Chapter 1
One Year Later
Per disciplinam, magnitudo: Through discipline, greatness.
Which is hilarious, considering half the idiots who walk under it can barely spell their own last names without a trust fund backing them up.
Nobody gets into Edgewood through discipline. They get in through bloodlines. Endowments. Donations big enough to put their family name on a library.
Still. The archway has one redeeming quality.
If you lean against the east column at the right angle, you can see the entire campus funnel through the front gate. Every car that rolls into the lot. Every student crossing the quad. Every alliance forming before first bell.
It’s the closest thing this place has to a throne. Which is why I’m standing there on the first morning of senior year, shoulder against the cold stone, watching the kingdom wake up.
Xander’s next to me, spinning his car keys around one finger like a bored prince.
Danny’s leaning against the opposite column, buried in his phone and probably already digging up dirt on someone for fun.
Iz is sitting on the low wall eating an apple like he has absolutely no responsibilities in life.
Ryan’s late. Ryan is always fucking late.
The five of us; The Elite of Edgewood. We didn’t give ourselves the name. The rest of the school did sometime sophomore year when they realized two things:
One — our families bankroll half this campus. Two — if you piss one of us off, the other four will finish the job.
People adapt quickly to that reality. Or they learn the hard way.
A silver Audi pulls into the lot, and I track it automatically. Habit. Pattern recognition. Control.
The passenger door opens and the morning gets interesting. Catherine O’Farrell steps out of the car. For a second the entire quad feels quieter. Not because she’s loud, because she isn’t.
The uniform fits her like it was tailored specifically for her body. Blazer crisp. Shoulders sharp. The tartan skirt hitting exactly where it should — regulation length, no cheating the dress code like most of the girls here try to do. Knee socks pulled clean and straight. Polished black shoes.
Perfect. Annoyingly fucking perfect.
Like she ironed the damn thing herself. Her hair is darker than it was the night I met her. Not natural, dyed. Wine-red that fades into darker shadows near the roots — deliberate, expensive, controlled.
She looks like the kind of girl who understands presentation. Which means she understands power.
I’ve seen her before. Once. My parents threw their end-of-summer charity circus in August. Two hundred guests on the lawn pretending they like each other while waiters refill their champagne.
The O’Farrells had just moved in next door. Thomas O’Farrell; Future governor if the press keeps kissing his ass. Fiona O’Farrell; Literary darling with a shelf full of awards and an ego to match. And their daughter.
I found her in the garden. Not socializing, not networking, just standing alone at the edge of the hedges like she was waiting for the party to end.
Arms crossed, eyes on the tree line, but not admiring the view.
Calculating; Distance, exit points. That kind of behavior jumps out if you know what you’re looking for.
So I introduced myself. Smile. Charm. The routine that’s been working on people since I figured out they’re easy to manipulate.
She didn’t react. Didn’t blush. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t even pretend to be polite. She just stared at me like I was mildly inconvenient.
Then she took the cigarette out of my hand. Just plucked it away like it belonged to her. Dropped it in the grass. Crushed it under her heel.
“Those kill roughly four hundred and eighty thousand people a year in the United States,” she said.
Flat. Like she was quoting a statistic in class.
“And a discarded butt can smolder for up to three hours.”
She gestured toward the hedge beside us. “You’re standing next to dry brush.”
Then she walked away. Nobody walks away from me. That isn’t ego. It’s just data. Seventeen years in this ecosystem and nobody has ever turned their back on me mid-conversation without checking over their shoulder first.
And Catherine O’Farrell did it like I wasn’t worth the effort.
I’ve been thinking about it for six weeks.
Now she’s crossing my campus with Jonathan Pennington’s arm wrapped around her shoulders like he owns the place. Something ugly tightens in my chest.
Xander nudges me. “Jesus Christ. Who the hell is that?”
“Catherine O’Farrell.”
“The neighbor?”
“Yeah.”
Danny looks up from his phone. “That’s the ice queen?”
“No shit,” Xander mutters. “You made her sound boring.”
“She isn’t boring.”
My eyes track the way Pennington’s hand sits on her shoulder. Too tight. Too fucking familiar. “She’s a problem.”
