The plan （his pov）
Chapter 13
LORENZO
Having the rooftop to yourself is one of those privileges that comes without being asked for.
That is the thing about a name like Calloway most of what it gives you arrives before you've thought to want it.
Doors that open. Spaces that clear. People who move without being told to.
Whether any of it is fair is an entirely different conversation, one nobody in my family has ever seemed particularly interested in having.
The rooftop has never been assigned to us.
It has simply become ours, the way certain things become yours when you occupy them long enough and with enough certainty that everyone else stops questioning it.
Now it belongs to the upper 10 Percent.
Not that I care.
I think Ben and Alex came up with that shit as a joke but somehow it became something more over the years.
I drop onto the bench beside Vivienne because it's the only spot still empty.Vivienne's gaze snaps to me the second my weight hits the bench.
That tilt of her chin.
"Where were you?" Matteo asks, looking at me with patient expectation.
He is one of the few people in my immediate circle I trust without reservation one of those rare friendships that has calcified over years into something closer to brotherhood.
Our families have crossed paths so frequently since we were four years old that understanding each other has never really been a choice so much as an inevitability.
Having him still beside me now, after everything, is something I don't take lightly, even if I rarely say so.
"It wasn't her," I say flatly, reaching for a can of Coke from the low table between us.
"And I have no idea how those photos ended up published the same night."
Vivienne's brow moves. "Are you sure? Think about it , she shows up from nowhere, she was at the warehouse that night, and then by morning the photos were everywhere."
"It wasn't her."
She stops pressing her lips together
Alex is to my left, working steadily through a cigarette while watching somthing on his phone.
Ben is balancing on the railing with the architectural confidence of someone who has never once considered that things might not hold him , a Coke bottle poised beside him at an angle that seems to treat gravity as a mild suggestion rather than a rule.
The two of them are, in their own ways, impossible. I wouldn't trust them with my life that would be an unreasonable burden for anyone to carry but there is a specific, narrow band of loyalty they occupy that has never once failed me, and I have learned to value exactly that and nothing more.
Ben turns from the skyline.
"Guys, not to be that guy," he says, with the tone ofthyt already tells you he is exactly that guy, "but she did walk into the boys' locker room."
He tilts his head slightly. "That's something."
He is clearly finding the whole situation Funny.
And I can tell by the way Vivienne has begun tensing beside me that she is fines it , not funny at all
"And she knows where you live," she says bitterly.
"Everyone knows where I live." I say it flatly because it is flatly true. The Calloway address is not a secret it is, if anything, the opposite, the kind of location that appears in architectural features.
Alex flicks ash onto the potted succulent beside the bench without looking at it. "I mean, at least she's attractive. Imagine if it was Susan from Class E." He laughs at his own observation.
"Alex, stop being such an idiot," Matteo warns him, gesturing toward the ashtray. "And use that, please. Those cigarette ends don't belong on the floor."
"That's not the point," I cut in, running a hand through my hair.
Alex and Matteo have begun bickering. Ben is apparently attempting to set some kind of record with stacked Coke cans. While Vivienne is scrolling through Instagram. I look at my watch. Ten more minutes, and then last period before the game against the Hacks.
"Real talk," Matteo says finally, setting the argument aside and looking at me with the expression he reserves for things he considers genuinely important.
"If your father finds out where the money actually came from" He draws a slow line across his throat with one finger. No further elaboration required.
Matteo is the rational one among us. Alex takes most things in stride.
Ben has the attention span of a ten-year-old and the instincts of someone twice his age.
And Vivienne well Vivienne is a persistent presence I have never entirely managed to shake, though I have long since stopped asking myself why I keep her around.
Some habits are simply easier to maintain than to break.
The thing is, Matteo isn't wrong. He is almost never wrong when it comes to this kind of calculation, which is simultaneously one of his most useful qualities and one of his most irritating ones.
My father has chosen not to address the funding.
But photographs in press outlets are different.
They exist outside silence. They require answers that can't be deferred.
I need to find out who.
"Why is she so fucking annoying ?" I mutter, glancing at my watch again.
"What if we made sure she leaves the Academy ?"
I look toward Vivienne, who is already smiling.
She has produced the red lip liner from her Birkin and is turning it between her fingers with the satisfied air of someone who has already arrived at a destination and is simply waiting for everyone else to follow.
"What do you mean," I say.
"A small crash course in Weststar protocol," she says. "Show her what happens when you attach yourself to the wrong people. She doesn't belong here, she doesn't know the rules, she doesn't know the city." A slight tilt of her head. "Let's help her find that out."
Ben jumps to his feet though on closer inspection, his excitement appears to be entirely directed at the fact that he has successfully stacked the last Coke can without the tower collapsing.
Vivienne rolls her eyes. Ben, apparently oblivious, flashes a grin in her direction.
"Yeah. Let's have some fun with the new girl."
Alex stubs out his cigarette against the bench arm, which earns an immediate comment from Matteo about the state of the furniture.
I simply lean back and I think about the measurement sheet.
"A small Weststarr experience," I say, settling on the phrasing. "Nothing that goes too far. Let's just show her our world."
Alex and Ben exchange a look. Vivienne's smile spreads slowly, the satisfied kind of someone who has gotten what she wanted in the form she was willing to accept.
Matteo gives me the look he always gives me in moments like this, the one that says are you genuinely certain about this without using a single word.
Am I certain? No. Does it matter? Not particularly.
"Divertiamoci," I say a grin forming on my lips.
And I already have a fairly specific idea of how. If she thinks last night was overwhelming, she hasn't yet experienced what a Calloway party actually looks like when we mean it.
"So let's invite her and show her our world," Ben says, throwing his hand up to high-five Alex.
"Man, I am so ready for a new party," Alex says, laughing as he returns the slap.
I lean back, tracking the movement of my friends but thinking miles ahead. The strategy is effortless. We throw her an invitation like a scrap from the table, let her step into our circle one last time, and let the sheer weight of our world break her.
It will be the gentlest push she ever receives to make her realize she belongs in a public school, completely erasing her from my existence.