“Very pleasant. Went to the beach. Did some reading. Surfed.”
“Didn’t kill anyone, did you?”
“Not this vacation, no.”
I smiled to myself and went inside.
Chapter 18
Melanie
I spent a few restless hours in the dorm, pacing back and forth, trying to make sense of my situation.
Surrounded on all sides. Palmira, Sarah, Nervosa. My brother and the others. No matter what I did, the Oligarchs came for me and dragged me back into their world, kicking and screaming my throat raw.
All I wanted was to research my grandfather’s murder. Instead, I was playing an even deadlier game.
I chewed on a pencil, trying to come to grips with my situation.
Sarah was part of an Oligarch family. She lied about where she came from, and I couldn’t be sure how much of her story was true and how much was made up for my benefit. Nervosa knew about it and didn’t seem to think it was a big deal—even though her brother was a part of the plot he was trying to stop.
It made my temples throb. I wanted to curl up under my covers and shut the world out. Instead, I kept thinking about my night with Nervosa, about his hands on my body and how good it felt, and how badly I wanted more.
I could’ve walked away from him. He tried to give me an out. But I insisted on talking to Redmond some more for him, and I knew it wasn’t entirely because I wanted to avoid this war.
I kept coming back to Nervosa for the way he made me feel.
God, I was losing my mind.
A few hours later, my pencil a mangled mess of graphite and wood pulp, Sarah came in. I hopped out of bed as she dumped her books on her side.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
She looked like she’d rather pass out and sleep, but she nodded. “A walk sounds nice. I could use a walk.”
I suppressed a smile. She could use ten hours of sleep, but she could stay on her feet a bit longer. I led her outside and we wandered down the paths as the sun sank and twilight fell over campus. Palmira shadowed us, leaving plenty of room.
“Why’d you agree to be my roommate?” I asked after a few tense minutes of silence.
She shrugged, arms wrapped around herself. “I thought it was the only way Liam would let me enroll.”
“Why did you want to come here and not Blackwoods?”
She made a face. “Have you ever been there? It’s like a terrible Netflix show about the worst, most privileged assholes imaginable.”
I laughed and cleared my throat, trying not to let myself enjoy this too much. “So you just wanted to be normal?”
“I wanted a good education.” She looked down at the ground, chewing her lip. “I’m the youngest daughter of an Oligarch family. There’s Liam, then my older sister Natalie, then there’s me, little old Sarah. I figured, if I was going to do something with myself, even if that was just to help the family business somehow, I had to learn how to be useful. I couldn’t do that at Blackwoods.”
“You’d learn how to marry rich at Blackwoods, but not much more.”
She snorted and grinned, loosening up a little. “I did a campus visit. I swear, everyone looked like they were trying to prove how rich they were. You could tell which kids were Oligarchs and which weren’t.”
“How?”
“The Oligarchs didn’t give a crap. They wore sweatpants. They had nothing to prove.”
I smiled and looked around. It was the same here at Stanford. The sons and daughters of rich kids wandered around like gods and goddesses while the rest of the population had to try to seem smart and good and cool. Money made things so much easier. It was something I’d always taken for granted.
“I know how you feel, about being useful. My brother runs our family and I’ve always been an afterthought. Even before he took control.” Before he killed our father, I almost said, but left that part out.
“It’s not easy,” she said. “Everyone imagines how nice it must be. Oh, you’re wealthy and comfortable, oh, life on easy mode. But that’s not how it feels.”
“No, it doesn’t feel that way at all.” I stopped walking and took her arm. She smiled at me, head tilted to the side. She really was pretty, even though she looked exhausted and on the brink of total collapse. “I want to forgive you. I want to be friends. But I’m afraid you’re lying to me, and you’re going to suck me back into that world.”
“I’m not lying,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m doing what my brother asked only because it got me out of the house.”
“You want to be normal. Or as close to normal as we can be.”
“That’s the dream. So far, it’s not working out.”