Page 41 of Cruel (Brutal Academy)

"I'm going to be honest with you, Zachary," I said. "I don't think you've even begun to pay the price for what you, my sister and Dane did to me. Starting with the toxic gas and ending with the whole trafficking bullshit. Now I think about it, you've all gotten off lightly. I don't want to know what Chloe has planned for me, because we'll be ready for her. We will go after her again and there's nothing she can do to get ready for what we'll do. When we're done, she'll beg to step down."

He glared at me. "You're going to regret that. When Chloe is done with you, you'll be the one begging to step down." He stepped closer. "You'll be begging to be auctioned off to someone who will only use you. Because what's coming is going to be so much worse than that."

I wanted to slap the smug expression off his face. Instead, I rolled my eyes at his melodramatic statement. He should be studying theatre instead of chemistry.

"You have no idea what she's planning, do you? It absolutely kills you that you haven't got a clue and that whatever she does, you won't be involved. You might as well leave Brutham and go back to ANU. Make a life for yourself away from us and all this." I spread my hands to either side.

"You never know, you might even be happy." I would be. The farther away from me he was, the better.

He rubbed the back of his neck and exhaled in frustration. "I'm not going anywhere, Lila. If you won't help me voluntarily, then I might have to find a way to force you to."

"Have you ever considered asking nicely?" I asked. "Instead, you accosted me, threatened to assault me, then threatened me in three or four other ways too. I know for a fact your mother raised you better than that." Not much better, granted. She wouldn't have married my father otherwise.

"Yes, but your father didn't." He smiled viciously. "Your father taught us to be ruthless and merciless, and fight for what we want. Not to roll over and play dead."

"Then go out there and fight for Chloe." I waved down the corridor. "Don't let her tell you no. She might like it if you pinned her to the wall and made her listen."

He looked at me for a few drawn out movements.

"You're wrong about one thing. I do know what she's planning. She had a backup in case things went pear-shaped with the last plan. She probably has a backup for the backup. I believe you when you say you didn't drug her. It's something the twins would do. Something half-assed and ultimately doomed to fail. I mean, what have they really done? Changed her birth-control and put her to sleep for a while? Small potatoes compared to what we've done. What will they think of next? Putting hair dye in her shampoo so she accidentally dyes her hair green? They make all of this look like amateur hour in preschool. They call themselves evil twins, but pathetic twins would be more accurate. It's almost like they want you to lose."

He looked down his nose at me, then stepped away.

I pressed my head back against the wall behind me. He was right. We hadn't done anything that came close to what Chloe had done to us. I knew the guys fully intended drugging Chloe to go a lot further than it did. Were they disappointed I stopped it? Was I wrong to think about stepping in? This whole competition could be over if I'd kept my mouth shut and if Dane hadn't stepped in when he did.

I was going to have to do something drastic. Something that would have an impact on Chloe and on this stupid competition. Something that would put an end to it once and for all.

CHAPTER16

LILA

"We have something for you." Hunter waved Parker and Slade into my room and closed and locked the door behind them. He held up a tub of my favourite choc-mint ice cream. In his other hand, he held a bottle of chocolate sauce.

They sat down around me on my bed. Parker handed out bowls and spoons and Hunter started scooping ice cream into each.

"Are we celebrating something?" I put my laptop aside and nodded as Slade raised the bottle of chocolate sauce and looked at me in question. He squeezed a big dollop onto the top of my ice cream.

"We're celebrating being alive," Hunter said. "In my opinion, that's a good enough excuse for ice cream." He raised his bowl to me in toast before starting to eat.

"Works for me." I dug my spoon into mine. "You're sure there's nothing in this other than ice cream and chocolate sauce, right?"

"Slade and I drove into town to get it," Hunter said. "If there's anything in there, then someone was trying to drug the whole town."

"You realise that's not impossible, right?" I still scooped ice cream into my mouth and savoured the minty taste before I swallowed. "Mmm, so good."

Parker grinned around his spoon. "You have the exact same expression on your face right now as you do when you swallow my cum."

"What can I say? I have good taste in ice cream and men." And ice cream and cum both tasted delicious.

"I wonder how much of this I'd have to eat before my cum tasted like mint," Parker mused.

"There's only one way to find out," Hunter said.

"Are you offering to take part in that experiment?" Slade teased.

Hunter laughed. "Only on the coming side, not the swallowing. In order for this to be a true scientific experiment, we need a control group. Or a control guy."

"As interested as I am in scientific research and Lila swallowing my cum, I don't want to miss out on this ice cream." Slade shovelled a huge spoonful into his mouth.

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