Worse Than Wicked (Willow Heights Prep Academy: The Enemy #2)

one

Duke Dolce

They slide down the chute in a great, rattling, bouncing rush, a blue wave coming in like a tide, adding to the ocean below. The bin is almost full. I hold my hand under the waterfall of them, sink my fingers into the new, warm batch and down below, into the cold, smooth beads.

“Hey, Duke,” says a voice behind me. Her small hand snakes onto my shoulder, and I turn and smile down at my girlfriend.

“Hey, yourself, Duchess,” I say, gripping her waist and pulling her in for a kiss.

She stands on tiptoes, pressing her soft lips to mine.

For one moment, everything is perfect.

Then she pulls back with a grimace. “I thought I told you to wear your mask when you’re doing this,” she says, pulling the covering up over the bottom of my face. “I can taste it on you.”

“It’s not bad once you get used to it,” I say. “I don’t even smell it anymore.”

“That’s probably not a good thing,” she says. “Neither is breathing it in all day. Hence, the mask.”

I don’t tell her that I breathed in the smoke when they burned once. That I watched the flames shoot up while my father lay facedown in a tray of pearls, and instead of rushing to save him, I turned and walked out.

Sometimes, I wonder if he woke up before he died.

If he tried to get out, to crawl across the floor and out of the room before the flames consumed him, writhing in agony.

Sometimes, I see him standing there, silently watching, ready to pounce on me for the slightest infraction, but when I blink, he’s gone.

Sometimes, I wake up to the sound of him screaming as we burned him alive.

Baron says it’s not real because we never heard him scream, but he doesn’t know. I hear it all the time, whether or not my ears ever did. He doesn’t understand. He would have saved Dad. He believes what Dad always told us.

Dolce blood is thicker than chocolate, more toxic than the Lady Alice.

He didn’t say the second part, but it’s the truth. After all, he’s just one of the dead we’ve left in our wake.

Dawson.

Dad.

The man who fucked Mabel.

Jane.

Less than five, still only a handful. I tell myself that to console myself, just like I only call her Jane, never her real name.

Blue.

Blue, like the blue pearls, the pearl lady, Lady Alice, Alice in Wonderland.

Mabel smiles, sensing my mood, and gestures to the machines. “Everything off?”

I hit the button to turn off the lights. “It is now, Duchess.”

Her smile turns secretive, the one she keeps just for me. “Okay, Duke.”

On the way out, I snag her hand, and she lets me.

She lets me hold it all the way to the car, where Baron is waiting.

Does she wish they were his fingers between hers, though? Does she pretend they are?

She climbs into the passenger seat, and I slide into the back of Baron’s Audi e-tron next to their two school bags.

They spend all day together at college, and even though they don’t have any classes together—Mabel is a junior now, Baron a freshman; Mabel is a forensic science major while Baron is focusing on neuroscience—they go to the same school and drive in together every day.

Sometimes I wonder about the best part of Mabel’s day.

Is it the moment I get out of the car in the morning, when she knows her time alone with Baron begins?

Or does she dread the moment they drop me off and she’s at his mercy?

“How’d your final go?” Baron asks Mabel as we pull away from the unobtrusive building that houses our operation.

“Good,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I got everything right except maybe two questions. I knew almost everything on it.”

“You should,” I mutter. “You sure studied enough.”

Baron glances at me in the rearview. “Everything good in Wonderland?”

It’s ironic that he named the location after the pearls people call Alice in Wonderland, a Baron Original Recipe that has half the college students in the country getting fucked up and fucking their brains out at parties.

The building where he set it up is the furthest thing from a fairytale—a drab, nondescript red brick square with barred windows that looks abandoned but is owned by some non-existent shell company he set up online, so the city never bothers about it.

“Every day’s a thrilling adventure filled with new delights,” I say sarcastically.

“You know we couldn’t do any of this without you, right?” he says, watching me in the mirror. “You’re the backbone of the whole operation.”

“A monkey could do my job,” I point out.

“That’s not true,” Mabel says, twisting around in her seat. “Besides, if you weren’t there, what would you be doing?”

She’s right. I’d probably be passed out in a ditch somewhere. That’s the best case scenario. There’s no way I’d have gotten into a good school like she and Baron did. I have no skills, no prospects. Cooking drugs is probably the best place for me. At least then I get the product for free.

