Page 37 of The Weekend Getaway

CHAPTER 33

Fifteen Years Ago

1:37 a.m.

Phil

Phil Richart downed another shot, his fifth, maybe sixth, fuck, he didn’t know, of the night, bellowing a chaotic roar as he walked through the rowdy, drunk crowd, a teeming horde of bodies.

The party was going better than expected.

Most of the WBU campus was in attendance, as well as several local celebrities, athletes, and rappers. He’d pulled the trigger on throwing the party after his dad and evil stepmom decided to spend the weekend in Monaco, an impromptu trip, most likely suggested by his dad’s skanky trophy wife, a woman fifteen years his junior, barely three years older than Phil.

All the cunt wanted was to spend his dad’s money, and theold fart let her do it because she had sex with him, but Phil saw through her professions of love. The bitch was after the Richart fortune. Phil would be fucked if he let her get her sticky fingers on any of his family’s billions. Once his old man kicked the bucket, Phil planned to kick his stepmother out on her ass.

Phil wasn’t letting the bitch inherit one dime, he didn’t care what his father’s will said.

He’d kill that whore before she had a chance to contest the terms.

Still, he was glad his stepmom had dragged his dad to Europe because it meant the chalet, which his dad and the stepbitch usually occupied on the weekends, was available for use. Once he’d confirmed they’d be gone, Phil had called an event planning team, given them his vision, telling them to make it happen. Within the next twenty hours, or so, the chalet had been transformed into a psychedelic kaleidoscope of lights, color, and sound. Because the chalet was a replica of the Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette’s private house at Versailles, Phil thought it made sense to throw a French Revolution party, but from the perspective of someone tripping on acid, or trapped in the clutches of a psychotic break.

And so, at midnight, thePhiltastic Philapaloozabegan.

And it was still going at maximum velocity, full steam ahead, with no end in sight.

As he tossed back another shot, Phil glanced around, his vision slightly blurred. He felt dizzy and chaotic and alive. Every nerve ending pulsed, as though electricity rushedthrough his veins. The music blared at ear-splitting decibels, making conversation nearly impossible, but that didn’t matter. No one needed to speak. Phil imagined the screaming, seething, surging crowd not as individual people, but as a single, living entity, an undulating organism.

Caught up in the rapture of euphoria, Phil allowed himself to be pulled into the fray, in the middle of a maelstrom, a whirling tornado of frenetic bodies that lifted him into the air, carrying him over the crowd, cheering him on as he rode the wave of the makeshift mosh pit all the way to the opposite side of the bar.

Steadying himself on a stool, he laughed with friends, basking in the revelry. He was about to ask the bartender for a beer when something in his periphery caught his attention.

Two girls, across the ballroom, making their way through the crowd, heading toward the stairs.

He recognized them as tagalongs, hangers-on, bitches who really didn’t belong.

Grace and Sarah.

They were friends of a guy he knew from Economics class, Alex Ashton. They shouldn’t have been at the party, but Phil had told Alex to bring whoever he wanted, so …

Ignoring the crowd teeming around him, Alex frowned as Grace and Sarah started up the curving stairway. Where were those bitches going? The party was restricted to the first level. The second floor was off-limits, especially to girls like them. Broke bitches. They were at WBU on scholarships, not because their parents could afford it.

Following the girls’ progress, Philthought one of them looked like she was out of it. Sarah. She was stumbling, while Grace guided her, holding her up. Phil wasn’t surprised. In addition to the various kinds of liquor, there was also every type of drug available. All around him, people were doing coke and taking molly. Maybe Sarah had taken too much of something. Or maybe taken something for the first time that she wasn’t used to.

Phil scratched his cheek, a sliver of apprehension snaking through him.

He didn’t want that bitch overdosing in his house.

Pushing through the crowd, Phil angled toward the staircase, then hurried up the stairs.

CHAPTER 34

Fifteen Years Ago

1:39 a.m.

Grace

The bedroom was spectacular.

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