So, who does?
“Okay,” Preston says, taking a breath and uncrossing his arms. He looks at Royal for a second like he’s deciding whether to go on. “If you want to know who gave a scholarship, it should be easy enough. Just follow the receipts.”
“Spoken like an accountant,” I say.
Royal tosses the DNA papers into the front seat. “Why don’t we start with which sick pervert in your family would want to know everything about me, down to the size of my dick.”
He glares at Preston like he might murder him if I wasn’t between them.
Preston’s brows lift. “If you’re looking for someone that screwed up, it would have to be Sullivan,” he says. “But he’s indisposed right now, not to mention that he’s a minor and doesn’t have access to money.”
“What do you mean indisposed?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him. “Like, locked up?”
“Something like that,” he says coolly.
“It’s him,” I say. “He said once that he wanted to hear about my sex life so he could live vicariously through me. I assumed your dad, since he’s in prison.”
“Again, Sully has no access to money,” Preston says.
“Magnolia does, though,” I say, thinking about the flouncy little brat who helped me at lunch and told me she wasn’t as dumb as people think.
Preston shakes his head. “She’s fourteen. She has a trust fund and her daddy’s credit card. She doesn’t have cash to do anything on her own, and neither does he.”
“Royal has a trust fund,” I say. “And he had money.”
“I got that at the Slaughterpen,” Royal says.
Preston chuckles. “You think Magnolia’s an underground streetfighter? Next you’ll be saying she was dealing Alice in the girls’ bathroom in middle school.”
“She could be Merciless,” I say. “She’s a masked fighter, so no one knows her identity.”
“I can have Colt look into it,” Preston says, shaking his head. “I’m sure he knows who even the masked fighters are. But I guarantee it’s not her. She’s a typical little brat. She fights with petty rumors, not fists.”
“Maybe we’re looking at the wrong question,” I say. “Y’all all have money. I’m sure anyone in your families could get some money if they wanted. The question is, who would want to take down the Dolces?”
Preston snorts. “Everyone.”
“No,” Royal says slowly. “Who would want to use me to do it? It has to be someone who went to Willow Heights, who knows that I was running things. They knew that taking me out would upset everything.”
“Then it has to be Colt,” I say.
We sit in silence for a minute.
He was incapacitated for months. Is that why he had to live vicariously through my sex stories? He’s not in jail, but being in a hospital is still a way of being locked up. And since I’ve never messaged him, I don’t know his handle.
“I don’t think so,” Preston says.
“Colt doesn’t have the balls,” Royal agrees. “He’s beaten. That’s why we let him stay. He bowed and groveled and did whatever we wanted. He doesn’t cause problems, and he has connections for fights, so he gets to stay. That’s the deal. He wouldn’t risk fucking up again.”
“What if…” I start, then stop, remembering something Dixie said. That’s not the reason she told me they let him stay. “Could it be Mabel?”
“No,” Preston says.
“How do you know?”
“Mabel wants nothing to do with this town or anyone in it,” Preston says. “She never did. And she’d never intentionally get involved with the Dolces, knowing that would make her a target again.”
“Who is it?” Royal asks, a muscle in his jaw jumping like he’s about to reach across me and throttle Preston. “You know, don’t you, you fucking cunt scab?”