12. Ryan #3
Kaid moves up beside me. X on the other side. Danny. Iz. No discussion. No signal. We just do what we’ve always fucking done. Five.
Victor looks across us. His gaze comes back to me. “Roman tells me you’ve developed a habit of speaking to Alison in a way I find unacceptable.”
There it is. Roman. I knew somebody had been reporting. Didn’t know how far it had gone. Now I do.
“Roman talks about me?”
Victor’s mouth flattens. “He told me what happened.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Devastating.” A laugh comes from somewhere behind us.
Victor ignores it. “For whatever reason, you seem to believe humiliating my fiancée in front of her peers is amusing.”
I shrug. “She survived.”
His eyes harden. “Watch yourself.”
I smile. “I am.”
ThaVictor glances toward the students beginning to gather at a respectable distance. A couple more phones are up now. He looks back at me. “This is not one of your little schoolyard performances.”
Iz whispers, “He hasn’t seen our schoolyard performances.”
Danny whispers back, “Some are excellent.”
Kaid nods. “Strong reviews.”
Victor’s gaze shifts. Not to me. To Kaid. And I see the exact second he decides to make this bigger — maybe because the boys keep talking, maybe because people are watching now, maybe because he thinks putting one of us in our place means putting all of us there.
Big fucking mistake.
“Monaghan.”
Kaid smiles. “Tremblay.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you involved.”
Kaid glances around. “In Ryan standing in a hallway?”
“In whatever mess happens to be closest.” Kaid’s smile stays put. Victor lets the pause stretch, then spends it. “The Penningtons, for example.”
The air changes. Small. Immediate. Kaid goes still. Victor sees it and thinks he found something useful. “Your families have been tied together for years, haven’t they?” Kaid doesn’t answer. Victor does it for him. “Garrett Pennington.”
Kaid’s smile disappears. “You should stop.”
“Why? Everyone here knows the story.” Victor glances around the atrium, pitching it for the room now. “Your family’s involvement with his. What happened to you.” Kaid’s jaw tightens. “And then, years later, Catherine O’Farrell.”
Victor keeps going, reading it like a list of charges. “The same family. Again. Catherine’s mother. Her father. The blackmail. The kidnapping. The political embarrassment.”
Kaid looks back at him. Cold. “You really researched us.”
“It hardly required research.”
“Fan behavior,” Iz mutters.
Danny nods. “Deep fan behavior.”
Victor ignores them. “One would think nearly dying because of one Pennington would have taught you to stay clear of the family altogether.”
Kaid stares at him. Then smiles again, and there’s nothing nice in it. “One would think being this fucking old would’ve taught you not to blame kids for what grown men did to them.”
A low sound rolls through the students watching. Not laughter. More like — damn. Victor’s eyes narrow.
Kaid shoves his hands into his pockets, easy, unbothered, which is exactly the thing that costs Victor the most. “You want to keep talking about Cat?”
“I didn’t say anything untrue.”
“No.” Kaid tilts his head. “You just said it like a cunt.”
“Monaghan.”
“Did you want respect?”
Victor’s jaw ticks. “You mistake vulgarity for strength.”
Kaid grins. “And you mistake age for authority.”
Oh, fuck.
X makes a delighted sound beside me. Victor turns toward him.
There it is. Next target.
“Anderson.”
X beams like Victor just handed him something. “I was getting jealous.”
Victor looks him over. “With you, I hardly know where to begin.”
“Take your time.”
“The fights, perhaps.”
X’s smile gets bigger. “What about them?”
“How many this year?”
X actually looks up like he’s calculating. “Define fight.”
“Assaults.”
“Oh.” X nods. “That narrows it.”
Someone nearby laughs. Victor’s expression goes cold. “You think violence makes you impressive?”
“No.” X pauses, timing it. “I think winning helps.”
Another laugh. Even Kaid cracks. Victor looks disgusted, and disgusted is worse for him than angry, because it means he’s stopped performing control and started feeling it slip.
“You spend enough time hitting people that I imagine you would.”
X shrugs. “It’s relaxing.”
“Your inability to control yourself is hardly surprising.” There. X’s smile thins. Victor sees the thin place and drives for it. “Adeena.”
Every fucking thing changes. X doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Down the hall, Penny goes still. Victor says it like a name on a list. “Your mother takes her own life. Your father replaces her. Years of making your home more miserable than it already was.”
X’s smile comes back. Slow. Dangerous. “Careful.”
Victor doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t. “Then Lucian’s businesses. Reece. Drugs moving through Edgewood. Penny caught directly in the middle of it.”
X takes half a step forward.
