Poisoned Ivy (Legacies #1)

Chapter 1

Malena

Iwas standing on a jockstrap.

A jockstrap that smelled like laundry detergent and had been propped up on a shelf a minute ago… so at least I could assume it was clean. I sighed and pushed the sliding door to the nearly pitch-black closet closed. And I tried my best not to knock into anything else.

“Hey, Mom,” I answered quietly. But casually, like I hadn’t accidently fallen asleep at my one-night stand’s place only to wake up to my phone buzzing incessantly.

“Malena, there’s mail here about tutoring opportunities at the library.

” Her voice was coming through low on my burner, so I clicked the volume button up a few notches.

My real phone was sitting on my nightstand, back at my place, dutifully transmitting its GPS location and forwarding all her calls and messages. “Are you a tutor?”

“Of course not,” I lied. I had been a tutor for the last two years, but the schedule filled up this year and my usual time slot was taken. “I’m not tutoring anyone.”

A metal hanger scraped against the rod overhead, emitting a tiny creak and making me flinch.

My mom paused. A few barely perceptible taps could be heard through the earpiece. I knew her well enough to know that she was pulling up her location-sharing app.

“You’re in your room,” she stated.

“Yeah,” I answered. I kept my voice low but close enough to normal that she wouldn’t get suspicious. And I prayed that the lacrosse player who’d kept me up all night was a heavy sleeper.

“Oh…” Papers crinkled in the background on her end. My mother didn’t believe in privacy, so any mail addressed to me that went to my parents’ house was fair game. “Why are you getting tutoring applications in the mail?”

I sighed and thought about the warm body a few feet away, still blissfully asleep. Meanwhile, all the stress I’d worked off last night started knotting in my back. After a long summer under her thumb in my childhood home, the start of the fall semester always promised a good unwinding.

And she was undoing it all.

“They send that to everyone with a high GPA,” I lied.

I sank a bit deeper into the clothes rack, a line of haphazardly hung T-shirts and button-ups on one side of my body and some pullovers on the other.

They did a decent job of muffling the sound.

As far as places to take a call from my mom went—when I wasn’t where she thought I was—a closet ranked solid.

“You don’t need a job. Focus on school, Malena.” Her voice stretched with steady frustration. “We pay for everything you need.”

My parents’ financial support was a double-edged sword. While I was blessed to have my education paid for, it gave them a lot of control over me. Especially when they made it known that anything they paid for, they could simply take away—which was my entire future.

“I know,” I answered curtly, trying to get her off the phone so I could get the hell out of here.

I was a twenty-one-year-old college junior, but my parents still imposed their unrealistic standards on me—based off of what they thought constituted a “good” South Asian woman.

The older I got the more I wasn’t allowed to partake in—no dating, no sex, no parties. A semester abroad was out of the question, as was taking trips with my friends or having virtually any freedom. And they demanded that my phone’s location stay searchable at all times.

So, I got the burner phone—the same make and model as my normal one—and the secret tutoring job to pay for it.

Whenever I did anything they would not approve of, I took the burner and forwarded calls and messages from my real phone, which I left charging in my room. My parents would be satisfied to see my location—aka my bedside table—and could get in touch with me. Which they did, incessantly.

They got the daughter they wanted; I got to live the life I wanted.

“And why haven’t you called in three days? I can see you’re just sitting in your room, yet you can’t call us? You’re that busy?” Her voice smoothed back down from angry to her normal level of irritated. “Just because you leave home doesn’t mean you can ignore your family.”

It wasn’t enough that I’d graduated high school at the top of my class, got into the oldest and most prestigious Ivy League school in the country (on a partial scholarship, no less), and was acing all my classes. No, I still had to be on-call because God forbid they bother my perfect older sister.

“Sorry, Mom.” At this point, I’d say anything to get her off the phone.

“Selfish.” She tsked to herself. “Call me tomorrow.”

She hung up, and relief shuddered down my body.

I pushed open the closet door and crouched down, reaching for my discarded shirt and scanning the wide polished-oak planks for my shoes. I spotted them on the other side of the bed and scurried over, my socks muffling my steps.

