Page 220 of Wicked Brutal

“Your inability to control yourself is hardly surprising.” There. X’s smile thins. Victor sees the thin place and drives for it. “Adeena.”

Every fucking thing changes. X doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Down the hall, Penny goes still. Victor says it like a name on a list. “Your mother takes her own life. Your father replaces her. Years of making your home more miserable than it already was.”

X’s smile comes back. Slow. Dangerous. “Careful.”

Victor doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t. “Then Lucian’s businesses. Reece. Drugs moving through Edgewood. Penny caught directly in the middle of it.”

X takes half a step forward.

Victor looks down at the movement, then back at his face, and keeps going because he thinks he’s found the seam. “And somehow through all of that, your most consistent contribution is putting your fists through other people.”

X laughs softly. “You make me sound fun.”

“I think you’re beneath the people you insist on surrounding yourself with.”

Oh. Fuck.

X’s head tilts. “Below them?”

“Your behavior speaks for itself.”

“And yours doesn’t?” Victor’s face hardens. X smiles, and this is the one with teeth in it. “You want to talk fathers?”

“X,” I say. He glances at me.

“I’m having fun.”

“Have less.” He looks back at Victor. “Fine.”

Xsteps back. Because I asked him to. Victor watches it happen and files it away, and I can see him take the wrong lesson from it — that the boys can be called off, that there’s a leash here somewhere too.

There isn’t.

That was X choosing me over the pleasure of ruining Victor’s afternoon. It is not the same thing, and Victor is going to keep not understanding the difference all the way to the end of this.

Then his gaze lands on X again. “Your father’s choices dragged half this school into something none of you understood.”

“He didn’t drag us anywhere.”

“Reece Hall might disagree.”

“No one gives a fuck what Reece would say.”

“He was rather important to how this all ended, wasn’t he?” Danny goes still. I know where this is going before Victor says it. So does X. His face changes. Victor looks past him. Toward Danny. “Daisy Rorke certainly found out.”

The hallway dies. Not quieter. Dead. Danny doesn’t move. Across the atrium, Becca’s face empties.

Victor looks directly at him now. “Rorke.”

Danny’s voice is flat. “Don’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Victor studies him, and I watch him decide that the flatness is a soft spot instead of a warning. Everyone who has ever underestimated Danny has made that exact mistake in that exact order. “Your sister became involved with Reece Hall.”

“Ex.”