Victor looks down at the movement, then back at his face, and keeps going because he thinks he’s found the seam. “And somehow through all of that, your most consistent contribution is putting your fists through other people.”
X laughs softly. “You make me sound fun.”
“I think you’re beneath the people you insist on surrounding yourself with.”
Oh. Fuck.
X’s head tilts. “Below them?”
“Your behavior speaks for itself.”
“And yours doesn’t?” Victor’s face hardens. X smiles, and this is the one with teeth in it. “You want to talk fathers?”
“X,” I say. He glances at me.
“I’m having fun.”
“Have less.” He looks back at Victor. “Fine.”
Xsteps back. Because I asked him to. Victor watches it happen and files it away, and I can see him take the wrong lesson from it — that the boys can be called off, that there’s a leash here somewhere too.
There isn’t.
That was X choosing me over the pleasure of ruining Victor’s afternoon. It is not the same thing, and Victor is going to keep not understanding the difference all the way to the end of this.
Then his gaze lands on X again. “Your father’s choices dragged half this school into something none of you understood.”
“He didn’t drag us anywhere.”
“Reece Hall might disagree.”
“No one gives a fuck what Reece would say.”
“He was rather important to how this all ended, wasn’t he?” Danny goes still. I know where this is going before Victor says it. So does X. His face changes. Victor looks past him. Toward Danny. “Daisy Rorke certainly found out.”
The hallway dies. Not quieter. Dead. Danny doesn’t move. Across the atrium, Becca’s face empties.
Victor looks directly at him now. “Rorke.”
Danny’s voice is flat. “Don’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
Victor studies him, and I watch him decide that the flatness is a soft spot instead of a warning. Everyone who has ever underestimated Danny has made that exact mistake in that exact order. “Your sister became involved with Reece Hall.”
“Ex.”
“And died.”
Danny’s jaw works once. “She died because Reece was a violent piece of shit surrounded by violent fucking adults who were using kids to move drugs.” Nobody laughs now.
Danny’s voice stays eerily calm, which is the most dangerous he ever gets.
“If you’re going to drag my dead sister into your little speech, at least get the story right. ”
Victor’s expression barely changes. “And afterward, you attach yourself to Rebecca.”
Danny smiles. It’s a terrible smile. “Attach myself.”
“Her mother. Hartley.” No Mrs. Carney. No courtesy.
Even Victor knows enough about Becca’s history with Hartley to skip it.
“The scandal surrounding Theodore. Katya.” Danny’s eyes harden.
Victor continues, tallying families like they prove something.
“Another family imploding publicly. Another one of you directly in the center of it.”
Danny laughs once. “You make it sound like I planned a fucking season.”
“Perhaps you enjoy being needed.”
Oh, Victor. No.
Danny takes a small step closer. Kaid’s hand catches his arm — not to stop him, just there. Victor sees it. Reads it as fear instead of restraint. And then says the thing that makes my entire body go cold.
“And then there was the pregnancy.”
Becca goes white. Danny stops breathing. The whole world narrows.
Victor continues in that same calm, detached voice, and I understand right then that he doesn’t know what a line is, only where the nerves are. “The baby you lost.”
That’s it. Done.
“Hey.” My voice cuts through everything.
Victor’s eyes come to me. Good. “Remember me?” His face hardens.
I step forward, putting myself between his mouth and Danny without making it look like that’s what I’m doing.
“You came over here because of me.” Danny doesn’t move beside me.
Doesn’t fucking have to. Kaid’s got him.
X is staring at Victor like he’s deciding where to bury him.
Iz isn’t joking anymore. I smile. “So quit digging through everybody else’s graves because you ran out of shit to say. ”
The hallway reacts. Victor’s attention settles completely on me. “You seem eager to make yourself the center of this.”
“I was already the center. You called me over, remember?”
“I called you over because Roman informed me you’d been behaving like a spoiled child toward Alison.”
“Then talk about me.”
Victor looks at me for a long second. Then smiles. Cold. “Fine.”
Good. Hit me. I can fucking take it, which is more than Danny could do with one more sentence about a baby that had a name.
“You don’t have quite the same catalogue of public disasters yet.”
Kaid mutters, “Slacking.”
Victor continues. “But you’ve managed to insert yourself into every one of theirs.”
“Friends tend to do that.”
“Police stations. Courtrooms. Investigations. Fights. Every time one of them creates another catastrophe, Ryan Harrington appears.”
“I’m supportive.”
“You’re arrogant.”
“Also true.”
“You think nothing touches you. You think your name protects you.”
“My name?”
“Harrington.”
I glance down at my blazer like maybe I forgot it was embroidered somewhere. “Yeah. That is my last name.”