“I saw your father whisper something to you. I’m guessing he wasn’t inviting you on a fishing trip.”
“He wants me… nay, hecommandedme to remove the three scholarship students from the Eldritch Club,” he said. “Or I will be removing myself.”
“Can he do that?”
“He’s a senior member.”
Vincent’s cruel words echoed inside my head. “Are you going to do it?”
“All my life I’ve tried to please him,” Trey said, still staring ahead. His voice sounded far away. “Nothing is ever enough. I’ll always be a failure in his eyes. My brother, Wilhem, he can do no wrong. Quinn would say the sun shines out his asshole. Even Ayaz – the poor Turkish kid my father only brought to this country for PR reasons – gets more respect from him than I ever did.”
“I don’t know what that’s like,” I said. “My mom was happy with anything I did.”
Almost anything.
“You’re lucky,” he said.
I snorted. “Is thattheTrey Bloomberg, heir to the Bloomberg fortune, telling me that I’m lucky?”
“I’m not the heir anymore,” he muttered.
“But you’re the oldest. You share his name. Is that the way it’s supposed to go?”
“I can’t be his heir. I was the oldest once, but I’m stuck here and my dipshit brother passed me by. He got to drop out of university, become a founder, run his tech startup into the ground, and get a job and a corner office at Daddy’s firm. And as far as the outside world knows, I’m dead.” Trey rubbed his head with his hands. “It’s so fucked up, Hazel. All the kids who go here… it’s too convenient. Dad got me out of his way so he could groom Wilhem to take over the business. Damon Delacorte got rid of the only person standing between him and his sadistic tendencies toward his wife, Tillie’s parents saw her as a chess piece they could maneuver into a better social position. She’s been promised to me since birth.”
“I can’t believe your parents arranged your marriages for you.” Trey nodded. “That’s medieval levels of bullshit.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Trey laughed without mirth. “Allthe Miskatonic students are more valuable to their parents dead than alive. And Courtney…”
“What about Courtney?”
“I think her mother saw her as a threat. Courtney was younger and hotter and she had a talent for design. She had a huge following on LiveJournal. She would have become one of the earliest online influencers. Then the next thing, she’s tragically killed in a fire.”
My heart hammered in my chest. “Spell it out for me, Bloomberg. What are you saying?”
Trey glanced toward the door, as if checking we were alone. He reached across and grabbed my hand, knitting his fingers in mine. “No one else knows this. No one’s ever talked about it. Maybe they all think it, but I doubt that. Everyone is far too wrapped up in their own shit to see.”
“To see what?” I whispered.
“Thatwewere the first sacrifice,” Trey choked on the words. “That it was no accident we were killed in that fire.”
My stomach twisted. If that was true… Their parents sent them to this school knowing they’d be sacrificed, all so they could get their hands on the power of the god. They did all this to keep their place in the world.
Fuck.
If what Trey said was true… I literallystared into the face of hate itself,and nothing that Great Old God had thrown at me compared to the horror of what their parents had done.
Good old human evil tops interdimensional cosmic deity yet again.
If it’s true.
I knew a thing or two about trauma, and dying in a fire then being brought back from the dead wins the prize in the ‘who’s more fucked up’ lottery. This cruel, remote King was still processing that dark shit. No wonder Trey was so detached, so driven to keep repeating the same year with the same result. If he kept pretending he was King of Kings at this school, then he didn’t have to face what was really going on.
I remembered those words he’d scrawled across the college prospectus in his room. NO FUTURE. NO HOPE. NO TOMORROW.
I rested my hand on Trey’s, squeezing his shaking fingers. “I believe you, but do you think there’s a possibility that you’ve convinced yourself this is true because you hate your father that much?”
“You’re right about one thing,” he spat. “Idohate him.”
