18. Maya
Maya
One second, bass is shaking the floorboards hard enough to rattle the glass in the window beside me. The next, feedback shrieks through the speakers, the room jolts, and Adrian’s voice cuts through the chaos from somewhere near the fireplace.
“Out. Everyone out. Elm House is closed.”
Complaints ripple first. Then confusion. Then laughter from people too drunk to understand the atmosphere has shifted. Dante and Cole move into the entrance, shoulder to shoulder, both of them silent, arms crossed, taking up the doorway like they measured it before they stepped into it.
The laughter dies faster after that.
I stand near the window with Genny, my bag pressed against my hip, the envelope sealed in the zippered compartment exactly where my hand can find it without looking.
Ten days since it appeared on my floor, and I still carry it everywhere because leaving it anywhere else makes my skin crawl worse than the weight of it against me.
My phone buzzes.
The 413 number.
I delete the call without looking at the duration. He calls. I delete. My thumb stays steady on the screen. My grip locks around the phone until the edge bites into my palm.
Genny’s eyes flick to my hand.
I turn the phone face down and look back at the room.
The last of the party spills through the front door in a rush of boots, perfume, beer breath, and offended whispers.
Gio Santoro’s name moves through the air in fragments.
Whisperer. Report. Killer. Rylan Vance. Somebody says sealed record near the hallway, and Adrian’s head snaps in that direction hard enough to make the freshman shut up mid-sentence.
Thirty minutes ago, Gio came through this party like something feral because Zoe had spent the evening ignoring him with surgical precision.
He found her on the staircase landing, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her upstairs before anyone in the room had time to decide whether stopping him would make things better or worse.
Zoe went with him.
Her spine was straight. Chin up. Her eyes stayed on Gio the whole way.
I saw the moment she chose to go with him. The moment she took his momentum and turned it into a door she could close behind them.
Now the party is gone, and the people left behind understand what happens when Zoe clears a room.
Adrian stands at the fireplace with his arms crossed, his knuckles white on the mantel.
Declan paces the length of the sofa, phone in hand, his shoulders tight enough to snap.
Clara and Talia sit on the couch. Clara has one hand curled around Talia’s forearm, and Talia sits upright, hands in her lap, spine straight.
Genny stays beside me at the window. The glass overlooks the front yard, the street, the approach. I can see the driveway from here. I can see who leaves and who comes back.
“Any idea what this is?” I ask.
“Something about the Whisperer,” Genny says. “And Gio.”
“That tracks.”
Declan paces the same twelve feet over and over. Turn, twelve feet, turn. Clara watches him with one hand still wrapped around Talia’s arm.
Dante and Cole haven’t moved from the entrance.
Their stillness hits the room harder now that the crowd is gone. Declan’s pacing slows. Adrian’s weight shifts toward the doorframe. My fingers tighten against the windowsill before I tell them to.
Dante’s eyes sweep the room. Fireplace, sofa, window, staircase, front door. Adrian, Declan, Clara, Talia, Genny.
Then me.
His gaze stops for half a second. Less. Long enough for my pulse to trip once before he moves on.
Three weeks ago, he was between my legs—his mouth, his hands, the piercings, the scrape of his rings against my thigh, the rough sound he made when my fingers twisted in his hair.
His gaze moves on. The scan completes. At his side, two fingers brush the back of Cole’s wrist. Barely visible. Cole’s chin dips a fraction. I catch it from across the room.
Cole.
His mouth was on me five days ago on the couch six feet from where Talia is sitting. Cole, who said I’ve got you, felt me flinch beneath him, apologized against my skin, and waited until my hips lifted for him again.
I’m standing by the window with Genny. Dante and Cole are in the doorframe. The room is between us.
Genny glances at me. I keep my eyes on the staircase.
A door opens upstairs.
Every head in the living room turns.
Zoe appears on the landing first, her shoulders pulled tight under the clean line of her shirt. Gio follows behind her, hair wrecked, eyes haunted, jacket pulled wrong across one shoulder like he’s been dragged through his own skin.
They come down together with six inches between them. Zoe angles toward him when they reach the bottom step, and Gio’s hand hovers two inches from her spine before he catches himself and drops it.
When attention cuts to Declan, Zoe shifts toward Gio.
For weeks, they’ve kept whatever this is neat in public. Gio’s hand remembers her before he lets it fall, and Zoe leans toward him when she thinks no one is counting inches.
Zoe steps into the center of the living room.
“Sit down,” she says to everyone.
People sit. I stay standing. So does Genny, both of us still at the window.
Dante and Cole stay in the doorframe.
Zoe stands in the center of the room. Gio is beside her, slightly behind. His hands are in his pockets. The muscle in his jaw ticks hard. Zoe shifts half a step back without looking at him, cutting off his retreat before he can take it.
Zoe turns her head just enough for him to hear her.
“You wanted to burn the house down?” she says, low. “This is your strike team. Step up.”
Gio looks at the room. At Adrian by the fireplace. Declan pacing near the sofa, one fist opening and closing at his side. Clara and Talia on the couch. Dante and Cole in the doorway. Genny and me by the window.
Then he steps into the center of the circle.
“I didn’t do it,” Gio says. His voice is raspy but steady. “I wasn’t driving. Rylan Vance is my cousin. My father’s sister married a Vance. We don’t advertise it.”
No one speaks.
“He wanted back on the team. Came to me a month ago. I told him no.” Gio looks at Declan, his mouth tightening before he gets the next words out. “His record. His comments about Talia. I told him I wouldn’t play alongside a guy who talks about women like that.”
Talia goes rigid on the couch. Her hands tighten in her lap. Clara’s hand finds Talia’s forearm, a silent, grounding pressure. Talia stares at Gio, her throat working once before Clara’s grip tightens.
