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Nick sighed, “We really had to watch this in front of my Hammy?” He gestured to his sandwich.

I didn’t look away from the TV. “All these videos are on the cloud?”

“Uh-huh,” Xander said. We could hear him shifting in his ice bath, unfazed. “Not sure what the Huntsmen plan to do with them. There’s more coming, and not all of them are our star of the night. It’s going to take me a bit longer to sort through everything and match clips with the Marked that they correspond to.”

Rook leaned back, stretching out his legs. “I think this is going to be fun.”

I agreed.

The Huntsmen were doing half the work for us. We’d barely gotten started.

Cade looked over at Rook, arms folded. “What did you get out of Fey?”

“Everything.” He took a drink, then added flatly. “Minus a theatrical debut.”

I chuckled

“She’s got a severe inferiority complex,” Rook said flatly. “Didn’t take me long to figure it out. She wants money, status, the whole package. That ‘woe is me’ act? It’s part of it. Her stepdad’s footing the bill to keep her at Crowsfell, and whatever flavor of the week she’s screwing usually coughs up enough cash to keep her afloat. Befriending Sanj? That was strategic. Calculated.”

I sat with that for a minute. I knew my fair share of ambitious women, but they were better at this than Layla was. Usually, they locked onto one guy if that’s the route they chose. Four or five in seven days was a bit much. And sloppy. She didn’t necessarily need to do any of this.

It wasn’t as if her place at Crowsfell was in jeopardy, and they weren’t easy to come by, so that was telling.

“To be quite fucking honest, I don’t understand her motive.”

She was attending a university that cost more than some people’s houses, had a coveted spot on the varsity cheer team, and still felt sorry for herself because she wasn’t as rich as someone else? Not even the scholarship kids gave that much of a fuck. Arianna was one of them. She’d been awarded multiple. It wasn’t until recently that her parents could afford Crowsfell full tuition cost out of pocket, and she chose to keep to the scholarship route. She was quiet, smart, and impossible not to like. No one in our circle ever made her feel less than. She came as she was, and we loved her for it.

Xander’s family was new money, too. Not old blood. His dad built everything from the ground up, and his mom took a salary cut to stay home and raise him the right way. Most people didn’t consider half of this shit from the outside looking in. They sawthe cars, the clothes, and were too focused on our bank accounts, how we played on the field, and who we were fucking.

“You know she’s infatuated with you and your brother, right?” Xander questioned.

“That’s something we try to actively ignore,” Cade replied.

“Well, from what I’ve gathered, she was banking on Sanj being with D-W. If they stayed together long enough, she’d finally have a clear shot to make a move.”

“She knows we don’t like her,” Rook remarked.

Nick rubbed the back of his neck. “Where did she come from to begin with? I know we didn’t go to high school with her.”

“She only attended a few weeks into our freshman year. She was pulled out and homeschooled after all that shit happened with her mom. You know the rest,” Xander explained.

“She could’ve sought Sanj out on purpose from that small window,” Rook contemplated.

“If she’s been keeping tabs on our girls for that long…” Nick blew out a breath, tapping the countertop with his fingers. “That’s someSingle White Femaletype shit.”

“She wanted an in. Sanj was the easiest target of the four,” I said, voice quiet. It had always been obvious. She didn’t just want to be around them; she wanted to be them. She was playing the long game like everyone else, through proximity disguised as friendship. From where I was sitting, Layla Vargas had officially moved from liability to problem.

It was nearly 2 a.m. by the time I made it upstairs.

After watching Layla’s personal motion picture, we bullshitted a little more on what to do, talked weekend plans, and locked in a day next week to head back to the party site and finalize a few things.

The caterer wanted to walk through the space too, get a feel for the layout. It was a simple, mundane conversation to keep things lax while we each processed what we’d just learned. The moment I was alone again, I went straight into my bathroom, shutting the door behind me with a quiet finality. My shirt came off in the same motion.

I turned the shower knob all the way hot.

Steam rolled out instantly, a wall of heat I welcomed. I undressed in silence, muscles pulled tight across my frame, tension humming in every inch of me. I unscrewed the rings from my piercings one by one, careful with the pressure. The metal was cool in my palm, catching the light before I dropped each engraved barbell into the sterile dish by the sink. It was a sanitary thing I couldn’t help but do. I stepped into the shower, and the water hit me like fire, scalding hot. I tilted my head back,closed my eyes, and slowly exhaled, letting the day bleed out and wash down the drain.

As I stood there, the memory of her slipped back in. The way her breath hitched and how she had melted when I placed myself on top of her. That body—fuck. Toned and curved in all the right places. Those thighs, the kind that’d make a man lose his religion. She was perfect. Strong but soft in places that made my hands ache to leave marks.I needed her scent clinging to my sheets and all over me.

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