Page 13 of Reckless
“My DNA was at the scene,” I said.
“And there was no body.” Bobbi knew her facts, apparently. I had no idea if her dad had told her all this, or if the rumor mill really knew that much about it. “It doesn’t look good, Jaz. If you didn’t have Oliver Fitzpatrick, you’d be deep.”
I nodded along. That much was true. If it wasn’t for Ollie…I honestly didn’t know what the hell I’d be doing right now. Probably stuck in jail, waiting for my trial. It really did pay to have connections, as much as I didn’t want to admit it.
I could feel the rest of the class’s eyes on me. The bell didn’t ring yet, but it was coming. Most everyone had gathered in their seats, whispering amongst themselves, but I knew they talked about me, stared at me. They had a murderer in their midst—or at least they thought so. I hated it.
It took everything in me to whisper, “I didn’t do it, Bobbi. I didn’t kill her. I know everyone here thinks I did—because, let’s be honest, everyone knows Brittany and I hated each other—but I didn’t. I might’ve hated her, but just because I hated her doesn’t mean I did it. I’m not like that.”
“I don’t think you are, either,” Bobbi said, leaning into me to add, “but my dad doesn’t know you like I do. I know things are going to be weird for a while, but maybe this’ll all blow over and things will get back to the way they were before.” Seemed like such an optimistic thing to say, a stupid thing to hope for.
Still, that’s kind of what I wanted. Everything to go back to the way things were at the beginning. Me, oblivious to Midpark’s dark underbelly. Me, unaware of Archer’s connection to Brittany. How stupid I was, and yet things were so much simpler in the beginning.
“Thanks,” I said, right as the bell rang and Ms. Haber exited her office.
Well, at least Bobbi believed my innocence—that, or she was a really good liar. For whatever reason, I didn’t want to face the fact that she might be lying. It could be that her dad put her up to this to see if I’d confess it to her.
Was it sad that that’s what I thought? Maybe.
It really sucked not being able to trust anyone in Midpark.
Chapter Four – Vaughn
I got to lunch as early as I could, waited in line and bought whatever lunch they were serving today. I wasn’t really hungry, for my mind was elsewhere. On Jaz and the news I’d heard. To think, I’d thought my antics on Sunday would be the talk of the school. It was, maybe for five minutes. But now? Now everything was about Jaz, and not in a good way.
She’d won the winter queen crown, and yet that wasn’t the end of it. Now Brittany was dead, and Jaz looked like she did the deed. I had Markus looking into it for me, so I didn’t know the entire lowdown yet, but I would soon enough.
I did know one thing, though: Jaz didn’t do it. I knew she wasn’t like me, and she definitely wasn’t like Dante. What would Jaz do if she knew what I’d done over the weekend? If I told her that I’d taken a trip to the hospital Sunday with Markus?
Before anyone else arrived at the table, I let my mind wander.
Markus wore his usual suit; his favorite color, too. Black, like his soul. With a dark red undershirt and a sleek black tie, he looked like the devil himself. The devil, made flesh, given a face that hardly ever wore emotion—and when it did, it was always terrifying.
Never cross Markus or the family; that had been ingrained into my head since birth. Markus was over ten years my senior, technically only my half-brother, but still. Blood was blood in the family. Blood mattered more than anything.
Except the contracts that kept us going, the money that kept our hearts beating and our estate away from any prying eyes.
I walked beside my older brother, wearing dark clothes myself. If you looked like you blended in, you tended to do just that. Today, Markus’s contacts were told to turn their eyes somewhere else. He would not be doing the deed, but I would. It was technically yet another favor, but I didn’t care. However much I would owe my family, I didn’t care.
I would do anything for Jaz.
Yes, I’d come into the obsession that tended to run rampant through my family. I’d thought it had skipped me, left me behind in the dust, but all it took was Jaz to stumble into Midpark for the obsession to take root.
I might not have had her in the way Dante did, but she was mine all the same.
That…that would be another favor I would have to talk to Markus about, but not right now. Right now I had to take care of business, and that business was the comatose Ryan laying unaware in his hospital bed.
We walked through the hospital with a purpose, already knowing where he was, what floor to go to, what wing of the hospital he was in. Room number, everything. My heart beat steadily in my chest, not the heartbeat you’d assume someone to have when they were mere minutes from ending someone’s life.
It would be the first time, but it wouldn’t be the last.
My family didn’t let children handle matters like this, not usually. I was eighteen, and within a few months I would be working for my family in the basement. Killing would become a normal thing for me.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t confident in my abilities; it wasn’t that my family hadn’t trained me, taught me from birth on how to be, how to act, that following a contract was always the most important thing. It was more like…I wanted to get it over with. My first kill.
Dante was a machine when it came to killing, but he was messy. His kills left a trail; that trail would end once Ryan no longer drew breath, but still. That was a loose end he should’ve taken care of himself.
But no, Ryan was mine. I’d set Dante like an animal onto Ryan and his friends after what they’d nearly done to Jaz at school, what they would’ve done to her at that party if her private investigator hadn’t shown up and saved her.