Iz snorts. “You say that about everyone.”
“No,” I say quietly.
“I say that about people who walk into my territory acting like they don’t know the rules.”
Ryan jogs up beside us, tie already half undone. “What’d I miss?”
Xander grins. “Kaiden’s got a crush.”
I don’t even look at him. “She’s dating Pennington.”
Ryan winces. “Oof.”
Exactly.
Pennington got me suspended last year after reporting me for smoking behind the athletic building. He also told the administration about a few other things happening back there. Things that involved a very willing girl and none of his fucking business.
That suspension cost us the state championship. Nobody on the lacrosse team has forgotten. Neither have I.
Catherine disappears into the humanities building beside him and something inside me settles into place.
“If senior year is going to run the way we planned,” I say, pushing off the column, “someone needs to explain to her how things work here.”
Iz sighs. “You’re going to make this worse, aren’t you?”
“Probably.”
The bell rings across campus and students start moving toward the buildings. I follow the crowd, but my focus stays locked on one person. Because Catherine O’Farrell walked into Edgewood looking like she owns herself.
Perfect posture. Perfect uniform. Perfect composure.
Girls like that usually crack the loudest. And for some reason I can’t quite explain yet… I really want to see it happen.
AP English Literature. Mrs. Saunders. Room 214 in the humanities wing, where the radiators clank like they’re dying and the windows never quite close all the way. The whole place smells like old paper and floor polish.
Catherine is already seated when I walk in. Front row. Center desk.
Of course she is.
Notebook open. Three pens laid out beside it in perfect parallel—black, blue, green. Not tossed down. Aligned. Intentional.
Everything about her is controlled. Her posture is flawless. Not stiff. Not forced. Just straight in a way that makes everyone else in the room look sloppy by comparison. Like her spine was engineered that way.
The uniform looks exactly the same as it did outside. Crisp blazer. Perfect lines. Skirt regulation length. Socks pulled smooth. Not a wrinkle anywhere. She looks like the fucking brochure, which somehow makes it worse.
Don’t stare.
I walk past her desk and drag my fingers across the edge of it as I pass. Just a whisper of contact. She doesn’t look up, but her pen pauses against the page for half a second before continuing.
Good. She knows I’m here.
I drop into the back row. Pennington is two seats ahead of me, angled toward her like a guard dog pretending he’s a boyfriend. His hand keeps touching her arm every few minutes.
But she never reacts. Not warmth. Not annoyance. Nothing.
That’s interesting.
I tear a sheet from my notebook, ball it up, and flick it toward the back of his head. It bounces off his shoulder and lands on Catherine’s desk. She turns, that dark red hair swings over her shoulder, catching the light from the window.
Dyed. Definitely dyed.
Her eyes land on me. Green. Sharp. Annoyed. Alive.
I give her the grin that works on everyone else. “Sorry about that, Kitty Cat. Bad aim.”
Her gaze doesn’t change. “It’s Catherine.”
Flat, like she is simply correcting a mistake, not engaging.
“Sure it is.”
Pennington pushes his chair back hard enough that it scrapes. He stands and walks toward my desk. The whole class goes quiet. Thirty students suddenly very interested in the entertainment value of first period.
He stops in front of me, trying to look brave. Trying being the key word. I lean back in my chair and look up at him like he’s something mildly amusing I stepped in earlier. The silence stretches. I can feel the pressure building in the room. Everyone waiting to see if this turns into something.
Part of me wants it to. There’s a place inside my chest that likes breaking things. Not metaphorically, literally. Bones. Furniture. People’s confidence. It sits there like a muscle that hasn’t been stretched yet today.
“You got something to say, Pennington?”
He opens his mouth and the classroom door swings open. Mrs. Saunders walks in with coffee in one hand and a stack of syllabi in the other.
She takes one look at us and sighs. “Seats. Both of you. I’m not doing this today.”
Pennington retreats. I don’t move, because I was already sitting down. Mrs. Saunders launches into the usual first-day speech about expectations and reading lists and how this is AP English so we should prepare to suffer.
Halfway through, she pauses and looks between Pennington and me. “I trust there won’t be any more interruptions this semester?”
