Page 1 of The Pawn

Chapter 1

There are wolves at Coleridge Academy.

Four of them, in fact. They live in a large enclosure that’s fenced on three sides, the fourth side jutting up against the back of the visitors center to give people a better view. Children and adults alike press their noses against the glass to marvel at them.

There’s something macabre yet poetic about housing four apex predators on the same grounds as the rich and spoiled teenage children of this country’s most corrupt CEOs and politicians. If there was any justice in the world, they’d leave the doors open and let the wolves tear through the whole flock of them so we could start anew.

“They look bigger than I thought they’d be,” Wally says, standing just behind my shoulder, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “I didn’t get the chance to see them when I came here last time. This place was under construction.”

“The enclosure?” My mother, on my other side, clutches her purse tight beneath her arm, frail body even frailer than it was just a month ago.

“No, it was the visitors center they were working on. Apparently the wood floors and marble countertops are new.”

Mom doesn’t look very reassured. “I hope it’s safe to have them here, so close to the dorms. They can’t get out, they?”

“I don’t think so, Mom.”

“There’s nothing to be concerned about,” a voice chimes in from behind us, male and pleasant with a European accent that’s both French and British. A shudder goes through me at the sound of it, starting at the base of my spine and rising to the backs of my arms until all my hair is on end.

I know this voice.

“The wolf enclosure is regularly inspected, and the wolves themselves are kept well-fed. They’re captive bred and born, used to humans and gentle in nature. One once licked my head. The worst thing about them is their breath.”

We turn towards the voice. I steel myself, heart already in my throat, fingers curling towards my palms. It’s an effort to remember to be calm, stuff my instant reactions down, and force my face into neutral curiosity instead of scowling like I want.

Any average girl who saw Lukas Dupont in person for the first time would be taken aback by his handsomeness. At an improbable six feet tall, with light blonde hair long enough to be pushed back from his forehead, steady honey-brown eyes, plush lips with a cupid’s bow, a perfect strong jaw, and flawless pale skin, he looks like he walked off a runway to Milan on his way here. The designer sweater and cuffed dark wash pants he’s wearing over his Coleridge-Academy-issued collared shirt only add to the impression.

I’m not an average girl, so I don’t quite swoon, but even I find myself struck by him. I’ve seen Lukas Dupont in a hundred well-lit social media photos, watched videos of him in the background of his diplomat father’s appearances and in advertisements from Harrington Foods, boasting their five generations of running as family-owned business. Seeing someone through a screen is different than meeting them in the flesh, though.

The excitement I feel must be what rushes through a predator’s veins as they stalk prey. Of all my targets, Dupont is the most elusive, the most private of the Elites. His family knows how to avoid rumors and scandal from spreading. If you cut him open, he would bleed the bluest of blues. That’s why I know so little about him, and why he intrigues me so much.

My quickening heartbeat and the way blood rushes to my face and neck when he looks at me has nothing to do with his incredible attractiveness or charm. And the subtle smile he flashes, the way his eyes take me in, is a façade—he’s not really seeing me.

Boys like him, born into privilege and cocooned from hardship, never see anything truthfully at all. There’s too much wool over their eyes and money in their veins.

He may be handsome. He may even be polite, charming, and easy to be around. But I loathe him.

I loathe him so much that I wish for nothing more than the freedom to reach out and strike him down, right here, right now.

The hardest part of pulling all this off will be the waiting. Coiled, unmoving in the grass, preparing to strike when my prey is in reach.

“Lukas Dupont,” he tells my mother, holding out a broad hand that she takes in both her thin, frail ones. “I volunteered to be your tour guide today when the student who normally gives them fell ill.” His eyes travel to Wally, then me. “You’re the two other students who missed orientation, then?”

“Oh, no,” Wally says quickly, or at least as quickly as his thick Virginia drawl will allow for. He shoves out his hand, and I wince at how calloused, broad, and thick his fingers look as Lukas amenably accepts the handshake with his own smooth hand. “I’m Wally Johnson, friend of the family.”

“My daughter is the incoming student,” my mother says proudly, putting an arm around my shoulders even though she has to reach up to do it. “She got in at the last minute. Delayed enrollment. Brenna here is quite the clever girl.”

I am, I admit, just not in the way she thinks. My grades have always been terrible. If my mom had paid attention to things like report cards instead of leaving so much of our lives up to my now-absent father, she would know this.

The truth is, I’m here at Coleridge Academy because an anonymous stranger somehow got me enrolled so I could act as a kind of firsthand observer of what’s going on here on campus and enact my revenge. I’ve got a list of boys, the privileged, shitty, rich as sin kind of boys, and I’ll be marking them off one by one as I expose them publicly for all their misdeeds. I’ll use Legacies, the long-running blog devoted to shining a light on boys like them, to do it—once I dig up all their dirty secrets.

It won’t make my brother Silas come back to life, and it won’t change what they did to him—or what, ultimately, he did to himself.

But it will snuff out the fire that lives inside me now, the one that threatens to burn me alive if I don’t find fuel for my hatred and anger.

“Let me look at my paperwork,” Lukas says, pulling out his smart phone, which is of course the latest model. I watch him closely, hungry to know everything about him, to pull him apart like he pulled apart my brother. “Ah, here you are. Brenna Cooke, transferring from Wayborne High School in Virginia, 3.7 GPA.”

“That’s me,” I say, ignoring the pained expression on Wally’s face, the way my mother twists her fingers together. I made both of them agree that I wouldn’t be a Wilder girl while I was here; being known as Silas’s sister would blow my cover immediately. Not that they know about my ulterior motive. “Are we waiting for someone?”

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