Chapter 53
CHAPTER 53
Max
The girl … isn’t hers? She’s not Cora’s mother?
No, that can’t be right. This has to be a mistake. She wouldn’t steal … a child?
Heath nearly breaks the bat in two with just his fist.
Suddenly, she turns around and runs off down the stairs.
“Ivy, stop!” I yell, but she ignores me completely.
I bolt down the stairs and follow her out of The Shack. But she’s already jumped on my bike, and my hands immediately fly to tear out my own hair. “Wait, that’s my bike!”
She turns the handle to speed up, and the wheels skid in the grass, spraying mud everywhere.
Silas bolts out the door, yelling, “Do you even know how to drive?”
“You don’t understand what you’ve done!” she yells back, racing off.
“Oh fuck no.” I fall to my knees. “No, my beautiful bike. What if she crashes it?”
Heath runs out the door too, growling, “Where is she?”
“Gone,” I lament.
Heath throws the bat to the ground, incensed. “Fuck!”
“Where’s she gonna go?” I mutter. “Everyone will see her covered in blood.”
Silas fishes a cigarette from his pocket and lights it up. “Cora.”
Heath’s eyes flash. “You don’t think she’s gonna …”
“She’s gonna run,” I mutter as I stumble to my feet. “Oh God, we gotta stop her.”
“We can’t,” Silas says.
“We have to,” I say, grabbing Silas by the shirt so he knows I’m serious. “If anyone sees her like that, they’re gonna ask questions, and she’ll definitely implicate us.”
“Never mind that,” Heath says. “What are we gonna do with those bodies up there? Penelope’s men will definitely snitch. She’ll kill you for real this time.”
“I don’t fucking care. It was worth it.” Silas fishes his phone from his pocket. “I’ll make one last phone call to my mom’s men… and then we chase her.”
Ivy
I race up the mountain as fast as I can.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, you stupid bike, go faster!
I pull the handle harder, trying to zigzag past each rock on the street, just like Max did, but he made it look so effortless while it’s so damn hard that I nearly lose control of the bike. With the sun quickly setting, it’s becoming harder and harder to see. But I have to keep it together. I have to get to her before Stefano does.
Ivan was the anonymous phone number demanding money from me.
I knew it from the start because he’s the one who caught me when I took Cora.
Ivan … Stefano’s most trusted personal guard.
The same fucking Ivan Heath bought those damn pills from.
Shit!
I should’ve known he would rat me out.
I should never have trusted those devils from the Skull and Serpent Society.
Now it’s going to cost me my life.
And Cora.
Fuck no. I’m not going to let them take her. Over my dead fucking body.
I race up the mountains and through the gate, all the way back to the Skull and Serpent Society, where I jump off and rush inside. There are a ton of guys now, all chatting about their day-to-day life, but they ignore me as I head up the stairs. Someone must’ve told them Cora and I were here and to act normal.
But it’s not safe to stay here anymore.
I rush to Cora’s room and quickly wipe down my face with my shirt before I open the door.
She’s playing with a giant dollhouse that’s filled to the brim with furniture and dolls. “Ivy!” She runs into my arms and hugs me tight, but then looks up at me in horror. “What’s that … on your face?”
I wipe away some more. “Paint.” I look at the dollhouse, confused as hell. “That wasn’t here before,” I mutter.
“Heath gave it to me,” she says.
I frown. “When?”
“This morning. He said it was a gift and that I could play with it as long as I’d like. Can I keep it, please?”
My heart aches for her.
“Oh, sweetie …” I go to my knees. “I’m sorry.”
“Can we stay here, please?”
Her begging will be my undoing.
“We can’t, I’m sorry,” I say.
She pouts. “But I like it here.”
“I know you do,” I say, hugging her again. “But this is a school. It’s not a house.”
“But plenty of other people live here. Everyone has their own room. That’s a house, isn’t it?”
She’s got a point there.
“Yes, and no. Look, this was only supposed to be a temporary solution.”
“But where are we going to go?” she asks, grabbing her little red flower lying on her bed and clutching it tightly.
Every answer I have to give her breaks my heart a little bit more.
“I don’t know, sweetie …” I blow out a deep breath. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.” I rub her little cheeks before I tuck her little red flower into her small pocket. “C’mon. Grab your things. It’s time to leave.”
I grab a bag from the closet and stuff it with clothes and shoes, then grab all of our belongings and her little hand and bolt off into the next room, Silas’s room, to search for that same little box of money that I found the first night I came into this godforsaken house. I rip open all of his drawers until I find it hidden underneath his desk.
Gotcha.
I stuff it in the bag too. I’ll worry about how to open it later. Even if only a couple of bills are inside, anything is better than nothing.
I rush through the Skull and Serpent Society house and haul everything downstairs.
“Why do we have to run so much?” Cora says, breathing wildly. “I can’t, my feet hurt.”
“Yes, you can. You must.” I grip her hand tighter so I can focus on getting us to safety first.
BAM!
The moment my foot touches the last step, I’m blasted backward into the stairs as a loud explosion fills the room, and my head knocks back into the wood. The bag is flung out of my hands. I’m disoriented from the blast, and my ears are ringing and my eyesight has gone hazy. But I can definitely see four masked men barging into the house, guns pointed right at the other students.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunshots fill the room with smoke and death, blood splattering everywhere. The screeching of students brings me back to the here and now, and I cover Cora with my own body to shield her from the rain of bullets.
Left and right, students go down instantly, unprepared for the sudden assault, but to my surprise, none of the bullets even so much as grazes my skin. I breathe in and hold it as hard as I try to hold my courage to keep Cora from feeling the fear taking hold of my heart.
Until hands wrap around my arms and drag me away from her.
“No, no, no!” I shriek, trying to maintain balance despite being hit in the head by what feels like a sledgehammer.
“Keep quiet, bitch,” the guy who holds me says.
And I have to watch in abject horror as they drag me farther away from her … while she screams my name.
“Ivy!”
Another guy picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. “Move!”
Even though I’m bleeding from the back of my head, I still knock myself back right into the guy’s forehead.
“Fuck!” he yells.
And I kick back into his nuts and bite down on his arm, leaving a bloodied indent.
“Let me go!” I scream.
But the more I kick and shove, the harder he clamps down on my body.
“This bitch bit me!” the guy yells at the others.
“Handle it!” another one yells back. “We gotta get back to the van. Now!”
They march out the door with both of us, but the moment we’re outside, we’re split up.
“Cora!” I yell while I drag my feet on the ground to slow them down as we head farther and farther away from the Skull and Serpent Society, the only safety net I still have left. Down, down, down, into a dark void I’m shoved, and the only light I have is destroyed by two doors slamming shut.
But I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care if I have to rot in here for all of eternity as long as I know one fucking thing.
“Where’s Cora?!” I yell. “Where is she?!”