4
Taking on and defying the devil drives him mad
A week had passed.
And I don’t know how I didn’t see it coming that day.
The morning actually got off to a good start.
I found the courage to straighten my dyed-black hair and put on my control yourself or I’ll control you shirt.
Standing in front of the mirror, I told myself that the world needed to stop revolving around the Cash brothers and .
. . But in this story, almost everything revolved around them, and I know that’s exactly what you want to hear most about, but I need to tell you these things.
I still needed to achieve one of my initial goals: getting onto the Tagus newspaper team.
The newspaper’s Instagram account posted that they’d be trying out new candidates at one o’clock that afternoon.
It was just my luck that the teacher for my last class was running late, so at ten past one, I ran over to the audiovisual building.
I was nervous yet upbeat when I arrived and walked through the double doors of the printing room, sure that I’d ace these tests.
But that confidence was quickly knocked out of me as soon as the door shut behind me with a treacherous sound, like it was trying to say, Look who’s here!
The twenty people sitting there shifted their attention to me.
I only recognized two faces: Aleixandre’s. And . . . you guessed it: Aegan’s.
Wow, looks like you have a thing for being the center of attention, my nagging mind teased.
I froze for a second. Aegan hadn’t looked up; he was lost in thought, writing something with an electronic stylus on an iPad, but it was really awkward because Aleixandre was staring at me with a slightly confused look on his face.
Weird confusion, like there was something he couldn’t quite figure out about me or why I was even there.
I thought maybe I’d made a mistake or that I’d shown up too late.
My inner alarm went off telling me to get the hell out of there because, if there were two Cash brothers in there, the danger was plain to see. So I turned around, but . . .
“Are you here for the newspaper tryouts or . . . ?” Aleixandre asked me before I could open the door.
Surprisingly, his voice was warm and friendly. As I looked at him again, I no longer saw a look of confusion on his younger, more relaxed-looking face, a scheming blend of Adrik’s and Aegan’s features. He flashed me the smile of a naughty child who thought things were about to get interesting.
I tried to sound relaxed. “Yeah, I wanted to talk to the club president to . . .”
“Well, I’m the club president.” His face might as well have said, What a coincidence.
Oh, fuck, was he kidding?
“Great,” I said, acting excited.
He nodded enthusiastically, pointed to one of the empty chairs and invited me in. Come on, sit down, you don’t have to leave.”
Fuck. I couldn’t run away if I didn’t want to come across as being crazy, so I made my way over to one of the chairs with the weight of all eyes—except Aegan’s—on me. My butt hit the seat just as Aleixandre was about to pick up where he’d left off, but a girl raised her hand.
“Yeah?” Aleixandre said.
“This girl will only be listening, right?” she asked, sounding like she was trying to hide how much she hated me. “Because we’ve already done the tests.”
I didn’t stop to look too closely at her. I had a lightbulb moment and quickly took my phone out of my pocket. I then showed everyone the screen with the exact time.
“Technically, the time isn’t up,” I said calmly, not wanting to cause a scene. “The ad said tryouts would be from twelve thirty to one thirty. It’s one fifteen.”
Aleixandre nodded as if agreeing. But it didn’t end there.
“I think letting her take the test would be unfair,” the girl said, clearly against the idea and speaking without even looking at me directly. We all showed up at twelve thirty. Nobody was late.”
To be quite honest, she was kind of right. Being late when the others had been on time was disrespectful, but at least I had an explanation.
“I’m late because my last class dragged on, so we finished ten minutes late,” I clarified so they wouldn’t think I was late on purpose.
But nobody was convinced. Everybody was on the girl’s side and chimed in saying, “That’s right,” and “We showed up on time,” and “She can’t just do the test whenever she feels like it.
” Despite the mild commotion, Aegan didn’t look up from the tablet, seeming to ignore what was going on.
With a half-lidded, teasing look, Aleixandre scanned everyone speaking, and gradually, the room quieted down.
He remained silent, pausing with the deliberate gravitas of a television presenter at a decisive moment.
I noticed he had the scintillating look of someone who treated everything like a game.
Hell, did my chance of getting to work on the paper depend on the immature Cash brother? Just my luck!