I loved the first week of classes; the semester wasn’t hectic yet. Between my chemistry major, writing minor, and the school paper, it wouldn’t be long till some of my extracurriculars had to take a back seat to work.

“Hey.” A gravelly voice dragged across the silent room.

I rose up from the floor. Balancing on one foot at the end of the bed, I pushed my block-heeled bootie on. “Hey.”

He folded an arm behind his head and watched me with a wide, dopey grin. The sheets pooled around his waist as the morning sun skimmed along his solid torso like a stone skipping over the surface of still water.

“I was just leaving,” I told him, zipping up my jeans. “I have a meeting.”

I glanced around the relatively neat room. There was some lacrosse equipment in the corner. A desk that was clearly only a dumping ground for clothes and other items he probably wouldn’t be organizing.

“You could be late.” He gave me a playful smirk and pushed a hand through his dark hair. It was just long enough that it fell into his eyes before he swiped it back. The perfect length for me to weave my fingers through and occasionally tug in the heat of the moment.

My kryptonite.

“Not for this one.” I tucked my burner into my back pocket. I wished, hoped, prayed that Dillian, the editor of the school paper, liked the pitches I submitted a few days ago. I planned to enter the stronger of the two into a feature-writing contest. “But this was fun.”

“Let’s do it again?”

Flings, not to be confused with actually dating, were standard operating procedure when you had parents like mine.

I’d fought tooth and nail for my freedom, so I wanted to experience as much as I could.

But the cute lacrosse player with a skilled tongue and excellent stamina was worth a repeat or two.

“Mm-hmm.” I tapped my back pocket where he was saved as Jake. Lacrosse. I pulled his door open and gave him one last look. “Text me.”

I hustled through the quiet off-campus house, thankfully not running into any of Jake’s roommates. I pushed the front door open and the late-summer air filled my lungs. Warm, floral, and a little salty.

As much as I loved the first few weeks here, autumn at Winchester was my favorite.

The New England campus blurred into shades of red, orange, and yellow, and my favorite poorly lit bench in the back of the Amherst Building’s library would be mine for the taking.

I could read or study for hours with a contraband hot chocolate while the wind rattled against the patina windows.

It was bliss.

I checked the time: 8:16 a.m. Just enough to get back to my place and shower before meeting Dillian.

With tutoring no longer an option, I needed cash from somewhere. And that feature contest was looking like the perfect solution.

Bars of sunlight streamed through the domed windows of the centuries-old Hastings Building. Despite the warm weather outside, it was chilly between the thick stone walls. They swallowed my footsteps’ rapid metronome as I sped through the vaulted archways.

I turned the corner when I reached the newsroom and passed through the threshold. As my eyes adjusted to the low light, I ran headlong into someone and only just managed to stay upright.

I stumbled back a couple of steps, and two firm hands landed on my shoulders, steadying me.

“I’m… sorry,” I stammered.

My brain skipped like one of those old-timey CDs. Glacial blue eyes, tawny hair, a cut-glass profile that belonged in a Ralph Lauren spread. He wore a loose-fitting crew shirt that hung on his body like cloth over marble and an amused expression on his face.

“Don’t be. I’m not.” His smooth drawl rolled down my body—plucking a cord deep in my stomach. “But I am a little surprised that anyone would be in such a rush to get to the paper.”

I took a step back. His hands fell from my shoulders.

“Is…” I faltered. “Is Dillian in there?”

“Nope. Lucky me.” His smile tilted up at one side, eyes locked on mine. He put out his hand and a slow static moved up my own when I shook it. “I’m Conrad Hastings.”

And just like that, my brain started firing on all cylinders again.

I didn’t know him. Not personally. We’d never been introduced.

But everyone at the paper knew Conrad Hastings.

He breezed into the newsroom at the start of every semester, usually with a girl or two on his arm.

He’d talk to the editor and his work would get reassigned, and that would be the last any of us saw of him.

