@marg47: That bitch is an attention seeker. Prancing around the school like she owns it. She deserves to get thrown in jail! Look at what she’s done to sexy Julian. #desperatewhore #tiredbitch #povertystricken
@palosverdesmetro: Julian Fitzgerald: rising, knowing no one will touch him.
Ice Queen Mia: someone hold my freaking wine cooler.
@sexyvee: That bitch set my husband up! There’s no way Julian MOTHERFUCKING Fitz would stoop so low 4 her. #desperatewhore
@yngyen: Bet she got fucked and dumped, then she decided to cry rape. Like bitch, what? We all know how broke you are. And to think her mother was an icon. Bet she’s turning in her grave right about now.
@theOG: Nah, I think she’s being honest. Why would Mia Montague lie? She’s not dramatic. She’s not as desperate as many of you are saying, smearing her own name with lies in the wake of her mother’s death? That doesn’t sound like her. You guys are the reason why women decode not to come forward when they’re abused. You should be ashamed. Poor Mia. I hope they lock Fitz up forever.
@queencasey: Whatever. Can’t wait to see what the #RACK does to her. Heard they’re going to eviscerate that Ice Queen bitch.
@naenaebitch: You know what, this is about to be a banging senior year! Bet!
Chapter One
Julian
Present time
Matthews: You sold her off just so you could avoid paying for your sins in jail? But she’s delicious though! Thanks Fitz!
“What kind of sick joke is this?” Liam demands, but his voice is drowned out by the ringing in my ears as I re-read the text.
I can’t fucking breathe. It feels like I’m drowning in a fucking sea of blood. Chocking on it, strangled by the dead look I see in my little Minx’s pale bloody face.
I can feel my lungs shrinking with each second that passes and all I can do is read and re-read the text, punishing myself some more as the anger festers into fury.
“Liam… this is not a joke.” Cole mutters silently. I can feel his worried gaze on me, but I ignore him.
“No man, this is fucked up!” I hear Liam shout. “Tell me you both see how twisted up this is?”
No one says a word.
I’m damn sure the world is still in motion, but for me, my world just came to a screeching, painful, unbearable stop. The one person who ruled it, made me fall at her feet is now in worship, in lust and in love, that was person has been…
You sold her off.
I can hear the incessant ringing in my ears, like someone whacked me upside the head.
It’s like I’m being torn apart from within, the broken skin over fractured and shattered bones being slashed and pulled every which way as if I’m about to be gutted, my insides spilling out on the cold, dirty floor for the fucking world to see.
You sold her off…
I read the text over and over again as tragedy falls over me, hazing my vision until it’s tinted in red.
I try to keep my eyes on the text, holding on to the anger because right now, anger is better than guilt. Anger is better than pain. Anger is better than the fucking gaping whole that’s widening in the middle of my fucking chest.
“Julian, tell him this is some fucking prank. This is not real but we’re going to make the Matthews assholes answer for this,” Cole says.
I don’t say a fucking word.
“Right? We’re going to shut them up once and for all, yes?” Liam presses. “J?”
The uncertainty in his voice, mixed with the furious pounding of my heart and the way the blood in my veins is boiling like molten lava, makes it all too real. Why isn’t he feeling the treat that’s fallen over us like a fucking poisonous mist?
“Liam bro, this is real,” Cole is saying. “This… image is real.”
I can’t help but look at the attached image again.
My knees weaken as the horror slams into me, punching me in the fucking gut but all it does is spur on the drum of rage. The thing in my chest feels tight, like it’s being twisted up, wrung like a fucking dirty rag, and then ripped into shreds. I can hardly breathe or move or speak, my focus zeroed in on the words on the screen as my mind races.
“No fucking way!”
“Liam—”
“There’s no fucking way this is real because if it is…”
The alarms at the back of my head blare over and over again like a plane about to crash in school full of kids. It’s the sound of catastrophe, devastation and a fucking horrific end that I didn’t see coming.
And in all that, all I can think, all I feel, all I fucking know is… Mia. Has. Been. Taken. From. Me!
“J?” I hear someone call but I don’t respond.
It’s like an endless, chilly darkness has seeped into my soul, taking me hostage as I read the words.
You sold her off…
I grip the phone tighter. I can feel the blood in my veins rushing violently with the promise of war hanging over me.
I can almost taste the violence on my tongue. I don’t even flinch because this time, I’m not denying the deadly side of me. Not with this.
“Julian, bro, speak to me.”
“And say what exactly?” I growl.
I can feel them watching me, assessing, waiting for a reaction. Meanwhile, every shred of humanity in me—the humanity she saw in me, the humanity my brothers brought out in me, cultivated by my solid friendship of my best friend—all that falls apart as agony rips through me, falling away like a fucking piece of paper towel in a storm.
You sold her off…
The text is now engraved on my eyelids, but the dead look in Mia’s beautiful aquamarine eyes as her naked, bruised body lies there on full display, is like someone took a tire iron and pummeled it straight into my chest.
“Say something, J,” Cole murmurs beside me.
“What the hell kind of joke is this?” At Liam’s hesitant, unsure question, I snap like that’s the trigger.
“She’s been fucking taken!” I roar.
Mia has been fucking taken by that disgusting vile sonofabitch, and I’m going to kill him.
Cole’s right there beside me. “Just breathe, man,” he mutters lowly, a firm hand on my shoulder. “Breathe.”
I shake his hand off. I’m way past reasoning with at this point. I’m past common sense, humanity or understanding. I can feel the anger igniting in my veins, licking through them like acid down my back.
“You don’t want to snap in public like this.”
Fuck me with a fucking drill if I care.
We’re still in the courtyard right outside the front steps of the courthouse where I was supposed to be tried and sent to prison, in short order for my supposed crimes of kidnapping, raping and threatening to kill the girl that stole my heart when I was a fucking mess years ago.
While Mia went ahead and saved my fucking life, my future—and my fucking sanity for a temporary feel-good moment before it all got shot to hell with one fucking text—proving she never lied to me, I’ve been hating her, cursing her name and the way I still wanted to kiss her.
And now, she’s been fucking taken! And God only knows what—
“Fuck!” I roar, turning heads and startling babies in my rage.