I give her the smile my mother calls your father’s face. Warm. Respectful. Completely fake.
“Of course, Mrs. Saunders. My apologies.”
Like always, it works. Her expression softens immediately.
Then she turns to Pennington. “You could take a page from Mister Monaghan’s book.”
Pennington’s face turns red. He doesn’t look at me, but I can practically hear his teeth grinding. I let myself enjoy it for about two seconds before my attention drifts somewhere more interesting.
Catherine; Still writing, still facing forward, but the corner of her mouth twitches. Just once. Barely there. Not quite a smile, but not nothing either.
She liked that.
That lands harder than it should. I force my eyes back to the syllabus. It lasts about thirty seconds. Then my focus slides right back to her. The line of her shoulders. The steady movement of her hand across the page. The tiny crease between her brows when she’s concentrating.
Stop staring.
But i can’t fucking help myself. For the rest of class, I study her. It’s what I do. Everyone has patterns. Habits. Weak points. The trick is figuring out where to apply pressure.
Catherine writes in small, precise handwriting. Left-handed. When she pauses to think, she clicks her pen three times. Always three. She sits with her back pressed fully against the chair. Which could just be good posture.
Or it could mean she doesn’t like empty space behind her.
When Pennington reaches over to touch her arm again, she shifts away. Not dramatically. Barely noticeable. But it’s there. Like a reflex she didn’t mean to show. Something about that snags my attention.
Recognition. Something I don’t want to examine too closely.
The bell rings, students start packing up, but I don’t rush. I take my time gathering my books while the room empties.
Catherine moves with the same controlled efficiency she does everything else. Notebook closed. Pens aligned. Bag zipped.
I look up and see Pennington is waiting in the hallway. Watching the door like a fucking guard dog. I step out beside him. Close enough that he has to tilt his head up.
“Leave Catherine alone, Kaiden.” His voice is low. Careful. “She’s not one of your games.”
I study him. The tension in his shoulders, the way his fists clench at his sides, the faint tremor he can’t quite hide. Jonathan Pennington is scared of me.
And he should be.
But right now he’s more scared of losing her and that kind of fear makes people stupid.
“She’s new,” I say quietly. “Someone should explain how things work around here.”
His jaw tightens. “I already have.”
I raise my hand and slam my palm flat against the locker beside his head. The metal cracks loud in the hallway. He flinches, just a little, just enough.
“Clearly not well enough.”
I walk past him and don’t look back. I can hear him moving behind me a second later, hurrying to catch up to her. I can picture it perfectly. His hand grabbing her arm again. Too tight. Too possessive. Like a leash.
The hallway empties slowly, the noise fades, and I realize something.
This isn’t about the parties, or the lacrosse season, or even Pennington. It’s about the way she looked at me. Like I was nothing. Every person at Edgewood sees me as one of two things; Threat or opportunity. Those are the only settings people operate on around me.
Catherine looked at me like I was furniture. Like I was background noise. That in itself should be refreshing. It should be freeing not being feared or flattered for once.
Instead it makes something dark twist in my chest. Makes me want to grab her by the chin and force her to look at me again. Really look. Until she understands exactly who she just dismissed. And underneath that—
Something worse.
That flinch when Pennington touched her. The way she crushed my cigarette in the garden. The iron control she carries like armor. Nobody holds themselves that tight without a reason.
I want to know the reason. I want to see what happens when that control cracks. Maybe to understand it. Maybe to destroy it.
Honestly?
I’m not sure there’s a difference. I push through the side door into the September air. The campus stretches out in front of me. Stone buildings, perfect lawns, the lacrosse field in the distance. All of it mine in every way that matters.
Catherine O’Farrell. Transfer student. Genius. My new neighbor. Jonathan Pennington’s girlfriend.
Problem.
I pull a cigarette from my blazer pocket and light it. The smoke burns slow in my lungs. She’ll learn. They all do.
The only question is how much damage we cause each other before she figures out that this school—this world—runs on rules she hasn’t learned yet. And I’m very good at teaching. But that thing she does—
That flinch. That distance. That control.
I recognize it. I see it every morning in the mirror, and that’s the part that won’t leave my head.