Page 1 of Deceit & Destruction

Prologue

Mike Robinson

From the outside,Stonewall University appears to be the gold standard of Ivy league schools. A top pick for all the poor unsuspecting fools looking to make something of themselves. It doesn’t matter if your dream is to be a lawyer, a doctor, or in my case a professional athlete—there is no place better to make that dream a reality.

But that’s not actually the case.

The day you receive your acceptance letter is the day that dream die.

You realize all too quickly that hell is empty, and all the devils are here, lurking in the halls of these ivy-covered buildings. Some of them are disguised as your peers, but the most vicious of all are masked as professors and they make up Scorpio Society.

I had a taste of the chaos and corruption those sick fucks breed.

I wasn’t looking for another.

But it doesn’t matter if you’re looking for it or not, if they decide to stain you with their deceit and destruction, there is no escaping it.

You become their pawn.

Well, I’m no motherfucking puppet and I won’t allowherto be one either. When you’ve got nothing left to lose, you become a weapon of mass destruction and these cocksuckers pulled the pin on the wrong grenade.

Chapter One

Mike Robinson

Bile risesin my throat as I pace the hallway outside of the Coach Riley’s office. Any minute he’ll open that door and deliver me my fate, and even though I have spent the last three months counting down the days to this moment, I’m not sure I want to know the verdict. There are no guarantees in life. Nothing is black and white, and that gray area between the two is fucking dangerous as shit.

“For fuck’s sake, man, can you stop pacing? You’re making me nauseous.”

I freeze midstride and glare at my roommate, Webber. Aside from the annoyance that flashes in his blue eyes when they connect with mine, the guy looks completely unbothered. Like he doesn’t have a worry in the fucking world. Like our futures aren’t sitting on death row, waiting to be executed.

It’s infuriating.

“How the fuck are you so calm?” I hiss.

He sighs, crossing his arms against his chest as he leans his back against the wall directly across from Coach Riley’s office. His eyes lock with mine and he shrugs a shoulder.

“Bro, I should be dead right now.”

I flinch.

He’s one hundred percent right, he should be dead.

Three months ago, Webber overdosed, and he did it on drugs he got fromme. To make matters worse, I didn’t even call for help after I found him unconscious. At least not right away. I freaked out, and not because I thought my friend was dead, but rather because I knew I’d lose everything if anyone found out I was the one who supplied him with the drugs he took. How fucked up is that?

“Whatever is going to happen is out of my hands,” he continues, forcing my attention back to him. “If Coach Riley kills my dream—well, I’m alive to find a new dream.”

He uncrosses his arms and lets them fall to his sides.

“Football isn’t everything, man. The sooner you realize that the better off you’ll be.”

I scoff.

Sometimes I wish I was the one who overdosed. Webber has changed so much since that dreadful night. He went from being a high-strung, self-entitled little prick to a courageous disciple who wakes up every day looking to repent his sins.

It started right after he woke up from the overdose. Instead of outing me as his dealer, he pointed a finger at Matt Jennings. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, but that one lie opened the floodgates of truth and Webber revealed that Jennings was blackmailing him.

You see, Webber is gay—a fact he kept hidden from everyone for a long fucking time. Jennings knew this because the two of them had a moment at a party. They were both drunk and Webber made a move on Jennings. That didn’t go over so well since Jennings was in denial about his sexuality. The piece of shit thought raping a girl would prove he wasn’t gay. He made Webber watch the whole fucking thing, then blackmailed him into spreading vicious lies about the girl he violated—something that may have never come to light if it weren’t for our former roommate’s girlfriend, Victoria Bianci. It was her best friend, Mila, who Jennings raped and when she got wind of the sexual assault, she made it her mission to uncover the corruption around the campus. She wrote about Jennings’ crimes in a thesis paper and read it to her entire class. While she didn’t name him specifically, she called out the Scorpio Society.

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