Ragged✔|18+

NINE

REYNA

"You've met Clyde Alvarez?" Lacy squeals in delight. She's on top of my bed right now and clearly doesn't know how to use her indoor voice because she's talking at the top of her voice.

"Yeah," I reply and continue typing on my laptop. I'm so fucking close to hacking into the database of DoD and Lacy is proving to be a major distraction.

She gasps. "Oh. My. God. Tell me all about it. Was it like, one of those teen movies where the actress trips then the actor holds her up, then they kind of make eye contact and bam! It's love at first sight?"

Talk about being dramatic. Lacy and her twin, Piper, always think that their lives are one big teen romance movie. Which it kinda is because dad spoils them. So much that it is turning them into spoilt brats.

"No. I met this guy at a fucking club."

"Please tell me you at least scored his number," she pleads.

"For that to have happened, it would mean that I was into him, which was not the case. At all."

"I'd totally do him," Lacy says dreamily.

"You do know guys like him only use girls then dump them like Kleenex tissues. He was there to pick up a girl, fuck her and then send her packing."

"Whatever. I don't care." She shrugs. "Do you know who the Alvarez's are?"

"No and I don't want to know because don't give a fuck." But of course, it's like I'm talking to myself because Lacy proceeds to tell me anyway.

"They live next door. Well, a couple of blocks away because this place has houses big enough to have their own zip codes."

"Lacy," I say, my voice stern. "I said I don't give a fuck about that guy much less his family."

Again, I'm talking to myself because Lacy continues. "And they're all irresistibly sexy, including the Dad." I cringe at that but Lacy is unfazed and keeps on ranting.

"They're the type of guys who'd make you feel all hot and bothered the first time you meet them."

Well that much is true. I mean I've met Clyde, I bet his brothers are just as obnoxious as he is.

"I'm not sure about their mother though," Lacy says. "There's some secret story surrounding the cause of her death."

I stop typing. "What story?"

"Thought you didn't give a fuck about that guy and his family," she taunts.

"You're the one who started the whole thing. There's no harm in finishing it."

"I don't know the whole story but I heard that it was a huge scandal."

"Murder?" I know that kind of scandal very well.

Lacy shakes her head. "No. It was—" she hushes down her voice, "—it was suicide."

"What?" Clyde's mom killed herself? Yeesh, that's got to be rough. I can only imagine how that's got to feel.

"Why did she commit suicide?"

"No one knows. There have been many theories but the one that stands out is the one involving a certain Clyde."

Lacy's dangling a carrot right in front of my eyes and like the starved rabbit I am, I jump at it.

"What about him?"

Lacy smiles. She's got me right where she wants me.

"Well, shortly after the arrival of Clyde in the Alvarez mansion, things spiraled out of control-"