straight, his eyes taking their sweet time flicking up to meet mine. “You said she was gone.”

“Sh—Haven?” My heart seizes up for a moment before blood pumps again. “Yeah, man. She’s gone!”

“Then what the fuck did I see? A ghost? That bitch haunting us now?”

My chest closes up. “She was on campus today? I thought she didn’t have class on Fridays?”

He rolls his eyes like he can’t believe he’s trying to explain something to a dipshit like me.

“Here, Kai. She was right fucking here. Strutted past me like she fucking owns the place.”

Casting a quick glance at the briefly empty entrance, he grabs the front of my tux and slams me against the nearest wall.

“You’ve been fucking her, haven’t you?”

And when I see the look in his eyes, I’m kinda wishing the wallpaper will swallow me.

My voice hitches in panic. “Wh-What?”

If only. If only I’d actually fuck her, then I could move on. But no, I just finger her under beds and leave my cum in her car like a pathetic stalker.

Ezra’s eyes glitter with malice as he leans in, his fist pushing so hard against my sternum I’m struggling to breathe.

“You’re seriously going to drag our name through the mud just so you can rail some slut from Riverside?” He scans my face, contempt dripping from every word.

The word ‘slut’ makes me want to slam his head into the wall.

Only I get to call her that.

Only I get to degrade her.

It’s not about what she is. It’s about what she did to me.

I don’t touch Ezra, of course. I let the words wash over me and refuse to let them latch on. I’ve gotten good at it over the years.

And Jesus, does it piss him off.

His eyes narrow to slits. Calculating. Honing in. Guess even on my best day, some of the anger still seeps through. Enough for him to pick it up, anyway. I read psychopaths are good at that kind of thing. Spotting human emotion. Even good at emulating it sometimes, if they want to blend in.

Ezra’s a fucking grandmaster.

“I don’t know what fucking spell that witch’s cunt cast on you when you were a kid, but you’d better snap the fuck out of it.”

I grunt in pain as Ezra presses away from me with a shove to my chest. He runs a hand over his hair, sliding a strand of hair that escaped his slicked-back faux hawk.

He gives my cheek a hard pat, forcing a smile as sharp as a fucking scalpel.

“I’ll handle this, just like I handle all your fuck ups.”

He seizes my shoulder and swings me to the door, where a couple stand, trying to decide which bin to put their donations in.

“Smile like you mean it, little brother.”

He’s said that to me a thousand times over the years. After he’d pinched me, bitten me, kicked me until I was blue and purple.

I walk up to the entrance, giving the couple a shaky smile and motioning to the canned food box. They grin at me, getting whatever shot of dopamine they came here for, and I step aside so they can go to the ballroom.