“That’s what set him off,” Gio says quietly. “He leaked the sealed record. Fed it to the Whisperer. Or he is the Whisperer. We don’t know yet.”
“He’s dead,” Declan says.
Declan isn’t looking at Gio anymore. His gaze is fixed on a point beyond the door. Around his phone, his hand closes until the case creaks.
“You can rage after,” Zoe says, stepping into the silence Declan left behind. “Right now we need a plan.”
I track who moves first, who speaks, where everyone looks when the information settles.
He speaks from the doorframe. “We’ll know who the Whisperer is. Soon.” His voice drops into the tone I’ve heard him use on the phone at 2 a.m. when Marco calls. Then, to Cole, low enough that the room almost misses it: “Find me a way into athletics IT.” Cole nods once.
Dante remains in the doorframe with Cole beside him, Adrian at the fireplace, and Declan wound tight enough to move. My pulse climbs as Dante’s hands hang loose at his sides, his weight balanced, his jaw set at the angle it takes when he’s already three moves ahead.
My fingers press into the windowsill hard enough to ache. Dante gives one order, and Cole is already moving inside it. The same mouth that left bruises on my inner thigh turns the whole room toward him.
“The Chronicle has been looking for a follow-up to the admissions scandal,” I say.
Heads turn toward me. Genny stays at my left shoulder. The window glass chills the back of my arm.
“The Vance family’s connection to Briarcliff admissions is documented but underreported. Rylan’s enrollment lines up with a donation routed through three shell entities before it hit the athletics fund. I’ve had the financial trail for two months.”
“We shift the narrative,” I say. “Institutional corruption buries sealed records. If the sheriff altered that file, there’s a trail. If the Whisperer connects to the Vance family, the story becomes coordinated corruption. And the Chronicle has the sourcing to prove it.”
“You can do that?” Gio asks, his eyebrows pulling together like he heard me wrong.
“You aren’t the only one who’s been building a file on the people who make messes.”
Genny pushes off the window frame. “The Whisperer posted a PDF. That means there’s a digital footprint. Metadata. Timestamps. If the sheriff altered the file, he left a trail. I can pull enough of the server trail to prove the posted version is a fabrication.”
“And Coach Addison needs to know,” Zoe says. “Before this goes public. If Rylan is the one who actually drove, he’s a loose end who almost torpedoed the program.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Genny says. “He knows me. He’ll listen.”
Genny pulls her laptop from her bag before anyone asks. I pull up the admissions file. Zoe stays close enough to Gio that his shoulder almost touches hers.
Dante hasn’t moved from the doorframe. Cole stays beside him.
The meeting breaks. People stand. Clara keeps her hand on Talia’s forearm as they rise.
Talia’s eyes are bright but her jaw is set.
Declan reaches for her, pulling her into his side, his hand flattening between her shoulders when she leans into him.
Adrian crosses to Dante and they exchange three sentences I can’t hear, low and direct.
I adjust my bag on my shoulder and head for the door.
Dante steps into my path.
“Stay,” he says.
One word. Low and certain. He stays between me and the door.
My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag.
“I have a story to file.”
“You have a story to build. Build it here.”
Cole says from the doorframe, “The Wi-Fi here is encrypted. Use the den.”
He gives me Wi-Fi, a den, and a practical reason to turn. My bag shifts higher on my shoulder. Toward the hallway, my feet turn before I give them permission.
I’m already angled toward the den.
“If you get in my way,” I say to Dante, “I’m burning the house down.”
His mouth barely shifts at the left corner. Smaller than a smirk.
“The den is yours,” he says. “We’ll be upstairs.”
We. Dante and Cole. Upstairs.
In the room where I know, have known since the first night I visited Cole’s house freshman year, since the door at the end of the hall and the quality of silence behind it, they close the world out.
I have carried that knowledge and kept it from both of them.
I put it away before I knew what it would cost to keep.
“Genny,” I say. “Den. Now. Bring your laptop.”
Genny nods, grabbing her laptop bag as she moves.
I walk past Dante, close enough that the heat off his body registers on my arm. His hand is at his side. My shoulder passes his chest. At the exact inch where touching would become a choice, my breath stalls.
Everyone in this room knows how to look.
The inch between us follows me after I pass him.
Cole watches me pass, his lips parted, his gaze holding on my face before it drops to the space between my shoulder and Dante’s chest. His eyes flick once toward the den, then back to my face.
The den is small. A desk. Two chairs. The window faces the backyard.
Genny sets up her laptop. I set mine beside hers.
The door is open. From the den, I can hear the house.
Footsteps, voices, the plumbing. Sound moves through the old walls and floors, catching on pipes and corners before it reaches us.
Dante and Cole go upstairs, their footsteps heavy and synchronized on the climb to Dante’s room. The door at the end of the hall closes above me.
Genny is pulling up server architecture on her screen. I have the financial trail, the metadata angle, the institutional corruption frame, and two months of documentation.
I open my laptop. The cursor blinks.
Cole’s mouth on my body from Thursday. Dante’s mouth on my body from three weeks ago. The envelope in my bag from the man who broke my ribs when I was thirteen.
The cursor keeps blinking.
“The metadata,” I say. “Start with the original sealed-record post. Timestamp, IP, device signature if you can get it.”
“Already on it,” Genny says.
I write.
The story I can publish takes shape on my screen. Above me, one floorboard creaks, then another. The captain and his shadow stay off the page. This house stays out of the story. What I know about where they are does, too.
My phone buzzes face down on the desk.
The 413 number. The second call today.
I turn it over long enough to delete the call without checking the duration, then set it face down again.
The front door is locked. Genny is beside me. Dante and Cole are upstairs.
Four in. Four hold. Four out.
My fingers find the keys. The cursor blinks.
I write.