Chapter 7
Violet
I sat cross-legged on my bed, the soft hum of my dorm’s heater filling the silence.
The shower I’d taken a few minutes ago had chased away the lingering alcohol haze, leaving me painfully aware of everything I’d learned tonight.
Sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon, so I figured I might as well start digging into Roman Valcourt.
Right now, I didn’t even know what he looked like, let alone anything else.
I pulled my laptop onto my knees and opened a browser tab to type in his name. But somehow, my fingers had other ideas.
J-u-l-i-a-n V-a-l-c-o-u-r-t.
I froze, staring at the name blinking back at me in the search bar. How had I written Julian’s name instead? I could’ve sworn I was typing in ‘Roman’.
It must’ve been a Freudian slip. Julian had been on my mind since I spotted him watching me across the quad twenty minutes ago, and I’d inadvertently written his name as a result.
Truth be told, he hadn’t just been on my mind over the last few minutes.
He’d crept into my thoughts several times since my arrival at BHU.
I wanted to say it was purely because of how attractive he was, but deep down, I knew there was much more to it than that.
There was just something wildly magnetic about him.
Something that made my pulse quicken for all the wrong reasons, filling me with confusion and shame.
I hated that my mind kept replaying the sound of his voice; that cool, measured tone that managed to sound both dangerous and intimate.
I hated that even knowing what I knew now—about the Dionysus Club, about the Selection, about his brother’s connection to my sister—my pulse still kicked up whenever I thought about him.
I should’ve been terrified of him. Was terrified, actually. But curiosity was a treacherous thing. So instead of hurriedly deleting his name from the search bar, I pressed enter.
There wasn’t much about him online. No social media at all. Not even a ghost account. Just a handful of articles about academic awards he’d won back in prep school, some mentions in university bulletins, and articles about his family’s foundation.
According to the bio that popped up in the overview above the search results, the Valcourts were one of the oldest families on the East Coast. Multi-generational wealth.
Landowners. Political donors. Philanthropists, the overview called them, but I’d already learned that was usually code for ‘powerful people with a lot to hide’.
I clicked on the images tab and scrolled through the results, which mostly seemed to be professional photos taken at charity galas.
Julian looked dangerously handsome in every single picture.
Tailored suits that mostly covered his tattoos.
Sharp jawline and sharper smirk. The kind of effortless, old-money confidence you could smell from a mile away.
I scrolled down and found a more recent picture of him standing beside another man at some sort of gala. Leaning closer to the screen, I squinted at the caption beneath. Roman and Julian Valcourt at the Blackthorne Harbor Arts Foundation Annual Benefit, May 2025.
So that was him. My sister’s secret boyfriend.
The two brothers shared the same towering height and confident bearing, but that was where the resemblance ended.
Julian’s thick, dark hair was always a little tousled, his blue eyes glacial and unreadable, whereas Roman’s hair was light brown and perfectly straight, his hazel eyes warmer but somehow emptier.
His skin was a little paler too, and there were no tattoos peeking from his cuffs.
He looked exactly like Calista’s type. Clean-cut. Polished. Safe.
Except he wasn't safe at all.
I deleted Julian’s name and typed ‘Roman Valcourt’ into the search bar instead.
The results weren’t much different. No social media, same carefully curated headlines.
Awards. Charity work. A few interviews where he talked about ‘legacy’ and ‘service to the community’.
And, of course, dozens of photos from high society events where he looked perfectly composed. Not at all like a coldhearted killer.
I closed my laptop with a heavy sigh and leaned back against my bedhead. I hadn’t learned much about Roman yet, but at least I knew what he looked like now. That was better than nothing.
In fact…
An idea sparked, and I sat up straighter, pulse kicking up a notch.
I’d already combed through both of my sister’s phones a dozen times, desperate for clues, but back then, I hadn’t known who or what I was looking for.
I hadn’t known Roman’s name, or his face.
And that meant it was entirely possible I’d skimmed right over something that mattered.
Something small and seemingly innocuous that could actually change everything.
I leaned over to fish both phones out of my nightstand drawer. I’d brought them all the way over with me from California because they were the only tangible pieces remaining from my sister’s final days, and they also contained the last digital breadcrumbs she’d left behind.
