Chapter 25
Scarlett
Although…I tighten my hand around the wheel of the Devil and try my very best not to think of Emma Jean in her lingerie on Ash’s bed.
Naked on his bed. I choke and flick my eyes over to Alexei, situated in the front seat of my car while wearing his uwu-emo-boy best. I’m sort of glad that I can’t see his face. Last night was wild.
I clear my throat, turning Emma down as she gushes gossip about the fires. The one at my house. The one at the mayor’s house. Back to the South Prescott Gardens where I started a teensy-weensy little Devil’s Night riot and burned down an apartment complex with molotov cocktails.
Alexei is sitting beside me with his red hood pulled up over his conspicuous blond hair. He’s wearing a black mask with vampire fangs on it, tugging it down with two latex-wrapped fingers as he turns to look at me. His mouth is too perverse to stare at.
“Scarlett,” he begins as I check the rearview mirror for Bohnes. Widow is just behind him in the Stingray. Ash will stay where he is in my trunk and then climb out later, using the hole in the back fence to crawl into the school.
Poor Ash is not permitted to drive any vehicles today. He has to pretend to be a loser scrub with no car.
We’ll stick together and surround ourselves with my girls. The mayor can’t execute us in broad daylight and keep his little ‘cleaning up crime in Prescott’ charade alive. But he’ll lurk. We’re going to have to be really careful here.
“Scarlett, what?” I ask, praying to the gods that I get my period soon.
I’m starting to wonder if… Gross. Can you imagine the look on Widow’s face if that happened?
Who knows if it’d be his though? I want to give a hysterical laugh.
I’m everything I ever hated in Prescott.
Married during my senior year. Multiple options for possible baby daddies.
Involved in organized crime. Murders to my name.
“Congratulations. To both of us, for the first official day of what’s going to be a very long marriage.
” Alexei threads his gloved hand around the one I’ve got resting on the gear stick, and he’s too fucking earnest for me to pull away.
Did not expect the chill last night when we did backdoor stuff with no condom.
He must really like me. Lapped up his own cum, too.
“Congratulations,” I repeat, giving him a sideways glance.
We stopped at the courthouse as promised.
Filled out the papers. Turned them in. We’re both legal adults; it really was that easy.
To skip the three-day waiting period, we lied and said I was preggers and that my religious family would kill me if I didn’t get married right that very second. Cost an extra thirty bucks.
I’m a married woman. Yuck. Alexei is my legal husband. Much less yuck.
You know how they say a captain goes down with the ship? I am officially onboard the Borisov boat, anchored to this rich boy’s fate in an inescapable way. Not that the paperwork changed things. All four of these men are mine.
“You’re perfectly fine with the most perverse of sexual acts, but a congratulations is enough to rattle you?
” he retorts, sniffing and snapping his glove against his wrist like he’s pissed with me.
Alexei believes in that true-love-forever shit.
Kills me to admit it, but so do I. Nisha was right all along: I’m a worse romantic than Lemon.
Here’s the deal though: I judge people through their actions, not their words.
“I’m really fucking excited about it.” I lift my left hand from the wheel (look, no hands, Ma), flashing the ring he gave me.
Never did I ever think I’d be wearing a bunch of fuckboy rings on my finger and trying not to smile about it.
I don’t feel trapped with these guys. Nah, I feel liberated.
“I always promised myself I’d never sign that death certificate they call a marriage license. You’re one lucky fuck, Mr. Force.”
Alexei pushes his mask back up, covering the smile that’s stolen across his lips.
“If only we weren’t in active combat and could take a honeymoon.
Where would you go, milaya moya, if you could go anywhere?
” he asks, his elegant voice muffled by the mask.
My hackles rise at the foreign term of endearment—who knows what sugary sweet name he’s calling me by—but my heart thumps happily.
“To bed.” It’s an easy answer, one that I accompany with a quick flick of my eyes and a wetting of my naked lips.
Alexei shudders, his emo pants tented in the front. This man can go and go and go, and I’m not mad about it.
“There’s no place you’d like to visit?” he inquires, breath husky as I blow through a stop sign.
“If we take a honeymoon, I’ll be the one paying for it. Don’t think I’m about to sit around and spend all your money without earning any of my own.” I glance in the rearview again, checking to see if we’re being followed. For now, the coast appears to be clear.
