“Holy fuck,” I murmur, studying Cal’s bound form, his cock thick and swollen and throbbing with need. He can’t do shit about it either. He’s at our mercy. Wouldn’t surprise me if he used the safe word right now.

Callum just closes his eyes and shudders for a moment before lifting his lids again and staring at us. I turn back to Oscar and he shoves his pajama pants over his hips, slicking a thumb over the moist head of his cock. He drags his fingertips down, playing with one of his piercings. It’s incredible to me that someone who hates to be touched so much has so much ink, such intimate piercings. He’s alluded to the story behind that, about the physical pain chasing the emotional, but I need more.

Whenever he’s ready to tell me, I’ll be here.

“Come, Bernadette,” Oscar says, and even though I’m his queen and I give the orders, I can sense that he needs moments to be in charge, too, to quell some of that violent, icy anger inside of him. I crawl over his lap, but he encourages me to prop my cunt against his thigh instead of over his shaft. He grabs me roughly by the back of my hair and licks the shell of my ear once before whispering, “move.”

I do as Oscar tells me, rubbing the swollen heat of my cunt on him. Right now, wrapped up in all of this, my worries are as distant as shooting stars. There isn’t anything more important than being in the moment, of seeing Cal twisted in Oscar’s rope, of slicking along his inked, muscular thigh until he’s wet with me.

My own inked left hand grabs his cock, pleasuring him as we stare into each other’s eyes and our mingled breath fogs his glasses. My clit is hitting in just the right spot, and that brilliant beyond brilliant gaze is searing into me, making my body feel liquid, weightless. My eyes go half-hooded as I tear my attention from Oscar to see Callum moaning and shifting, trapped in that beautiful, red rope.

The orgasm hits me like a punch to the gut, making me groan, making my insides flutter. As soon as it hits me and my muscles go taut, Oscar adjusts me, moving my hips and spearing me on his cock as the climax takes over my entire body. The long, low moan trailing from my lips is soon joined by his as he spills himself inside of me and then rolls me onto my back beside him.

“Please make me come,” Cal murmurs, his eyes squeezed shut tight. “Please fucking god.”

I sit up on one elbow, panting, staring at him with vision clouded by sex.

“Do it,” Oscar commands, and I glance back to see him staring down at me like an imperious prince. “Do it, Bernadette.”

I reach out with my left hand and give Cal three small, delicate strokes with loose fingers. He comes so hard, all over his stomach and chest, bound with the rope and unable to do anything but experience the rush. After, he slumps in his bondage, panting and shaking, and Oscar moves over, untying him with a few, deft strokes.

“Jesus motherfucking Christ,” Cal murmurs, shaking as he snatches the half-drank Pepsi bottle from the nightstand. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right,” I murmur back, and then I know that I’m going to need to try it again soon, Oscar tying me up. Last time, he left. This time, he isn’t allowed to. “Oscar …”

“Do you feel better now?” he asks me, genuinely serious. All I can do is nod my head as I crawl up to lie beside him, letting him rest his hand on the side of my head. Callum crowds close behind me, throwing an arm around my waist.

I snuggle them both for a minute, my two, dark, precious monsters.

“I feel better,” I say, because I’m happy, but I’m not over it. So, I decide to tell the truth, too. “But only a little.”

“Little by little, a little becomes a lot.” Oscar trails off and I close my eyes. It’s not exactly a Shakespearean creation, but it works. And within just a few minutes, I’m asleep and dreaming.

It takes about three weeks to set my mother’s fate in stone, to sit down with Vera over coffee—not cat shit coffee either—and talk about what needs to be done. Callum doesn’t think I should keep chasing loose ends, but I need Pamela off my list for good. At first, I thought that by sending her to jail, that I could accomplish that feeling.

But it isn’t enough.

Not after what she did to Penelope.

Frankly, it wouldn’t be enough if I put an upside-down bucket with starving rats in it on her belly and watched as they slowly and agonizingly ate their way through her insides. For what she did to Pen, to me, to Heather, she deserves to burn at the stake.

So, as Vera makes the arrangements—finding the right girl for the job, paying off whatever guards need to be paid to make this happen, waiting for a moment when my bitch mother isn’t in solitary for mouthing off—I wait. I sit in my fancy classes with my fancy iPad while my fancy teachers try to teach me things that I can’t understand because my public school wasn’t appropriately funded. Because, somehow, giving equal money to all schools regardless of where they’re located and educating the children of our country is controversial to some people.

