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“I—”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he growls, his voice rasping in a way that drags over me and electrifies my skin. “You should leave.”
My jaw sets. Great. Yet another asshole at this school full of assholes who wants to chase me out of their little cool club. He might be a bit terrifying, and the cold, unblinking intensity in his eyes is more than slightly unsettling.
…But at the end of the day, apparently the infamous and dastardly king of The Reckless is just another class A jerk.
“Says who?” I snap.
His lips curl as his head tilts slightly to one side.
“Says reality.”
And then just like that he disappears back into the woods. I whirl, my eyes scanning the now-dark trees, waiting for him to jump out and scare the ever-living shit out of me. But it never happens. He’s just really, actually gone.
After that I run, and I meanrun, all the way back to the dorm. Mercifully, Amanda is out. But my bitch of a roommate’s made sure to print out a copy of the disgusting post on KnightNet and tack it to our door.
I rip it off and storm inside, flinging myself onto my bed.
I’m not crying. I’m not shaking in fear from my run in with the campus’ resident devil.
I’m just thinking about the little orange diary.
And the person who wrote it, who’sjust like me.
5
DAHLIA
Present:
“I’ll swapyou my notes for Professor Carlsen’s European Financial Markets lecture for yours from that Strategic Innovation roundtable thing with Professor Cho.”
I groan, slumping across the study room table between us as my eyes snap to Eilish.
“Fuckity-fuck-fuck, I completely forgot that I still haven’t done that analytics breakdown for Carlsen’s class for next week.”
Eilish winces. “Oof. I did it a few days ago. It sucked. You wanna copy mine?”
“And get us both kicked out of school?”
“I mean, not word for word, or even use my exact subject matter,” she snickers. “Just grab the framework for the breakdown presentation.”
I nod, frowning as I sort through the reams of study notes in front of me. “Okay, yeah, I’ll take you up on that. Thanks.”
“Any time.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know how the hell that slipped my mind.”
Except I do. I knowexactlyhow and why it—and several other important things, if we’re keeping score—have slipped my mind in the last few days.
The easy excuse would be what’s going on with my mom and Gerard. I mean, that’s the obvious one. There’s also of course themajorshit that went down at the end of the evening at Callie’s birthday party. Luca Carveli, the slimy LA mafia don she was betrothed to marry is, in fact, dead. But Callie’s birthday dinner wasn’t even finished before the whole party got a visit from Massimo Carveli, Luca’s son, demanding that she marryhiminstead.
That, too, isn’t going to be happening. Because, cue the mafia-world chess moves: Cillian’s stepped down as the head of the Kildare family, Castle’s been made thenewking of the family, and he and Callie are now about to get married in order to get out of any lingering contract she might have with the Carveli family.
I mean, I got a small taste of the drama in the mafia world through Uncle Adrian and Aunt Celeste, and later at Knightsblood. But goodlord.
“Really?” Eilish snorts sarcastically. “You havenoidea how you managed forget to do some dumb busy-work school project with everything you’ve got blowing up in your life right now?”