“Let’s vote,” he said slowly for dramatic effect.
Smart move; I’d lose. It was so obvious that everyone would vote against me.
He knew that. The girl did too, because she turned her face and threw me a small, satisfied smirk.
Have you seen the film Legally Blonde? Well, she looked at me the same way Vivian Kensington looked at Elle Woods when she was showing off her engagement ring.
Okay, the day isn’t going as planned. I thought about turning around and leaving, but that would’ve made me look like a coward. So, in the end, I wore the same steadfast look that Elle had at the party when she showed up dressed as a bunny.
Everyone nodded hesitantly. Most of them accepted the idea of a vote.
I didn’t want to, but arguing about it would’ve made me look worse.
“I guess,” I said.
“That’s it then.” He nodded. He paused for a minute and then unexpectedly said, “But with some conditions.”
The girl frowned, looking somewhere between confused and pissed off. It even caught me off guard. What kind of conditions?
Aleixandre explained it in a this will be interesting voice: “If we let her take the test, then anyone who’s late this term, for whatever reason, will have no problems whatsoever.
If we don’t let her take the test, then nobody will be allowed to show up late, not even by a minute, or they’ll be kicked off the newspaper team.
So, who’s against giving the girl a chance? ”
I was as stunned. Now Aleixandre was imitating Vivian from Legally Blonde, intelligent and manipulative. The other students looked at each other, shrugging their shoulders. There was dead silence as Aleixandre waited for someone to vote against me.
Surprisingly, nobody raised their hand.
“So, that’s it then?” he asked.
He waited for an objection, but nobody said anything. Then he threw me a triumphant smile. For some reason, I wanted to smile back at him, but I didn’t push my luck. I didn’t want to be overly trusting of Aleixandre, even though the situation was tipping in my favor. Did he like me? No chance.
But that was it. I’d get to try out.
“What kind of test is it?” I asked, kickstarting my brain to make sure I gave it my best shot.
“It’ll be the same one the others did,” Aleixandre answered me. “You’ll have to write an article . . .”
“About me,” Aegan said, suddenly cutting him off.
A stunned silence filled the room. I froze, and I was sure the others did too. The silly cat clock on one of the walls here probably stopped moving too.
Really?
Aegan had looked up from the iPad. Now his feline gray eyes were fixed on me, not smiling but oozing his usual arrogance.
Aleixandre watched him, bewildered.
“But that’s not the—”
“She’ll write a short article about the student council president,” Aegan specified, giving his brother a stern look, as if to say, Don’t even think about contradicting me. “It’ll tell new students what they need to know about me. And we’ll publish it,” Aegan continued.
That shut Aleixandre up. He looked like he was ready to argue with Aegan, but he just shut his mouth and nodded. His enthusiastic smile faltered for a second before he looked back at me with an amused, confident expression again.
Wow, so one brother really seemed to be calling all the shots. But what he couldn’t do was shush someone else’s surprise.
“Publish it?” said the same girl as before. “But that’s going too far, candidates can’t—”
“We haven’t posted anything new on the paper’s Instagram account since yesterday,” Aegan interrupted her, sounding less harsh, like he knew he had to be careful how he spoke to his little fan club. “We’ll post the article today. And it’ll be good, won’t it, Jude?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“But it doesn’t seem like the test the others did,” I said, pointing out how unfair this was.
“It’s the one you’re being given the chance to do,” Aegan replied, making it clear that he had no intention of changing his mind. “If you don’t agree, you can get out of here. But if you’re smart, you’ll know what to do.”
You’ll know what to do . . .
For a minute, I hadn’t understood the point of this test, but that sentence changed everything.
Things were getting personal. I didn’t like how he was speaking to me, but there was no going back.
Leaving now would feel like throwing in the towel in a boxing ring after Aegan had just thrown the first punch.
I took off my backpack to pull out my pen and a sheet of paper to write on.
“No, you’ll write it there so we can all see it.” Aegan pointed to the digital whiteboard, where the image had changed to show a white box for writing text. “And when you’re done, you can click Publish.”
Just a glimpse of his arrogant smile was enough for me to know what he was playing at.