callan
Face bruised and aching, stab wounds in my side, and my hands scarred from the mob torturing me last night, I gripped the steering wheel in pain and drove like a madman to the skatepark, where I knew Blaise would be.
I hadn’t told the mob shit last night and stayed true to the lie I’d fabricated for them about Jett. And those assholes had told me to prove that I still had allegiance to them, that if I was really telling the truth, I would show up at the auction tonight for Vera Rodriguez.
Blaise’s girl.
How the hell had they gotten her? I didn’t know. What did they plan to do with her? Probably have a creepy, old man like Vaughn fuck her in front of the entire town. The reason why? I couldn’t fucking tell you.
Once the mob had released me this morning, I’d texted Sakura and told her to meet me at the library today. I didn’t know when I would get there, but I needed to see her and bring her somewhere safe.
After speeding into the parking lot, still bleeding, I slammed on my brakes and leaped out of my car. “Harleen!” I shouted, spotting him riding down into the bowl and coming up on the other side, headphones covering his ears.
He glanced at me, kicked up the board, and walked over to me as slowly as he fucking could with a smug smirk on his face. “Last time I saw Callan Avery at the skatepark, he was threatening a kid with a gun.”
“Where’s your girl?” I asked, no time for bullshitting around with him.
“Vera?” he asked. “Why do you want to know about her?”
I snatched his arm and dragged him to the parking lot. “I’m not here to play games and talk shit to you, Blaise. This is fucking serious. I talked to someone who had more insight on Skylar Walker’s murder.”
“What’d they say?”
If he couldn’t tell by the bruises and blood on my body, they didn’t have anything good to say about her death or about the girls they were constantly trafficking to the Redwood rich, even Blaise’s damn father. I was glad I’d fucking murdered Jett. That entire family, besides Blaise, was too fucked up.
“Get in the car,” I growled, shoving him into the passenger seat of my car. After slamming his door, I slipped into the driver’s seat and locked the car. We needed to get to Vera now, before the mob did. “Skylar was fucking your father.”
Blaise widened his eyes. “What?!”
“Don’t fucking scream,” I scolded, backing out of the parking spot.
“You can’t drop a fucking bomb on me like that and expect me to whisper-yell it to you,” he said more quietly. “Dad was barely ever in Redwood, never home. How the hell was she fucking him?”
“He was never in Redwood to see you,” I said. “Apparently, he met up with her a few times these past few months before her death. They’d been seeing each other for nearly a year in secret at an upscale hotel.”
Blaise ran a hand through his hair. “What the fuck? So, are you saying my dad killed her?”
“That’s not even close to everything,” I continued, gripping the steering wheel to ease the pain shooting through me. I didn’t know how much blood I’d lost last night, but it was enough to make me see stars every so often. “There’s a sex trafficking ring happening within the high school. Cheerleaders and many of the popular senior girls have been roped into it for a few years now. I’ve been trying to stop it, but—”
“What the fuck?!”
“Blaise, listen—”
He stared at me in shock with his mouth hanging the fuck open. “Was Skylar in it? How didn’t Principal Vaughn find out?”
I tightened my grip on the wheel and growled, “Oh, he fucking knows.”
“He’s taking part in it, isn’t he?” Blaise asked through gritted teeth and glared through the windshield. “I can’t fucking believe this. I should’ve known because he’s such a fucking pervert, but …” He ran his hand through his hair again. “Fuck. Skylar was really in the ring?”
“That’s how she met your father, I believe.”
“Bro,” Blaise said. “I’m about to fucking puke. The fuck is wrong with him?”
When I pulled up to the end of the road, I stopped for a moment at the Stop sign and rubbed the lines on my forehead. “As soon as I found out that the mob was involved, I tried to stop it because I knew that something like this was bound to happen to one of my students.”
“Can’t we go to the police?”
“No.”
He shook his head. “I know that you can’t because of your relations to the mob, but I can.”
“You don’t get it,” I snapped. “The police chief is in on it too. This town has gone to shit.”
The police chief was pimping out his own daughter. The principal was asking teachers to get in on this sick shit. And I was caught in the middle of it, trying to protect my students and most importantly trying to keep Sakura out of this completely.
“What can we do?” Blaise asked. “This isn’t fair.”
“It gets worse, Blaise,” I said, staring emptily out of the car. I clenched my jaw and shook my head, the veins pressing against the backs of my hands from my harsh grip. “Where’s Vera?”
“She’s at work,” Blaise said, brow furrowed in confusion. “How can this get any worse?”
“Because your mother found out that your father was cheating again.” I let out a low breath. “And she hired the mob to kill Skylar.”
“That fucking bitch knew the truth this entire fucking time?!” Blaise exclaimed.
Why his mother had tried to put the blame on her own son, I would never fucking know.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he whispered.
“Where does Vera work?” I asked.
“Why do you keep asking about her, like you haven’t been telling me all of Redwood’s secrets? Besides, why would the mob kill Skylar if they needed her to be part of their trafficking ri—”
“Because your mother promised them that Vera would take Skylar’s place.”