A single drop of red rained down from the ceiling, causing my eyes to slowly travel upward to where a bloody symbol was painted across my ceiling.
A dark red spade. In the middle, scrawled in jagged letters:Pretty Little Ace.
Stumbling backward, I crashed into the hallway wall before fleeing from the house. My feet tripped down the front steps, across the lawn, and into the safety of my car.
I didn’t need confirmation. My heart already knew the truth.
Logan Reid had survived that night.
I knew he would defy all odds of death to get his hands on me. And when he did, he would ensure that he wiped every record of my existence from the face of this earth.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
acelynn
The campusof Saint Aveline’s Academy was nearly empty at this time of night. Finals week meant most students holed up in their dorms, high on caffeine and dread for the tests to come. But Logan had insisted we meet in the library, something about the silence helping him focus.
I leaned back against the hardwood chair. My notes were sprawled out in front of me in a messy pile of color-coded highlights and Post-it tabs. Criminology was never an easy subject for me, but I loved the structure of it—rules, patterns, logic. The idea that even chaos could be decoded if you connect the clues.
Logan pulled back from his own notes, the edge of his pencil tapping rhythmically against his bottom lip. “Okay, pop quiz.”
I raised a brow. “I thought we were done with those?”
“If you were going to kill someone.” He ignored me, voice soft and casual, like he was asking about the weather. “How would you do it? And get away with it?”
I blinked slowly at him. “That’s…not on the exam.”
Logan’s grin widened, all teeth and charm. Part of the reason I liked him. He gave off an effortless bad boy vibe that I swooned over the first few weeks of us dating. All he had to do was run his hand through his light brown hair and toss a wink of his hazel eyes that sparkled with trouble to get me to fall in love. My brother would have hated everything about him. That is why I kept him a secret.
“Come on, doll. You aced every other question I threw out at you. Why not play a little? Hypothetically.”
“Well, hypothetically…” My eyes traveled back to my notes. “You’d need to avoid anything personal. No obvious motive, no connection to the victim. Ensure there are no cameras around and nothing to trace me.”
“Smart. And how would you dispose of the body?” He nodded, as if impressed with my answer.
My spine stiffened against the back of my chair. “That’s not funny, Logan.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” he said with a casual shrug. “You’ve just got the background for it. I mean, you have been trained to know how people think, what makes them tick. That’s a dangerous skill, little Spade.”
I hated that nickname. He was the only one at school who ever used it.
“I am studying business, not criminology,” I said, voice a little sharper than I meant it to be, but something about his insinuation struck me the wrong way. No one at this school knew of my family’s crimes. I just told them they owned an extremely successful mechanics shop, which is how I affordedthe high tuition. “This was just a fun elective to fill a requirement.”
“Right,” Logan murmured, leaning forward. “But knowing how to commit the perfect crime? That’s power most people don’t even realize they possess.”
The air between us shifted, thickening to an unbearable amount that made it hard for me to breathe. I pulled at the sleeves of my cardigan as the library’s temperature heated. Something dark flickered behind Logan’s eyes, something that I had never noticed before. Or maybe I had just chosen to ignore it.
“You ever hear about that guy who got kicked out of his gang in a small town in Arizona?” he asked suddenly.
My stomach dropped because, of course, I had heard of Liam, but he hadn’t just been kicked out of his club. I shook my head no, waiting for him to respond.
“Blacklisted from his whole scene. Word is, he and another guy tried to flip on someone big. Burned bridges with their family name. But I am pretty sure they were killed for their crimes.”
I felt like I was going to vomit. This wasn’t a random story he had found while scrolling the internet. Not when it was tied to my father and brother, who had spent years burying their dirty laundry that came from the club. No one would dare speak of the execution of club members, knowing the consequences.
“What gang was it?” I asked, heart thudding.
Logan’s lips turned up in a devious grin, but he didn’t answer me. He just leaned further back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head as he watched me like a cat that had just pinned its prey.
