Page 31 of Soulless Rivalry

“Nope. I come from a long line of women who don’t listen,” I sassed, even though one of his hands was clutching my throat and the other was next to my head, against the door, effectively trapping me in.

He snarled at me, fingers flexing around my neck, making me gasp a little.

The realization that this was turning me on a little was blinding and more than a bit disturbing. I’d never felt this way before. Been alive twenty years and I barely knew what it felt like towantsomeone, let alone get turned on by somebody else’sactions. Yet I simply couldn’t ignore the heat spreading down my thighs.

“You’re getting on my fucking nerve, Ayaari. Quit fucking disobeying if you don’t want me to strangle you.” With that he released me, and I gulped the air that had been cut from me eagerly.

“They found a body, you moron!” I hissed, angry but not keen on getting discovered, “They found a body and they’re doing everything they can to hide it!”

He clenched his jaw and said nothing, didn’t even look surprised.

It dawned on me then. “You knew.”

“Considering I just saw that atrocity, yes, I did. Whoever killed her clearly didn’t know what they were doing. The cut was way too deep and it wasn’t made in one go, the fucker had to go back and forth like they were cutting bread—it was amateur work.”

I stared at him, gaping a little. I’d always known he and his family were into some shady shit, just as much as mine, but hearing him speak so freely about murder threw me off a little.

“What?” he asked when he noticed I was gaping at him. “Don’t act like your family are saints.”

“They’re into traffics,” I defended lamely. All kinds of traffics. “They don’t specialize in all the ways to kill someone like fucking Dexter.”

“They should,” he shrugged. “The fact that they don’t simply shows that they’re fucking pussies.”

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose because this discussion wasn’t going anywhere.

“The girl, how did they… how did she die?”

“Slit throat. She was pretty much all out of blood by the time those morons found her, super pale. And she wasn’t killed thereeither because there was hardly any blood on the ground or dripping from her.”

My mind reeled with the amount of information he was feeding me. Actually, it was hard to grasp that he was feeding me any information at all. When did we go from barely acknowledging each other to starting our very own little Scooby gang?

“I couldn’t stay long at the scene because guards were alerted by all the screaming. I saw Gastow bring Hannah back here and Taylor walked her boyfriend to his dorm too.”

“Chapman and Gastow were talking about how they would send them both home. They want to stifle this, they don’t want students to know there’s a killer on campus.”

“Can you blame them? Our parents pay thousands, if not millions, to send us here. They would fuck this castle up if they learned somebody was out here killing people.”

I frowned, knowing he was right. All of us came from wealthy families; some were crime-related, others legit, but what they all had in common was that they were affluent and powerful as fuck. When Buxley died, Charles’s parents nearly flew here. Word was Taylor himself flew to them and spent all day convincing them that it was the work of townspeople and that repercussions would ensue.

Something crossed my mind right then and I looked up at Konstantin with wide eyes. “The girl, did you see her face?”

“Listen, I know you’re not the sharpest tool in the box, but I already told you I did.” He looked annoyed.

My eyes itched to roll but I held on, not wanting to piss him off and keep him from answering my questions.

“Did she have a mark?”

Konstantin frowned. “A mark?”

“On her forehead,” I nodded. “Like Buxley did. An upside-down T.”

He seemed to think about it for a second before slowly nodding. “Not on her face. It was carved on her stomach.”

I knew right then when the words left his mouth that we had to go back to the room where I had found the journal. The little symbol on the cover had rung a bell when I first saw it but I couldn’t quite place it. Now I knew.

It was the same symbol that had been drawn in blood on Buxley's forehead and now carved with a knife on this girl’s stomach.

I briefly thought about sharing the thought with Konstantin, but then he opened his mouth and I decided it was better if I kept my distance.

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