I remembered it like yesterday. Like it had happened last week instead of over a decade ago. Some things never faded no matter how much distance you put between yourself and the event.
"Three days."
"And that kid from Upstate New York cracked first."
"Ricci," I said, the name surfacing from memory along with a clear image of a skinny fourteen-year-old screaming to be let out. He was supposed to be one of our top wide receivers the next year. "Marco Ricci. Yeah. After he cracked, they let us all out. Dragged us into the common room. Made us watch while they lectured us on weakness. Made an example of him in front of everyone. Then he disappeared."
We’d all guessed about Ricci after that. Hopefully, he made it home. But unlikely.
"We were only fourteen," Connor said quietly, something raw and unhealed underneath the words.
"Yeah." I finished my beer, setting the empty bottle down on the counter with more force than necessary, the glass hitting marble with a sharp crack. "Those fuckers stole our childhood. Our lives. Everything we might have been. Everything normal."
I looked at Connor, serious now. Meaning every word.
"We killed them once. I say we kill them again. Burn it down. Salt the earth. Make sure it never comes back."
Connor met my eyes, and I saw the same cold determination I felt burning in my chest reflected back at me.
The same fury that had driven us to escape in the first place.
The same refusal to ever go back.
The two old friends nodded, a silent agreement passing between us like a contract signed in blood and sealed with shared trauma.
Just like that, the pact was made.
No discussion needed.
No debate.
We'd survived St. Paul's once by burning it to the ground.
We'd do it again.
Whatever it took.
However long it took.
Whoever we had to go through to make it happen.
Now I just had to figure out how to protect Ella while hunting the men hunting us.
How to keep her safe without pushing her away.
How to dodge the trap that was Ella from Manhattan—beautiful, forward, vulnerable, dangerous to everything I was trying to maintain—while not getting her killed in the crossfire of a war she didn't know she'd walked into.
19
ELLA
Morning light slipped through the thin curtains in pale Parisian gold, soft and forgiving in a way the past few days hadn’t been.
For a moment, half-awake, I forgot where I was again.
Then the unfamiliar ceiling settled into focus. The faint scent of Rose’s perfume still lingering in the air. The quiet hum of the city below instead of Manhattan traffic.
And the memory returned all at once.
