How to Kiss a Loose End

Chapter Three

"Did you know that the inner nose swells when people have sex?"

I groaned loudly. "Vayda!"

Since the past twenty minutes that Vayda found me in the bathroom with coffee stains on my shirt, she'd been cracking jokes and saying funny facts to get me to lighten up.

It worked.

Only that now, her facts were veering in the direction of her private internet searches, and her face had grown redder than a tomato.

"I'm sorry," she said, visibly cringing. "I just feel really terrible for not being there when that idiot poured coffee on you."

"Seriously Vayda, it's fine. You were in the music room when it happened, there's no way you could have known."

After spending a couple of seconds in thought, a small smile enveloped her features.

"But you can compensate me with intel," I smiled coyly. "I want the names of every guy that you consider a Bridwall Royal . . . plus info about their backgrounds because I need to know what I've gotten myself into by moving to this town."

"Woah," exclaimed Vayda. "That doesn't sound like healthy rage at all."

"I'm serious. This might be my only shot at understanding this school's hierarchy and taking it down, or at least getting everyone else off my back."

"Okay, fine. Even though I think it's a terrible idea to get involved with them in any way, I'll tell you just so you'd know exactly what you're getting into," she surrendered. "I've studied these guys right from kindergarten. They come from money and power . . . I'm talking blood money type of power."

"Okay."

"The first Royal is Slade De Antonov," she said with a light shiver, unlocking her phone and searching for the Instagram app. "His father is mute, and paralyzed . . . He used to be a successful business tycoon, prominent in the oil and gas industry before his health made him retire."

"Mute and paralyzed," I repeated. "That's an interesting health combination, but it also sounds like a normal family." I pointed out.

"Cool it, I'm getting to the interesting part," she whispered. "Slade's mother on the other hand, is a powerful retired assassin called La Thorna. Rumor has it that La Thorna cut off her husband's tongue so he wouldn't rat her out to the police after her assassination attempt on the president in 2007. The story has too many loopholes and it hasn't exactly been fact-checked, so I dunno for sure."

I swallowed.

The picture she had just opened was of an attractive guy I recognized from the encounter in the hallway. His hair was trimmed to a crew cut, military style, and through his gray t-shirt, I could see faint outlines of colorless tattoos on one toned arm. His eyes were cold and gunmetal grey, yet he still managed to look like a baby.

But he looked oddly familiar.

Taking a closer look, his trimmed brown hair ran close to dark umber. And his grey eyes, no matter how dead they looked, had golden specks sitting inside of them like molten.

It freaked me out because even though his hair could have been dyed to the same dark shade as mine, I had never met anyone with my eye color before—

"The second is Draven Vaughn and his money is the cleanest out of the group. His dad's a senator and his family owns several establishments around the globe worth multi-billions . . . including this school.

But that doesn't change the fact that the Vaughn Bridwall dynasty has been the biggest manufacturers of deadly war weapons for hundreds of years. Draven's really smart too and I heard he's in training to be the heir to one of his dad's weapon-making establishments."