I picked up the smaller phone first; the one I now knew was a burner phone given to Calista by her friends on the day she died. There wasn’t much on it, but now that I’d heard the whole story from the others tonight, the messages in the inbox made a lot more sense to me.
I clicked into the first message thread, which I could only assume was Cherry, given that the contact was saved as 'C' and the timestamps matched everything Cherry told me earlier.
10:09: Hey babe, don’t be worried if someone knocks on the door soon - it’s just me coming back! Have an awesome surprise for you. See you soon! xox
10:34: OMG I am so stupid, I missed the exit to Crescent Bay and now I’m all the way up in Port Engel! I was wondering why the drive was taking so long lol duhhhh. Turning around now. Be there in 20ish mins. Hope you aren’t asleep already xox
10:53: Parking now! Coming up in a sec!
10:54: Umm hello where are you? And why did you leave the door unlocked? Hope one of those hunters didn’t get you... JK, am assuming you’ve gone down to that vending machine we saw earlier? I’ll come down now. I could really use a Mars bar tbh, need the sugar after that long-ass drive
10:57: Okay seriously, where are you? And why aren’t you replying to anything? I know you aren’t freaked out by any of this Selection stuff, but I am... so please just let me know you’re okay
10:59: This isn’t funny, Cal. Seriously. Please just tell me you went down to the beach for some air??
11:02: Okay I’m really getting scared now. PLEASE ANSWER!!!
I clicked into the next message thread from the contact saved as ‘J’.
11:01: Hey Cal, where are you? Cherry told me you left the room? Where did you go?
11:04: She said you’re still not back and she’s really worried. I am too. This better not be part of one of those prank videos you guys are always working on… omg girl I will totally kill you if it is…
11:12: Seriously Cal where the hell are you??? Are you okay??
There were no other message threads in the inbox. Just multiple missed calls from the four saved contacts: C, J, D, and G, which were obviously Cherry, Jeremiah, Dylan, and Ginny.
There was nothing else on the phone that could possibly relate to Roman Valcourt. No calls to or from unsaved numbers, no photos, no deleted messages in the trash.
With a sigh, I put the burner away and turned my attention to Calista’s main phone.
I went through everything for what felt like the millionth time—contacts, messages on different apps, emails, call log—but there was no mention of Roman Valcourt’s name anywhere on the device.
Not even a contact saved simply as ‘R’. There was zero evidence that she’d even known the guy, let alone been in a secret relationship with him.
Once I’d checked everything text-related, I went into the phone’s photo gallery, wondering if there was anything useful in there. Calista had always loved documenting everything in photos, so the gallery was packed with hundreds of albums, all named and sorted by event or location.
Perhaps she’d hidden something about Roman in one of the albums. But… which one? Where would I even begin to look when there were so damn many?
I was about to start the painstakingly slow process of going through each album one by one when something caught my eye. Something I must’ve seen a hundred times before but had never really noticed until now.
Last year, Calista had done a six-week-long Euro-trip with a couple of her best friends from high school.
The three of them had spent a huge portion of their time in Italy, so there were multiple albums with titles like ‘Rome’, ‘Milan’, ‘Florence’, ‘Cinque Terre’ and so on.
But now I’d noticed there was a little more to that section of the gallery.
Right between the ‘Rome’ and ‘Florence’ albums, there was another album called ‘Roman Holiday’ with an image of the Colosseum as the cover photo.
When I’d scrolled through all the albums in the past, I’d assumed that Calista had simply made an extra album for her Rome photos because she’d taken so many, and the Colosseum cover photo seemed to confirm that.
But I knew it was possible to set any photo as a cover image, even if it wasn’t relevant to the photos within the album itself.
So perhaps she'd used the Colosseum photo as camouflage, hiding photos of Roman Valcourt amongst all the Italy pictures.
With my heart thudding, I tapped on the ‘Roman Holiday’ album to enter it.
I was right. It wasn't Rome at all.
The first photo was of Calista, standing on a rocky coastline with the wind whipping her blonde hair across her face.
She was laughing, one hand reaching up to catch the strands, the other clutching a takeout coffee.
Behind her, gray-blue water stretched to the horizon, dotted with lobster boats and pine-covered islands.