I study every move. The way she keeps her back to the door, the way she circles the room before sitting. She’s paranoid, but not enough. She never once checks the vents, notices the cameras and does nothing about them. Amateur hour.
She unpacks some weapons before taking a deep breath in.
She finally sits on the edge of the bed, picks up a notebook, and starts writing. I can’t zoom the camera, but I can guess. Lists. Schedules. I’d bet cash there’s a flowchart of every possible way she could get fucked over at this school, color-coded by threat level.
It makes me hard just thinking about it.
A true match.
I keep watching, longer than I mean to. Hours slip by. She eats dinner—delivery, never leaves the room—and watches some shitty mob show on her laptop. She never cracks a smile. Even alone, she’s tight. Serious. I want to see her snap.
By midnight, she’s in bed, lights out, but I can see her moving under the sheets. Tossing. Turning. She sleeps with her knees up, arms crossed over her chest like a corpse. The old-school camera does night vision in grainy green, and it makes her look like a ghost.
I sit back and crack my neck, satisfied.
“You’re mine, princess,” I say, just to the empty room.
The screens flicker. I click back to her room, just in time to see her sit upright in bed, eyes open, scanning the darkness.
Maybe she knows she’s being watched. Maybe she just senses it.
I hope she does.
I kill the feed and shut the monitors off, plunging the room into perfect black. I lie back on the mattress, hands behind my head, pulse still running hot.
There’s nothing in the world I can’t break.
And tomorrow, I start with her.
Chapter 3: Dahlia
Youcantellsomeonerushed to fix this greenhouse judging by the half-dead plants still scattered around. Must have been in bad shape. Glass is swept into a corner and a half broken bench is piled against a wall, but hey, plants are my love language so I can’t complain.
There’s a stink of wet moss and compost, enough to mute the chemical tang of fertilizer. The room is bright, the sun magnified and scattered across rows of colorful plants, waxy-leafed monsters and other random leafy greens.
There’s a discipline to sitting on a chair that’s sinking into dirt. Ankles crossed, shoulders squared, spine a string pulled taut.I listen to the hum of the vents overhead, and the gossip that moves through the class like a virus.
“She’s exiled, they said—her father’s in trouble back home—”
“No, you idiot, the Don sent her here to keep the truce.”
“I heard the Feral Boys already have dibs, probably auctioned her off.”
None of them are new to power, but most of them are new to consequence. I absorb the commentary as I used to absorb the commentary about my father: half-true, half-wishful, never said to my face. There are twenty students in the greenhouse, each with the same performance of boredom, the same sideways glances, the same tendency to shut up when I look up from my notes.
It’s all very predictable, except for the man at the edge of the world.
He stands by the loading doors, where the sunlight is weakest, one shoulder braced against the old steel beam as if it’s the only thing keeping the place upright. He’s massive. Not the empty-muscled kind you see in college gyms, but thick and brutal, shaped by some other curriculum. The jacket he wears barely contains his arms, and the tattoo at his collarbone is visible even at this distance—black lines biting up past the shirt like a leash that never quite held. Stubble lines his jaw and his head is close shaved.
Objectively, he’s exactly my type.
Subjectively, he’s a fucking nightmare.
And right now, his eyes are fixed on me.
He is, of course, the only person in this building who is not pretending to ignore me. I have seen this guy in the files Dad sent: Bam Ellis-Black. Westpoint’s hired monster. Feral Boy, student, enforcer. The only animal trusted to keep the Don’s daughter alive, or to rip her apart if the Board so orders.
Oh yes, I know all about their feral games and I have every intention of giving this meathead a run for his money.