“Everything I have is yours, and everything you have is mine. I look forward to our combined future fortune.” Alexei puts both of his hands into his lap and then says something under his breath in Russian. Something perverted, I’ll bet.
Ash rumbles around in the trunk, murmuring some crazy shit—you are cordially invited, probably—and making me chuckle.
“Can you imagine that?” I say to Alexei, pulling up in front of the school in my parking space. “Me dating a guy with no car?”
I’m still laughing at the thought as I climb out, finding Nisha, Basti, and a good two dozen of my girls lounging on the steps waiting for me.
I’m surrounded and petted, offered hot cocoa, gossip whispered in my ear.
I discover all sorts of interesting things, like how most of them have been approached with cash offers for information.
What they told the mayor’s people in return.
What everyone thinks about me actually losing a fucking race.
Apparently, I handled it with such mad chill that nobody knows how pissed off I really am.
I do not appreciate losing, even on a technicality. Second place is just first place loser. Gah.
Must correct that mistake.
“Did you hear about the South Prescott Gardens?” Jennifer murmurs as Widow sweeps up along one side of me and Bohnes takes up the other.
Marie is there, too, floating dangerously off to one side.
When another hooded boy in a mask comes up on us, the girls stiffen, looking to me for confirmation.
I don’t acknowledge him, and Ash falls in line on the opposite side from Alexei, like he’s a student here, too.
My crew relaxes, adjusting to his presence.
“Not really. What do you mean?” I ask as I stop at my locker, using the excuse to pass weapons out to the girls. Officer Erectile Dysfunction back there did a nice job squeezing my duffel bag in without it ending up on camera. We have a lot of knives. Just in case.
“The fire revealed serious structural issues within the building itself. It was a death trap. We probably saved lives by setting that fire.” Jenn whispers this to me and then widens her eyes, accepting the knife I pass her way. “Oh, and your mom is looking for you. She came by the track yesterday.”
My mouth flattens.
“Huh.”
I do my best to move through my day like everything is normal. The boys take turns shadowing me and alternately creeping around the school to look in all the dark corners. Ain’t nothin’ there but our imagination.
At lunch, we have a rendezvous in the girls’ locker room. I walk in and snap my fingers, sending the few girls in there scrambling out of the showers and grabbing their clothes. Basti and Nisha clear the room, making certain that nobody’s hiding behind the shower curtains or in the lockers.
“Thanks for inviting me to the courthouse,” Basti says sarcastically, making eyes at me. “I wouldn’t have known you were even getting married if I wasn’t asked to be a witness.”
“Alexei only asked me to marry him last night,” I explain, like that makes it better.
Nisha grits all sorts of colorful curses out under her breath.
“Don’t even get started on me, girl.” I turn toward her in warning as she finishes checking the last row of lockers.
“No prenup. This is a good business move for us.”
“If it was only a business move, I’d be fine with it. You’re in love with a man who’s so disgusted by the school water fountain that he gags whenever we walk by it.”
I grin as I head for the door, opening it for the boys to come in.
Bohnes, Widow, Alexei, Ash. All four of them are staring at me like the creepers they are. I pretend to be oblivious to their combined attention. Business comes first and besties come even before that. Fuckboys only come when they ask nicely.
“That ain’t nothing,” I tell Nisha, trying not to get excited by the parade of hoodies and jeans and boots that waltz by me, all of them smelling too damn good for their own good.
Yum. I love when you hug a boy and end up smelling like him.
“Everyone gags when they get near that fountain. Probably undiscovered strains of mono on that thing. Herpes, too, I’ll bet. ”
“Pardon?” Alexei asks, aghast as he passes by me.
“The school water fountains,” I explain, ensuring some of my best girls—Tuesday and Juana—are stationed outside the door.
I let it swing shut and move over to sit on the bench, letting my head fall back and breathing in the leftover steam from the showers.
It smells nice in here, like hot girl shampoo and bodywash.
I smile.
“What are we waiting for, Scarlett?” Nisha asks, her eyes following the four huge men with an understandable wariness. They’re big dudes, overall. Bohnes and Widow are a little wider in the shoulders, but Ash and Alexei are acidic. Equally dangerous for different reasons.