CHAPTER 14
CASHTON
I whipped my Chevelle into the parking lot before shutting it off and heading into the downtown office of my step-father’s architecture firm. This is where I had been earlier when I had gotten the notification that Landry had sent out some texts, having checked my phone to see that she had asked two of her teammates to accompany her to the shelter. Both of them had replied, not that she knew though.
Kaptan had been able to hack into her phone, using some software to alert him if she received any texts. He could then approve or decline if he wanted her to receive them. He had also been the one to hack into whatever programs or servers that the Gamemakers used to make sure that my team received Landry’s team as our target.
I was beginning to understand Landry well enough to know that one way or another, she would be going to the shelter. She loved swooping in to save the day .
I had already been in the city, sending the rest of the team after her since they were closer to campus and the shelter, though I wish I had been there to oversee the abduction myself.
My blood had gone cold as I had taken in the shape she was in, the scrapes down her arms and legs along with the angry red marks around her wrists. I had told them to scare her, not fucking hurt her. I wasn’t a monster. The abduction would have been traumatizing enough for her.
The dog crate had been my idea though, I had to admit. I had reveled in the thought of her quaking as I kept her caged in my penthouse like a little pet that I could use at my disposal. The image of her sitting there flashed through my mind, those baby blues shooting straight daggers at me as she sat in nothing but those tiny sleep shorts and see-through tank top that left nothing to the imagination. My dick hardened instantaneously.
The way her golden hair cascaded down her bare shoulders, all messed up from the scuffle, and those long tan legs that were begging me to run my hands up the smooth skin. The fact that I knew she was still up there in her cage right now sent a shock of excitement through me.
I shook the image out of my mind, reminding myself why I had left the penthouse in the first place. I had been reading through a new proposal earlier that my dad had sent to review for the opera house plans. I had been halfway through reading it when I had gotten the notification that the penthouse elevator was being used, letting me know that the team had made it there.
My stepfather had made me a partner in the firm last year as a reward for all of my years of putting in the work. My mom had married David Astor when I was in middle school, and I had eventually chosen to adopt his name for myself since he had been more of a father to me than my real dad had ever been. Considering the fact that I had never met my biological father, it hadn’t taken much for David to surpass him as father of the year.
I liked David, though. He had treated my sister and I as his own, and it was evident how much he genuinely loved my mother. She deserved her happy ending, given the cards she had been dealt early in life.
David had done everything he could to make sure we had all felt at home from that very first day, and I can still remember the tears in his eyes when I had turned twelve and asked him if I could start calling him dad instead of David.
Our life had been nearly perfect from that point on. I had started learning about dad’s business once I turned sixteen, and at eighteen, the entire family had moved to Benbrook so that they wouldn’t be as far away once I started attending Ivybrook Elite. It’s funny just how quickly things can change.
Emory should have been a freshman at Ivybrook this year. She had been forced to change schools for her senior year due to the move, but had quickly made new friends and continued to excel in all of her classes, excited to attend University with me the following year.
Her acceptance letter to Ivybrook had arrived in the mail a month after she died. I still remember walking into the dining room that evening to find David holding my weeping mother in his arms, the letter laid out on the table in front of them. I hadn’t been back home since. I knew that it might make me a horrible son, but I had a different way of grieving. I wasn’t ready to face her again until I was strong enough to offer the support she needed. At least she had David, who understood my need for space during these times. He would take care of her .
Landry showing up at Ivybrook this year had offered me an outlet that I hadn’t known I needed. It was a gift from the universe, placing her directly in my path and basically begging me to take the revenge that my family deserved.
Maybe once I had completely ruined and broken her, I would find it easier to face my mother, knowing that I had done something to right the wrongs that had been done.
My mind turned back to Landry, still sitting up in the penthouse that dad had bought me so that I could have a place to stay in the city whenever we had important business meetings. She had been asleep when I had left earlier, and I imagined that she probably still was. The look of defeat on her face earlier had been so sweet. Fucking with her had brought me such a sick sense of joy. I was getting addicted, constantly trying to figure out how I could push it further and further, driving her closer to her breaking point.
I hadn’t intended to go quite as far with the midterm incident, only having meant to get her tipsy enough to fuck with her presentation. That first day at the pool when she had claimed to be allergic to bottom-shelf vodka, I had assumed she was just acting like her spoiled self. I had immediately known that something was wrong when I noticed the labored breathing and sweat dripping from her brow. Panic had consumed me as I had watched her collapse, my heart having stopped in my chest completely. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out that it hadn’t been a lie, she truly was somehow allergic to cheap vodka, something that I didn’t know was even possible.
I still remember the panic as she had begun stripping in front of the entire class, Atticus and Ryan having to physically hold me back from running down there to cover her up. I didn’t like Landry, but that didn’t mean she deserved to have the entire school see such a vulnerable moment.
I had gotten updates about how she was doing through the group message, and had gotten Kaptan to take down any videos of the incident as soon as they had started circling around campus. But at the end of the day, I felt more guilt than I cared to admit.
I absent-mindedly stuck my hand in my hoodie pocket as I continued to read through the contract, feeling for the key to the locks on her crate. I paused my reading, my hand meeting nothing but emptiness. What the fuck? I shoved my other hand in as well, feeling for holes and trying to figure out how it could have slipped out.
My entire body turned to ice, my stomach rising to my throat as the realization hit me. I had showered before running to the office, and had subsequently changed hoodies, my dirty one still laying in my bedroom at the penthouse. My heartrate picked up, hitting unhealthy levels as I realized who I had also left at the apartment with Landry.
MOTHERFUCKER.
The girls had left at the same time as me to head back to campus after I had lied and told them that I wasn’t coming back for the night, but I had let Levi and Connor stay knowing that they didn’t have a key to her cage. But if they had somehow figured out that they did in fact have access to one…
I raced out the door and to my car, tires squealing as I pulled out of the parking lot. All I could see was red as I imagined what I would do if either of them had so much as put a hand on her. She was mine to fuck with, mine to torment, mine to break, nobody else’s. I knew what those sleazy fuckers had in mind, and with the amount of alcohol they had consumed tonight, I wouldn’t put anything past them.
Remembering the way they had looked at her earlier made my fists clench the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles turned white. It had taken everything in me not to crack my beer bottle against both of their skulls at each of those looks. I pressed down harder on the gas, my Chevelle easily clearing 150 mph thanks to the modifications that Zayn had helped me install last semester.
Maybe everything was fine and I was overreacting. They had been hammered after all—The chances of them not only realizing that I had changed, but also that I may have forgotten to grab the key were low. But I still felt a sinking feeling in my gut. A foreign emotion ran through me, something new and uncomfortable. It was something that I had only faced once in my life, the night that Emory died.
Except for this time, I would get there in time. I would make sure of that.