Page 39 of Theirs to Ruin

It pissed me off. I’d shed so many tears over Ty, and he didn’t deserve any of them.

Swiping my tears away, I left the ribbon where it was. Then, since I was obviously a masochist, I pulled my drawing pad out of my backpack and opened it.

I stared at the drawing I’d done in art class earlier.

Class had started with a bang, and ended on one, too.

First, Professor Means dropped the bomb that students would soon be paired up to draw nudes of one another.

While other students had whooped and made sexually charged remarks, I’d cringed inside. Given how flat-chested I was, I didn’t even like wearing bikinis to the beach but I knew I had to get over it. The nude drawing portion of the class was just another message to students to get over our basic insecurities and inhibitions.

“Fuck Marry Kill” might as well be emblazoned on the top of every CU syllabus because making a choice between them wasn’t a game for CU students, it was often a call to action.

Even worse than being told I’d have to strip naked so someone could draw me? The class assignment that day had been to practice drawing eyes; I hadn’t even realized I’d been drawing a specific person’s until I was halfway done and had recognized them to be Kage’s. Then to make matters worse, I’d drawn Dante and Ty’s eyes, too. By the time I was done, all I could think about was how uniquely gorgeous their eyes were, and how I’d feel standing naked in front of all three of them.

I groaned and shoved my drawing pad back in my backpack.

Focus on your exams, Camille!

I took several calming breaths then got back to what was important: passing my classes, especially Seduction 102.

I decided to start with the part of the exam I dreaded most—the practical exam in which the students would showcase their seductive skills in front of the entire class while the professor watched and evaluated. I grabbed my desk chair and stuck a pillow on the seat. I imagined a potential target—someone Ineeded to seduce. I thought of Kage but pushed him out of my mind, the memory of his betrayal still painful. I thought of Dante, picturing his beautiful blue eyes, his teasing smile, the memory of him standing up for me at Devil’s Engine. Our kiss at the overlook had been amazing, and I hated that he’d regretted it.

If Dante already meant to stay away from me because of my age and his position, what more if he knew I was a virgin? Would the knowledge tantalize him, like the possibility seemed to tantalize Kage? Or would it just make Dante’s resolve to stay away from me even stronger?

Eyes half-closed, I leaned toward the pillow on the chair as if it was Dante, drawing out each movement. My fingers traced imaginary patterns on pillow-Dante’s “arm,” my voice lowering to a seductive whisper as I uttered some rehearsed lines.

Suddenly, a pang of absurdity hit me. This was ridiculous. How could I take this seriously when I was attempting to seduce a pillow?

With a frustrated groan, I grabbed the pillow and threw it on my bed. My heart raced with a mix of embarrassment and frustration. I tried to shake the feelings off but they clung to me like a second skin.

"I'm so not cut out for this," I murmured, my voice edged with resignation.

My hand lifted in reflex, searching for the heart locket I’d used to wear around my neck. My mom had given it to me when I turned fourteen. I still reached for it sometimes when I was at my lowest, only I’d left it in Italy two years ago. After Ty had broken up with me, I’d begged him to mail it to me, but he’d never responded.

I hated him most of all for that.

But even though I didn’t have my mom’s locket, I had something else she’d given me.

I opened my armoire. Inside there was a small safe. The school provided one to students who then set the code themselves. I didn’t do it often, but when the world felt too heavy and my self-worth seemed to slip through my fingers, I’d open the safe and take out the only item I kept inside—a gold ingot the size of a deck of cards.

My mother had given matching ingots to me, Bianca, and Elise, the same ingots my grandfather had given my mother. Cast from twenty-four karat gold, each one was worth about half-a-million dollars. The value wasn’t because of its material makeup, but because of its historical ties to a mob boss from the Prohibition Era, a guy my grandfather had worked for. The gold ingots had been a symbol of power and a means of securing deals in the shadowy underworld of speakeasies.

Each ingot was also branded with my mother’s family crest. My mother had loved its beauty and historical connection to her family; my father loved its value and how it symbolized our generational wealth and power. Both my parents had told us the ingots were our safety nets. This was more than just a bar of gold—it was my family’s legacy and my only means of starting over if I needed to. If Bianca, Elise or I were ever in danger and needed to go underground, we were to take our gold bars and run.

I pressed in my code but when the safe door swung open, my heart plummeted. It was empty. The gold bar, which had always sat securely inside, was gone.

I frantically checked the entire safe, as if hoping it might magically reappear or had perhaps shrunk to an invisible size but it remained agonizingly absent.

Panic bubbled up inside me, constricting my chest. It had to have been stolen. There was no other explanation. I glanced out the windows and saw nothing but the trees covering the hill behind the dorm. When I checked, the windows were all locked and none of them looked like they had been tampered with.Everything else in my room looked undisturbed. If someone had broken in, they’d had to have done so with a key, and what were the chances of that? Plus, no one else knew the code but me and Bianca. It was a combination of letters that was sacred to me. I’d never shared it with anyone else, including Ava.

Ava.

My mind raced back to earlier and how suspiciously she had been acting.

Could she have...?

Of course she could. She hated me that much. She must have figured out a way to get around the safe’s security system.

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