Rachel Dyken: Elect

“It isn’t.” Trace sighed. “It never was.”

Chase jerked her toward him. She fell against his chest and looked up into his eyes. “What are you doing?”

Chase sighed. “What I should have done a long time ago.” He grabbed the back of her head and pulled her in for a kiss. Their lips touched.

I had to look away.

The only sound in the night was that of my soft footsteps as I walked away… leaving my heart in broken pieces where I’d last stood. She was lost to me; it wasn’t even the Sicilians that had taken her, but my best friend.

A gunshot rang out loud and clear in the night air. I turned back around just in time to see Trace collapse into Chase’s arms.

Three weeks earlier

“Chase,” I growled. “Do your damn job.”

My cousin rolled his eyes and saluted me as he jogged off to Trace’s side. We’d all decided it would be best if she stayed in school. After all, the security at Eagle Elite was tight. And nobody would dare try something during the day.

Really, it was the nights that had me going insane. I didn’t know whom to trust. I wasn’t even sure if I could trust myself. If anything happened to Trace again, I would never forgive myself. The way things stood, I was having trouble even looking in the mirror after the way I’d treated her over the past few weeks.

Raped. She had been so damn close to being raped by someone I’d once called friend. And now… now her grandfather was in hiding—again. You can’t just shoot a mafia boss without a damn good reason and he didn’t have a leg to stand on. It was crucial that we find out who’d killed Trace’s parents, because if it was the De Langes like I suspected, at least her grandfather wouldn’t get shot—or worse, tortured for doing what was right.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been my fault in the first place. If I would have just stayed away like her grandfather had asked. She would have been safe. Instead, the pull she had on me was so magnetic I found myself falling. Before I knew it, I was ready to start an all-out family war against the Alfero boss in order to have his granddaughter. Hell, I was ready to kidnap her.

I groaned as I watched Chase run to Trace’s side and grab her hand. Okay, I could handle a lot of things. Guns, violence, people who didn’t know their place in this godforsaken world, but my best friend kissing my girlfriend’s hand? The same girl I’d been in love with my whole life? Yeah, I was going to freaking murder him if he did anything to mess that up.

She was the only thing I had going for me. I mean, I had my sister, but both my parents were gone. My mother died when I was younger—at the hands of my bastard of a father, and my father, well… I would dance on his grave if it wouldn’t make me look like a genuine ass. The fact was, I needed Trace; she wasn’t just a girl to me, she was my lifeline. I was terrified that if I lost her, I would lose myself—lose everything that keeps me grounded and sane.

“You okay with this?” Tex asked next to me as he ran his hands through his dark red hair and nodded toward the happy couple.

I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Are you challenging my judgment?”

“Whoa.” Tex lifted up his hands in surrender. “I was just asking a question, Nixon, not challenging you. Take a sedative. Seriously.”

“Take a—” I bit down on my lower lip and sucked on the metal of my lip ring. “I’m fine.”

“Right. I’m fine, you’re fine, everything’s fine. Oh, look, I think a rainbow’s sprouting out of your ass.”

“Remind me why you’re here again?”

Tex grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Oh you know, to make your life miserable. That and because your hot sister promised she’d meet me before her first class.”

“Please don’t use ‘hot’ and ‘sister’ in the same sentence.”

“Sorry.” Tex cleared his throat. “I’m here because your sexy sister promised she’d meet me before her first class.”

“And I’m leaving.” I rolled my eyes. “Tell my not-sexy, not-hot sister that she needs to answer her damn phone.”

“Will do!” Tex saluted. “Don’t trip over the rainbow, sunshine!”

I flipped him off and jogged in the opposite direction to the business building. I was technically a senior in college, though I truly only had three credits left before I’d be able to leave. I’d enrolled in electives so I could stay a student for the rest of the fall semester. I was seriously thinking about failing my last few classes so I could stay spring semester, too. I had to do something—no way was I going to be the only one not at Eagle Elite, not with the Sicilians rowing their boats across the Atlantic at this very moment.

I’d only been given control of the school because my family owned it. Clearly it was all a front. I needed access to everything, and therefore the dean had looked the other way when I enrolled in certain classes and dropped others. I’d been working for four straight years trying to discover who had killed Trace’s parents when she was six. And after all those years of trying to clear my family name, it just seemed like now everything was going backward and spinning out of control. The last thing I needed was the Sicilians breathing down my neck for raising hell these past few weeks.

“Mr. Abandonato,” my senior seminar professor announced the minute I stepped foot into the classroom. It was a tiny class of only about fifteen students, all of them too engrossed in talking and texting to care that I was late. None of them even noticed that I looked like I’d just gotten back from visiting the seventh circle of Hell and had a meet-and-greet with Satan himself.

“Yes?” I tried not to appear as irritated as I felt. As it was, I knew I was only about five seconds away from losing my shit. “What can I do for you?”

My words held a double meaning. My asking what I could do for him. He knew who I was; he knew what my family did. I always chose my words carefully for that very reason. Most people asked for favors in public—not in private. So the art of deception was my specialty. If he answered that he needed something taken care of, then I’d know he wanted to deal with Nixon Abandonato, mafia boss. If he laughed and started spouting out nonsense instructions about school, then he just wanted to talk to plain old Nixon.

Sometimes I wondered what normal would be like. For example, what does it feel like to wear jeans without hiding a gun on your leg? Or not feeling leery about every single person that looks at you cross-eyed? Sleeping was overrated, and now I was running on pure adrenaline.

“We have a new student.” Mr. Ryan’s gaze flickered to the front of the room. My eyes followed his. Rage mixed with that very same adrenaline, making my hands shake as I balled them into fists.

“Shit.” A few students looked in my direction, then gazed back at their phones as my eyes slowly took in the new student. I could probably scream “fire!” and their asses would still be firmly planted in their seats. Idiots, all of them.

“Pardon?” Mr. Ryan said. “Do you know one another?”

“Oh,” a hiss of air escaped my lips as I marched over to the desk. “You could say that.”

“Well,” Mr. Ryan said from behind me. “If you could show him around, it would be much appreciated. After all, you are senior class president.”

“That I am,” I answered. I stopped in front of the new student’s desk and whispered. “How the hell did you get in?” I was so close to his face that I could see the faint bruising across his nose—telling me one thing. He wasn’t there by choice—he’d been forced; not that he’d ever admit defeat. My nostrils flared as he licked his lips, taking his time in answering.