Oak Valley Prep and me, that’s a wash. I struggle through it though as best as I can, even as I know that the only person in Havoc whose diploma matters is Victor. Getting straight C’s at this point is all that I want. Because graduating to me is still important, because being the first woman on Pamela’s side of the family to actually accomplish that goal is important.

Sometimes, I follow Trinity around just to see her squirm. Sometimes, I make out with Victor in front of her fancy friends or murmur brother-fucker under my breath when I pass her in the halls. But honestly, as much as I want to hate the school and all of the people in it, it’s actually … kind of nice living here.

Sharing an apartment with the boys is amazing, being able to see my sisters (let’s be fair and just start calling all of them what they really are) is incredible, and the food isn’t halfway bad. Although once, they actually served fucking snails in the cafeteria and I thought I might puke the way Charli and Dixie D’Amelio did when they botched that TikTok video after finding a snail in their paella. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, thank god for you. Don’t bother Googling it; it isn’t worth your time.

After school, when I get up to the apartment with Oscar as my escort to find the other four boys waiting for me, I know that something is wrong.

“The girls,” I start, but Victor is already shaking his head and standing up, holding his big palms out to placate me.

“The girls are fine,” he explains quickly, glancing over at Aaron, like he trusts him to deliver whatever news this is in the most … tranquil and pacifying manner possible.

“What?” I ask, looking between Vic and Aaron, back to Hael, over to Cal. Oscar seems unsurprised to see the boys here, his phone in his hand, fingers clenched tight. Whatever this is, he’s known about it. For how long, I’m not sure, maybe just long enough to walk me up here, but he waited to tell me until now so it must be bad. “Jesus, you guys, what the fuck is it?”

“Your mother,” Aaron begins, and I quirk a brow. There’s not really much else that bitch could do that would surprise me. There is literally nothing she could do that would hurt me worse than what she did to Penelope. “Bernadette, she killed herself.”

I just stand there, staring at Aaron like he’s lost the fucking plot.

Killed herself? No, she didn’t kill herself. Stacey and Vera’s girl, she was going to do it. We’ve been working on this for weeks. Pamela is the last name on my list, and it’s my right to decide what happens to her and when. She doesn’t get to just kill herself.

“What?” I ask, setting my book bag on the counter and trying to blink my way through this. “I don’t understand. We were going to have her … dealt with. We were …”

“She took her own life,” Victor repeats, crossing his arms over his massive chest and exhaling. His gaze is not unsympathetic. “We thought at first that maybe the GMP had gotten to her, but she was in solitary again this week, so …” He trails off, waiting for me to have some sort of reaction. “We figured it might’ve been one of the guards, but we managed to grease some palms and talk to someone who saw the security footage.”

“How.” It’s not even a question. It’s a goddamn statement. I’m so fucking pissed off right now that I’m quivering. How dare she?! is the first thought that comes to mind. You wouldn’t think, considering I was already planning on having the bitch killed, that I would care she was dead.

Only … I do.

I do so much that it feels suddenly hard to stand up, and I slump into one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Oscar moves up beside me, stroking long, careful fingers across the back of my neck. My gaze shifts his direction, and our eyes meet. Casual touching is hard for him, so this is kind of a big deal to me, even in the light of the Pam stuff.

“She purchased some drugs off a fellow inmate,” Victor explains as Hael moves into the kitchen and gets me something to drink. He places the brandy in front of me, and I don’t even have to ask where he got it from. He and Cal have been breaking into some of the staff apartments for fun, just to see if they can do it without getting caught. Sometimes, they take an item or two, nothing noticeable, but just because they can.

This is where the brandy comes from.

And you know how much I love the taste of stolen things.

I down the whole of it in one go and then slam the glass back down so that Hael can refill it.

“Bernadette,” Victor hazards as Oscar stays close on my left side, Aaron just behind me, and Cal climbs up onto the counter to crouch the way he likes to do. “What are your thoughts?”

My thoughts … I down the second glass of alcohol and let the warm fire of it percolate up through me, cutting through the storm of feelings that are swirling around inside my chest.

Pamela is dead.

I wanted her dead, but … my mother is dead. And I was supposed to kill her. And now she’s taken away the last bit of power I held over her, the only shred of vengeance. A small noise escapes me, and my palm itches, right on that thin, white scar where Victor cut me and we shared blood.