He was also one of the obscenely wealthy students who lived in my building with all the rest of the legacies. Being a prestigious Ivy League school, Winchester was filled with the children of powerful families. With a population of over five thousand undergrads, the rich ones tended to blend in.

“I’m late for a meeting.” The reason I was rushing in here filled my mind, and I pulled my hand back.

Conrad looked over his shoulder to the empty newsroom.

My face heated. I glanced at the clock; I was early.

“Well, good luck.” His lips painted a mocking smile, and as much as I wanted to stay unaffected, something inside me fluttered. “Seems tense in there.”

This early in the semester, it was always quiet. But the first round of assignments went out in the next week, and soon it would be alive with chatter.

I crossed my arms. Some of us took the paper seriously.

“Good luck to you too. With getting your work reassigned, I mean.” I feigned a sympathetic pout. That was probably why he was here. “I don’t know that Dillian will be charmed by”—I waved my finger around his face, hopefully distracting from the heat that flooded mine—“that.”

The dismissal did nothing but dig the smirk deeper into his cheek.

“I should get more creative.” His eyes, immovable on mine, seemed to spark as he nodded. “Noted.”

I walked around him and told myself not to look over my shoulder. I had to focus.

I strode over to my desk, where the source of my anxiety greeted me from its surface in bold black letters: Keller Feature Award Guidelines.

All of my discarded ideas were scribbled in the margins—everything from price fixing at the campus bookstore to the rapid decline in professors achieving tenure. For the next few minutes, I read through them again, tapping my foot against my chair.

I joined the paper as a freshman because I wanted to appear well-rounded in my medical school applications, but it turned out I enjoyed the work. A lot. It led to a writing minor—a decision that my parents didn’t like, but since it didn’t affect my grades, it never became an issue.

“Malena.” Dillian walked into the newsroom, rousing my attention. “I reviewed your pitches for your first piece. The feature.”

“And?” I sat forward in my seat.

His glance landed on the papers on my desk; a knowing smile pushed up against his cheeks. “And, I’m assuming you’re planning to submit it for the Keller Feature Award?”

Founded by the Keller family, revered Winchester alums, the feature award was a national competition open to writers at college papers. Winning got you a foot in the door at magazines, papers, and publishing houses all over the country. And the prize money…

The award was a hundred thousand dollars. That was over a year’s tuition.

“Yeah. I am.”

If I was going to live a double life—and I had to if I wanted to live at all—I had to fund it.

Between the phone, going out, expenses for healthcare my parents didn’t know about, and the occasional purchase of clothing they wouldn’t approve of, I only had about four months before my private bank account was drained.

The award money would keep it well funded for years.

“It’s highly competitive, Mal.” His shoulders dropped. “And the two pitches you sent were fine for a regular piece in the Winchester Daily News but…” He ran a hand through his curly brown hair. “The best college writers are going to be competing; I think you need something with a bigger bite.”

“Right.” I twined my fingers together. Shit.

I had a path: Ivy League undergrad, entrance to a top medical school, residency, and then my own life. Once I got there, I’d figure out how to make the two versions of myself merge into one.

Till then, the two-Malena system worked.

But without tutoring, I was backed into a corner.

My parents couldn’t know I was working, because they’d want to know where the money was going.

And defying them came with arguments, then guilt-trips, then the threats of losing their financial and familial support.

It was too much baggage when I could just as easily lie and make everyone happy.

“You still have a week before I need to submit your pitch to the faculty advisor.” Dillian had taken me under his wing here as a freshman when he was a sophomore.

I relied on his experience; he was among the people who encouraged my writing minor last year when I was on the fence.

If he didn’t believe in these pitches, I needed to find something better. “Use it.”

“I will,” I assured him.

He checked his watch and walked back to his desk. I tapped a pen against the spiral on my notebook and scanned over the margins of the submission sheet.

Some people went their entire lives without truly living a single day. My parents seemed determined to slot me in as one of them. But at Winchester, my world was vibrant and filled with the opportunity to be myself. Not the version of me my parents wanted. Just me.

I couldn’t let that go.

One way or another, I was winning that award.