“Alice pays for all of this,” Baron says as we pull up at our posh townhouse in the trendiest neighborhood in the city. “If you didn’t work there, we wouldn’t live here. You’re paying for us to go to school, vacations, everything.”

“You’re our sugar daddy,” Mabel says, squeezing my knee before turning to undo her seatbelt.

Baron gestures around at the place we chose for the three of us, a perfect fit for each of our needs. We can walk to local breweries, coffee roasteries, and cafés; record stores, art studios, bookstores, and vintage shops. Even Mabel could walk alone at night around here.

Not that we’d let her.

The neighborhood is safe, it’s thriving, and it’s pricey as fuck. Baron loves it.

I can’t tell if Mabel does or if she just appeases him by agreeing.

We climb out of the car and head inside. Unlike Baron’s last place, there’s no padded basement with torture devices and a starving girl. The place is light and airy, modern and elegantly decorated. The only girl here is Mabel.

I watch her hang her backpack and slip off her shoes.

Since the day Baron made her break her toes, she’s only run once.

Of course it was when I was supposed to be watching her, so Baron got pissed at me.

Since then, I’ve watched her more carefully.

I don’t like letting her out of my sight, not even when she’s with him.

She’s slippery, unpredictable. Every time I wake up and she’s not in the bed, I start to panic, worrying that she’s out with another man again, that Baron will kill him again. That this time, we’ll be caught.

Maybe she wants that. Now that she knows what he’ll do, she could set him up.

“Are you excited about our trip?” she asks when she sees me watching her.

“No,” I say, scowling. “Why would I want to go somewhere cold as fuck and not see anyone for the holidays?”

“It’s not much colder than New York,” Baron points out.

“New York had parties and fun shit to do.”

“And Havoc Harbor has us,” Mabel says, coming over to wrap her arms around my neck. “It’ll be fun. Just the three of us. No homework, no studying, no school or work.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t go home,” I say. “Your family knows where you are. Our family knows where you are. You’re not hiding anymore.”

“Because I tried to kill Royal’s girlfriend,” Baron says from the table, where he’s set down his bag and is petting Seeley Boots, who isn’t supposed to get on the table but likes to lie there when we’re not around.

“You went back for graduation,” I point out.

He exchanges a look with Mabel, and I wonder if they’ve talked about this, and if it’s me they’re worried about returning to Faulkner, not Baron.

“What?” I demand.

“I’ll talk to Royal,” Baron promises.

“I’m going to take a shower,” I say, and I stomp off to the pretty, tiled bathroom with the skylight and the fancy soaps that Mabel likes.

I thought once we got Mabel, everything would be fixed, that it would all be good again, but it’s not.

I’m not even sure when it stopped being good.

I thought it was when she left, but maybe it wasn’t her at all.

Sometimes I wonder if I even know her at all. Or Baron.

Or myself.

The problem of her being gone is gone, but there are new problems now.

Like how I’m never quite sure if she slipped away while I was watching her just because it was easier, or because she knew Baron would be pissed at me, and she wanted that.

Maybe she even wanted him to kill me. I don’t think he would.

But maybe someday I’ll fuck up enough that he realizes he doesn’t need me.

That they don’t need me.

Before I drop my jeans, I remove my wallet, then slide a hand in the front pocket. I finger the smooth little bead, debating whether to take another one before bed. It will keep me up all night, but then, I never sleep well anyway. Too many monsters lurk there.

I already took one today, watched porn on my phone between batches, jerked off until my dick was sore. I have one here, though, and I’m already itching for it, so I swallow it dry, letting that bitter chemical burn spread from the back of my throat, seeping over my tongue as I shower.

I jerk off again, using plenty of cream rinse so I don’t chafe.

I picture Mabel, tied to the bed when Baron hunted her down, about what we did to her.

I think about Harper, tied to the tree, what we did to her.

I think about Mabel tied to the bed another time, what we all did to her, my brothers and me, one after another, one-two-three-four, the train we ran, and how we left her there, and Dad found her.

When I’m done, I get out of the shower and towel off.

I hear Baron and Mabel talking in the other room.

They’re probably talking about me. That’s if they even remember I’m here, if they care.

They could be plotting, though I’m not sure what.

It’s a dumb thought anyway. I’ve been spending too much time in Wonderland—both the place where it’s made and the place it takes me—and it’s making me paranoid.