Chapter 38
BANE
Nine years ago:
Fuck this place.
I know how these people see me when I walk through the halls, tainting them with my very presence.
Dynastic wealth always looks down on new money. Especially when that new money took what the dynastic motherfuckers view as “a shortcut.” Never mind that these old-money shitheads all—and I do mean all—got their money in the form of an inheritance or a trust fund.
It doesn’t matter. To them, if you’re not one of them, you never can be.
Dad’s sent me here because he wants…
Fuck, I don’t know. Partly to offset what I think he sees as the poisonous environment of being brought up in the bratva. I mean, I want the track I’ve been set on. I'm eager to lead his underworld empire when he’s ready to hand it to me.
But until then, he wants me to go here, with the “normal” rich kids, unlike my friends, Roman and Laz, who are at The Pembroke School. Pembroke is another snobby pit of old-money snakes. But that place has been “corrupted” by our kind—the underworld kind—for at least a generation or two.
Not here, though. Here, I’m the odd man out.
Mostly.
As if on cue, the new girl strides around the corner of the hallway. Well, technically a quarter of the fucking school are “new” today. It’s day one of the school year, and she’s one of the incoming freshmen.
Dove Marchetti: Cesare Marchetti’s princess of a daughter.
She flashes a killer smile as she sashays down the hall in her short plaid skirt, knee socks and open blouse, looking like a wet dream.
Not my fucking wet dream. But definitely one for just about every other guy who attends this fucking school.
They won't give a shit that she’s “dirty new money” like me because it’s overshadowed by that pushup bra, big dark eyes and million-watt smile.
“Don’t drool, Viggo.”
My jaw clenches before I turn. Scott Hathaway, “of the Upper East Side Hathaways” as he has a nauseating habit of saying, is a grade behind me. But despite being a cretin, a creep, and a piece of shit, the motherfucker is royalty in this school. And at Pembroke, that’s saying something.
He’s already the varsity quarterback in his sophomore year and has the entourage around him to back it up.
But none of that is why I don’t just beat the fuck out of him.
“What’s the matter, Viggo?” Scott grins at me. “You jizz in your pants already?”
It’s probably the millionth time I’ve heard him or one of his little friends call me that. Viggo as in Viggo Mortensen, the lead actor in Eastern Promises, a movie about—wait for it—the Russian Bratva.
How fucking original.
But the single most annoying thing about this little bitch isn’t the dumb name he calls me. It’s not his obnoxious, all-American-douchebag persona.
It’s the fact that I can’t hit him.
Not because I’ll get in trouble or whatever. But because Dad is in the middle of negotiating a huge deal with Mitchell Hathaway, Scott’s equally douchebaggy father.
I know. But as Dad’s told me easily a dozen times, “You gotta get down and eat with the pigs if you want to get fat.”
Dad knows what he’s doing. He built the empire I’ll lead one day from fucking nothing. I also happen to know that this deal he’s working out with Mitchell Hathaway will eventually mean we fucking own that cunt.
But until that happy day, Nikolai Antonov’s son categorically cannot, sadly, beat the ever-loving shit out of Mitchell Hathaway’s son.
It’s been very hard to keep myself in check.
Not just stopping myself from punching his lights out, but also from telling him that his dad is just as fucking dirty as he says mine is.
Scott doesn’t know about that side of his dad’s business, and fuck would it be sweet to be the one to clue him in and watch him realize he’s just as sullied as the rest of us.
But I bite my tongue, daily, because that’s what my father needs me to do.
“Tell me, Viggo…” Scott grins, nodding past me. I glance back to see Dove surrounded by a gaggle of rich, horny Thornfield Prep motherfuckers.
Scott snickers, elbowing his buddies. “You got a little stiffy for that freshman? Well, too bad,” he smirks. “That chick is mine.”
To be clear, there’s nothing little about my “stiffy”. But if the rumors I’ve heard from some of the cheerleaders who occasionally buy weed from me are true—I mean, who the hell else are they going to buy from at this buttoned-up shithole—Scott’s “stiffy” sure is.
“Cool.” I pat his shoulder a bit harder than I should, winking at him. “Good luck with that baby dick of yours. I’m sure she’ll love it.”
His face darkens as I brush past him.
“The fuck did you just say, bitch!” he yells after me.
“It’s the motion of the ocean, right, Scotty?” I yell back as I turn to grin and hold up two middle fingers at him. “Not the size of the boat!”
Eat a bag of dicks, motherfucker.
That bitchy cheerleader is all his.
I pull the pack of smokes out of my back pocket as I step outside and slip behind the athletic wing. Smoking isn’t permitted on campus, and it’s actually one of the rules they enforce.
Like I care.
I slip a cigarette between my lips and light it with a flick of my Zippo.
“Can I bum one of those?”
I whirl, then do a double take.
Fuck me.
Okay, they’re not twins, but she looks freakishly like the cheerleader princess I just ignored inside. Sort of. I frown. Eh, maybe it’s just their faces.
The girl looking at me—expectantly, like she’s already so sure I’ll give her a cigarette that she’s annoyed she doesn’t have it yet—is another freshman. She’s petite, with a build that screams athlete.
“I dance,” she says flatly. “Ballet.”
I frown. “What?”
“You were checking out my legs.”
“I…wasn’t.”
She smirks. “Yeah, you were.”
I totally was.
“I dance ballet.”
“So you said,” I say dryly.
She sighs. “So…where we at with that smoke?”
I snort in spite of myself, taking a slow drag as my gaze drifts over her.
She’s cute.
Scratch that. She’s fucking stunning. But she downplays it in this arty-punk way. The blonde hair, with a few light blue and purple streaks. The anarchy symbol painted in…is that White-Out?…on the side of her Mary Janes.
“Here.”
I take the cigarette out of my mouth and hand it to her.
Fuckin’ smooth, self.
She takes it with a small nod. “Thanks.”
I nod back, lighting a new one for myself.
“A little young to be smoking, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” She winces overdramatically. “Oh, sorry, unless you’re twenty-one and repeating the eleventh grade for like the fifth time?”
I smirk, nodding my chin at her hair. “They’re going to nail you to the wall for that hair, you know.”
“Really?”
“Really. Welcome to Thornfield, where fun goes to die a painful death, dressed head-to-toe in Brooks Brothers.”
She giggles, her dark eyes twinkling as she pushes a lock of blue back from her face.
She puts her hand out. “What’s your name?”
“Bane,” I say, taking hers.
“Bane? As in, the bane of my existence?”
“If you ask me nicely.”
She grins again.
Fuck, she’s got a pretty smile.
She hasn’t let go of my hand yet, either.
“Nice to meet you, Bane. I’m Lark. Wanna be friends?”