Burning Fury

XXX

"Hello, Clover. I see you graduated," he said, pointing at our black gowns.

I removed my cap, the decorated top gleaming in the sunlight. "What are you doing here?"

"It's a shame, really, how easily it was to get in here. All I had to do was go to campus security, pretend to be your uncle, and they let me in. Easy peasy."

"Why are you here, Mr. Taylor?"

"I'm here because of my daughter. Lock the door."

I slowly backed up to the door and locked it. "I'm really sorry about Alice, sir. It can't be easy to have to lose your daughter."

"She isn't lost, Solace. I know right where she is: rotting in the prison you put her in."

"Why did you come here?"

"I came to finish what she couldn't."

Fear iced my veins.

"You don't have your little friends to help you this time. I'll be able to finish what she started."

"Sir, you don't have to do this. What do you want? What does she want?"

"She wanted you dead, so I want you dead."

"Is there anything I can do to make you change your mind?"

He smiled. "Watching your blood coat this floor and seeing the life drain from your eyes will be good enough for me."

There was a knock on the door. Niko's voice came through, slightly muffled. Mr. Taylor reached out and grabbed me. Gem squeaked, but slapped her hand over her mouth when she received a glare from him. He held me against his body and held a knife to my throat.

"Tell that no good boy that everything is okay. Get him to go away."

I cleared my throat and raised my voice so Niko would hear me. I tried to clear all traces of panic from my voice. "We're okay, Niklaus. Give us, like, ten minutes and we'll meet everyone downstairs in the commons."

"Um...okay."

After a moment of silence, Mr. Taylor slowly released me.

"Very good. So you can listen to orders?"

"When my life is at stake, yes."

"Good girl."

"Can you please let Gem go? She isn't involved in any of this."

"And risk having her go downstairs and tell everyone what's going on? Absolutely not. Perhaps I'll let her go after I'm through with you, but more likely I'll tie her up so I can make my escape and wait until someone comes to find her. If they do."

"You forget we have a whole group of people just a few floors below that care about both of us very much. Someone will come for us-her."

"I'll be long gone and you'll be very dead by that point."

Keep him talking, I thought.

"Why are you taking over for Alice now? This is her fight, not yours."

"I'm her father. Her fights are my fights," he growled.

"I want to know how she did it all. Everything from the first night."

"You'd be surprised what you can find on the dark web," he sneered.

"Like what? What did she use?"

"She used some drugs to drug your drinks. The first night, at Griffin's, she used regular sleeping pills. They didn't have the affect she wanted, but she tried it again at your brother's graduation. After that didn't work right, she bought some harder stuff. Rohypnol, for example. That's what she used the night of Emily's party. She also bugged all of your phones and had been doing that for months before the first murder. That's how she knew where everyone would be, when you'd be home, etc."

"So, she drugged us to completely take our cognitive abilities away so we wouldn't remember if it, in fact, had been us or not?"

"Precisely."

"I just don't understand. This was all because she was jealous of me?"

"Jealous?!" he growled. "What is there to be jealous of?"

"Those were her words, not mine. I agree with you. What is there to be jealous of?"

"Glad we're on the same page."

"She was upset that Niko thought I was pretty or something, way back in high school? Before they even started dating?"

"She was upset at a lot more. You walked like the world should bow down to you, like people owed everything to you."

"I never did. I stuck to the shadows, never wanting to be the center of attention."

"Yet you attracted the eye of everyone. Perhaps it was your inability to see what others saw."

"I truly didn't mean any harm. And I feel horrible that she thought that way of me."

"You deserve to be in hell for what you did to her. She's rotting away in that prison because you and your friends couldn't just do as she said."

"Do as she said? She wanted us to die. She wanted to slowly kill me and have all of them watch. Why would we be willing do that?"

He sneered. "She saw everything you guys did. Including your texts to Gem about how you'd been raped at the hands of a couple frat boys."

I stared in horror. "She knew everything."

"She knew all of your guys' secrets. Every little dirty secret. Callum and Houston's gay affair, Griffin and Emily's relationship. Niko's infatuation with you and how you secretly liked Ryder at the same time. She knew everything."

"Griffin and Emily's relationship?"

"They went on a few dates, hooked up a few times. Nothing major, just motive is all."

"So if she was ever in the hot seat, she planned on letting loose all of these secrets?"

"Every. Last. One."

"Maybe she needs help, help that she can get where she is."

Mr. Taylor's face turned red, but the sound of a key entering the doorknob interrupted whatever he was going to spit back at me. Once again, he grabbed me and held his knife to my throat. Gem whimpered and I noticed silent tears streaming down her face. The doorknob turned and Mr. Taylor's hold on me tightened.

"If one of your friends opens that door, so help me God I will slit your throat," he whispered.

My breathing increased as the door swung open. All of my friends stood there with one of the security guards, mouths hanging open as they saw Alice's dad and the hold he had on me.

"Her blood is on your hands," he said, then drug the knife across my throat.