Page 60 of Raise Hell

“Don’t worry so much about it.” I sit back down at the table and contemplate my now soggy breakfast with a frown. “Even if Vaughn’s brothers told him everything, it won’t help us. The Initiation is different every year.”

All we know is that randomly chosen alumni, whose identities are never revealed to us, will show up on campus at some undetermined time during our senior year. When they do, we’ll be expected to drop whatever it is we’re doing and meet for the Initiation.

I’m assuming it’s all masturbatory bullshit, but the older guys always seemed to take it so seriously. They’ve been building that shit up since I first pledged Havoc House as a freshman.

Now, it’s our turn.

Nolan returns to his seat across from me, still tense. “Have you heard anything? I mean, how much warning are we going to get?”

The Initiation will probably be closer to the end of the school year, but it could happen at any point between now and then.

As acting president of Havoc House, I’ll be the one who gets the signal that our Initiation has begun. I’m hoping it’ll be a call or text message, not some mysterious hacker taking over my computer screen while I’m in the middle of jerking off.

But who the hell knows?

“I know as much as you do.” I push the bowl away, my appetite officially gone. “It could be days of warning, or less than an hour. Your guess is as good as mine.”

“You really think this thing with Olivia will keep us from getting initiated?” Cole asks, biting into an apple.

“My father said as much,” I admit.

I want to ask my father why he and the other alumni care so much about what happens with one random girl. But I already know what his response would be.

Any threat to Havoc House is a threat to all of us.

“The alumni are pretty much admitting that someone in Havoc House attacked her,” Cole points out casually. It doesn’t seem to bother him that what he is saying is basically blasphemy around here. “I bet it was one of the seniors from last year. Now we have to cover for some asshole who isn’t even around to help clean up the mess he left behind.”

Nolan turns on him with a shocked look on his face. “This is Havoc House. That’s the point. We rise and fall together. Any of them would do the same thing for us.”

The only difference between Havoc House and a street gang is that the turf we control is in the upper echelons of society. Our drugs don’t get cut with baby powder or rat poison. When our alumni get indicted for stealing, the courts call it embezzlement or fraud instead of plain old robbery.

But the same no snitching rules apply.

Cole shrugs. “If you say so.”

“That same asshole might be the one who recommends you for a clerkship on the Supreme Court when you’re in law school,” I point out. Nepotism has always been part of how the world works, but with us: it’s codified. I watched my mother struggle for too long to believe there is any nobility in turning down every advantage you can get.

“And it’s not like we know what actually happened,” Nolan adds. “For all we know, Olivia Pratt is just a slut with a bad case of buyer’s remorse.”

“It kind of sounds like you don’t care, either way.” Cole stomps out of the room, letting the door slam closed behind him.

“What the hell got up his snatch?” Nolan watches him go, rolling his eyes. “Why is everybody acting like I’m the asshole around here?”

I wisely decide not to answer that.

He turns back to me with a frown. “I really do hope you know what you’re talking about.”

“We just need to get her to leave. The other details don’t matter.” I say the words, but I’m not sure how much I believe them. Some things are better left unexplored. “My plan is going to work.”

“It better,” Nolan says with a grimace. “If not, our Initiation task is going to be burying her body in the woods.”

He isn’t actually serious, but I still feel a tingle of foreboding move up my spine.

Olivia has to leave St. Bart’s before something worse happens to her than already has.

But the details in my head are like puzzle pieces from different sets that have all been mixed together. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t make them fit.

“Do we really know what happened to Olivia last year?” I ask, trying to sound casual.

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