Page 48 of Merciless Prince
I snapped out of my reverie a moment later and realized my unfocused gaze was aimed directly at the large wall-mounted mirror which hung right next to my desk. There was something on my face. Something dark red.
Was I bleeding?
I stepped closer and stared at my reflection, focusing on the spot of red next to my nose. My shoulders slumped with relief as I realized it wasn’t blood. It was just a dot of liquid lipstick. I must’ve accidentally brushed against a semi-open tube of the stuff when I reached for my sunscreen in the top bathroom drawer a couple of minutes ago, and some of it ended up transferring from my hand to my face.
I looked down at my hands and found more smears of red on my left palm, confirming that theory. With a sigh, I went back into the bathroom to wash it off. Then I returned to my desk and picked up the card again, mind whirling as I continued to mull over its authenticity.
Cori’s words from the other day quickly floated back into my brain.Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is the correct one.Then I thought of everything Francesca told me at dinner last night.The Beaumont grotto thing was just a scene from an amateur film, and the Hellfire Club is just a myth.
My instincts had to be correct. The letter was an elaborate joke, perpetrated by the same asshole who went out of his or her way to scare the shit out of me multiple times over the last few weeks. After all, they went to the effort of breaking into my dorm and hacking my emails to delete that video, so I could easily see them going to the effort of writing a stupid riddle in the hope of convincing me that the Hellfire Club was real, too.
Whoever it was who’d decided to target me for this toxic hazing—I was still quite certain it was Killian and his friends, despite Francesca’s doubt—obviously assumed I would take the bait, solve the riddle, and show up at the correct location on Friday night, expecting a real initiation ceremony. Then they’d carry out some other sick, stupid prank to scare or humiliate me. A bucket of pig’s blood tipped on my head, for instance, or a man in a Scream mask chasing me around with a machete. It would probably all be filmed and uploaded online so everyone could point and laugh at me.Again.
My nostrils flared as something inside me cracked and boiled over.
I was so sick of this shit. So sick of being targeted and harassed by people who were no better than schoolyard bullies.
Like Cori said the other day, I worked hard to get into Bellingham. I deserved to be here. That meant I needed to buck up and stop letting others have so much power over my life. I couldn’t andwouldn’tallow Killian—or anyone else, for that matter—to bully and intimidate me off this campus.
I scrunched the card up as much as possible, tearing it in various places. Then I turned around and tossed it right where it belonged—in the trash.
15
Killian
A smirk playedon my lips as I watched Shay step out of her bathroom, yawning and rubbing something into her damp hair. When she was halfway across her dorm, the front of her robe fell open, exposing one of her dusky pink nipples. She didn’t make a move to fix it.
My cock twitched at the sight. It was almost as if Shay knew she was being watched and wanted to put on a little show to tease me.
But she didn’t know. She lived in blissful ignorance with no clue that I was practically in the room with her, witnessing her every move via the tiny hidden cameras I’d set up in the dorm before she moved in. I was like a ghost, lurking in the shadows. A spider crouched in its web, waiting to spin the next part of her ruin.
The thought of that made me even harder.
I reached down and palmed my cock through my pants, letting out a soft grunt of arousal as my gaze remained fixed on Shay. Her robe had fallen open even more now, and both of her perfect tits were hanging out along with half of her smooth, tanned abdomen.
What I wouldn’t give to go down there, kick open her door, and grope all that gorgeous flesh instead of grabbing my own dick from behind a screen…
Patience,I told myself, steeling my jaw.
Shay slowly walked over to her closet and stared into it, jaw slack and shoulders drooping. She looked like she wanted to crawl back into her bed and sleep forever.Poor girl. I’d been so hard on her lately, with all the shit I’d plotted against her, but it was crucial for my own freedom and survival. I couldn’t stop now, even if it led to her destruction.
The smirk on my face grew wider as I waited for her to notice the envelope I’d slipped under her door five minutes before her alarm went off this morning. It didn’t take long. Less than thirty seconds passed before she spotted it and walked over to pick it up. She no longer looked exhausted, and her shoulders were high and tense. The surprise of the mysterious delivery must have jolted some adrenaline into her system.
After she opened the letter and read it, she held onto it and stepped across the room. I switched to a different camera to get a better angle. Then I leaned closer, lips twitching with amusement as I stared at her beautiful, bewildered face.
She put the letter down on her desk and stared into space, brows drawn into a contemplative frown. Then she shook her head slightly and focused on the mirror in front of her. Her forehead wrinkled, and she took a few steps closer, squinting in my direction.
My pulse accelerated, and I moved my head back, blinking rapidly. Was I wrong about Shay’s level of ignorance? Did she know I was watching her right now?
I wasn’t sure how she could have any idea about it. Before she arrived on campus several weeks ago, I’d replaced the old mirror in her dorm with a brand new one-way mirror and stuck one of the cameras behind it, but there was no way she could know about that, unless…
I frowned, mind flashing back to the instructions that came with the one-way mirror. It was possible for a person to figure out that it wasn’t a regular mirror if they went close enough and touched the glass. If there was a small gap between their fingertip and the reflection, that meant it was a real mirror. If there was no gap and the fingertip seemed to be actively touching its reflection, that meant it was a one-way mirror designed for spying.
Shay must’ve figured it out somehow. She was staring directly at the hidden camera now, right into my eyes, and one of her hands was rising, reaching toward the mirror.
I swallowed thickly and stared back at her on the screen, rooted to the spot by her magnetic gaze. Her eyes suddenly dropped a couple of inches, and her hand moved to her left cheek. There was a tiny smear of red there. Some sort of makeup, presumably, or blood from a spot she’d picked at too much.
She wiped it away, nose wrinkling with annoyance. Then she took a small step back.
