“What did he do?” Lightning flickers on the horizon, and I glance at the driveway again, wondering where he is now. She’s right, though. Work always comes first. He probably forgot about our plans and stayed late at the office again.
“Who knows,” Mom says. “I think that Darling guy claimed thatDolce Dropswere his idea. Which is ridiculous, of course. If they were his idea, they’d beDarling Drops.”
Some old business grudge, then. Nothing sensational at all. In fact, kind of a letdown. Not that I want drama between our families, but the Darlings obviously did fine for themselves without any help from Daddy. What I can’t figure out is why he wanted to move in right next door to a man who accused him of stealing his patent or whatever.
“Not everyone can win, Crystal,” Mom says, sipping her martini and checking her image in the corner of the screen. “There will always be losers. You have to accept that reality and not get caught up in the fate of the losers. You have to take care of yourself. We always tried to teach you kids that.”
“You did a great job,” I say. Mom always looks out for number one, that’s for sure.
“Good,” she says. “Dolce’s always win. Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t,” I say, glancing at the Darling house. I wonder if they tell Devlin that. If they preach to him about being a winner, about looking good and strong, about never showing the cracks in his armor. I wonder if he has a family motto, if he feels five times the pressure I do because he’s the only kid, the heir to their family name and fortune.
I wonder if there’s a way for the Dolces and the Darlings to both win. Right now, it doesn’t look like it.
thirteen
Who picks a girl to treat like a dog for the entire school year? Monsters, that’s who. Sick fucks. Sociopaths. If some part of me understands them, or wants to understand them, does that make me a sociopath, too?
On Monday, Royal pulls the Range Rover out of the garage and sits idling in the driveway while the rest of my brothers pile in. He hasn’t driven the car since the accident, and with good reason. It looks like a beater car.
“What are you doing?” I ask, peering suspiciously at the dented and scraped vehicle. One of the headlights is smashed, along with the side panel behind it, the passenger side door, and part of the rear door behind it.
“Driving to school,” Royal says. “Duke, take Crystal in your car.”
“No way,” Duke says. “I’m not missing the look on those assholes faces when we show up.”
“Why do I feel like you’re going to get arrested?” I ask.
“Because you worry too much,” Duke says, throwing an arm around me. “Now come on, if we follow right behind them, we’ll get to see it all go down.”
“Whatever’s going down, I don’t want to see it,” I say. But I get in the car with Duke, anyway. Maybe some part of me is still the nosy bitch I was in New York. Or maybe I just want to know what my brothers are doing. It’s definitely not because I want to see the Darlings, too, because I can’t help but be drawn to them like a voyeur looking in at their lives, trying to figure them out. Or so I tell myself.
I climb in the Hummer with Duke and Baron, and we follow the smaller car like a military escort. It sends a message for sure.
“Is this your way of telling the school ‘don’t fuck with us, or we’ll bring the big guns,’?” I ask.
Baron laughs from the passenger seat. “Sure.”
“Those ass-wipes are going down,” Duke sings, obviously high with the excitement of taking down the Darlings.
I remember Devlin’s words, and stomach flips. “You’re sure you can’t just call it even and move on? I mean, would it really be so bad to have an even bigger crew? One that wasn’t just our family. Think about it. There would be seven of you instead of four. You’d be almost twice as powerful.”
“You really don’t get how this works, do you?” Baron asks, twisting around to smile at me from behind his glasses. A dimple sinks into his cheek, and he’s still my adorable little brother, no matter what scheme he’s cooking up.
I open my mouth to tell him what Devlin said, but then I close it. If I tell my brothers that he threatened me, they’ll do a lot worse than whatever they’re planning as revenge for Royal’s car. I’m not about to stick my nose in the middle of this and make things worse. I’m just going to stay far away from the whole thing, watch what goes down from the sidelines, and let the boys work things out on their own. It’s not like they’d listen to me, anyway.
We pull into the parking lot early, as usual. During the past week, my brothers have played the stupid game with the Darlings where they each try to arrive earlier than the other so they can get the primo parking spot. But today, instead of cursing and glowering when the Darlings steal their spot, Baron cackles as he sets his phone on the dash in video mode. Duke pulls into the parking lot and circles around so we’re a row behind the Bel Air. He stops in the middle of the road, ignoring a car that pulls up behind him, waiting to turn down a row of parking spaces.
“What are you doing?” I ask again, my heart hammering in my ears so loudly I can barely hear my own words. “Because whatever it is, you need to stop.”
“I’m just capturing it on video,” Baron says. “This is going to get so many hits on my YouTube channel.”
I lean forward between the seats, anxiety churning inside me like a restless, storm-tossed sea. Royal cruises along the row of parking spaces in the Rover, not slowing as he moves toward his space. In fact, he seems to be speeding up. The dented door and broken light flash by, and I want to close my eyes, to cover them, but I can’t. I stare in shock as the battered Rover shoots toward the Bel Air.
Devlin and Preston look up from their usual spot leaning against the car. And Colt… Annoyingly charming Colt is glued to his phone as always. A scream catches in my throat, and my hand flies out, as if I can stop Royal, as if I can grab Colt and yank him out of the way.
Preston yells something, leaping away from the car. Fear slaps across his face like a hand, erasing his perfect mask of indifference. Devlin grabs Colt and hauls him across the pavement, faster than he should be able to move with his cousin stumbling and protesting with confusion. And then the Range Rover barrels into the Bel Air like a wrecking ball.