Dirty Revenge: A High School Bully Romance (Hawthorne Holy Trinity Book 3) Read online

  Dirty Revenge

  Hawthorne Holy Trinity Book Three

  Eden Beck

  Dirty Revenge by Eden Beck

  © 2019 Eden Beck

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of including brief passages for use in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  For permissions contact:

  [email protected]

  Ebook ASIN: B07T6SK26P

  Also by Eden Beck

  Hawthorne Holy Trinity

  Dirty Liars

  Dirty Fraud

  Dirty Revenge

  The Monster Within

  Where Monsters Hide

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  A Note From The Author

  Chapter 1

  The sky is the same color as the inside of my head; gray. It’s cold and cloudy, the weather as dismal and depressed as I feel inside. Like pretty much everyone at Hawthorne Academy feels today.

  I stare out the window of my rideshare, but I don’t actually see anything we pass by. This isn’t the first time I’ve visited Dana in the hospital since the incident, but it’s the first time she’ll be awake. I should be so grateful, but now that she’s out of the coma … it means we have to tell her the rest of the news. She might be awake, but others weren’t so lucky.

  For a while there, I thought she might be one of them.

  The coma was the result of a Christmas party gone so very wrong. It seems strange to think back to how it began, just a week ago towards the end of the school semester, when all of us were so hopeful. Everything was finally working out all right; I was excelling in school, college was finally on the horizon, and most importantly—Blair and Wills were mine again. I was so happy.

  That feels a world away now, like I was living a dream and only just now, since, woke up.

  I don’t want to think about it, but I have to. Thinking about it is the only thing that makes me believe it’s real. That it even happened.

  I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life.

  I’m an orphan. I lived my whole life moving from foster home to foster home, all around the state of New York. I was never in good homes for very long. It seems like I always spent the most time in the bad homes, and my last foster home was the worst of all. My foster mother, Ms. Martin, was an abusive, neglectful alcoholic.

  But all that, as bad as it was, was never as bad as this.

  At least I had the chance to escape that life. I had to steal the identity of a dead girl to do it, but still … it had to be done. Sadie’s death gave me a new life, but if Dana had died …

  I shake my head.

  No good would come of Dana’s death—unless you count Victoria’s subsequent death that surely would have followed. If Dana had died, I would have murdered the bitch that did it.

  As it is, I’m still considering the possibility.

  She’s been a thorn in my side ever since I got here. For a short time, I thought Victoria might be something more than she appears to be. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  She and I didn’t have to end up as enemies.

  I just hadn’t counted on falling for three of the most popular boys at school. That alone might not have been enough to seal my fate as the object of Victoria’s jealous rage—but the fact that they fell for me too, that did it.

  Wills Stryker; a super fit jock with long blonde hair and eyes the color of a stormy sea. Blair Rashnikov, a green-eyed darling devil of a boy with silvery-white dyed hair, a motorcycle, a penchant for mischief, and an insatiable hunger for me. And last, but definitely not least, Astor Hawthorne. Clean cut and gorgeous with dark golden-brown hair, and warm, deep brown eyes. His family founded Hawthorne Academy almost a hundred years ago, and he—ever the young prince—rules it now as a student-come-lord.

  Astor might be hers now, but she’ll never forgive me for stealing his heart first.

  Just like I’ll never forgive her for what she did to Dana. She might be alive, but she almost wasn’t. Once, Victoria took everything from me. She made the whole school, including my boys, turn on me. When that wasn’t enough, she tried to take away the only person who was loyal to me the entire time. The only person she couldn’t sway.

  When the boys found out the truth about me, they turned on me. Not just them, the entire school; all of them except Dana Rutherford, my best friend. Dana who just came out of the coma and is lying in a hospital bed.

  Victoria doesn’t want me in her world, and she’s willing to do anything to make sure that I am removed from it, no matter the cost. No matter what it takes.

  Even if it takes setting an explosion at a secret Christmas party deep down in the wine cellar of the school. An explosion that took the lives of people who sit beside us in class and were supposed to stand beside us this spring at graduation. An explosion that put my roommate and best friend Dana into a coma.

  All that just to stop me being around Astor. That’s the kind of serious bitch that Victoria is.

  But there’s a problem.

  I’m a bitch too.

  Victoria did her utmost, but now she’s number one on my hit list. I’ve been bullied and tortured and hazed, but now it’s my turn. I’m going to do my utmost to get my revenge. Victoria Waldorf will be put in her place.

  No one like her deserves to be at Hawthorne or any other school for that matter. She’s a total danger to anyone she doesn’t like; a lethal danger, and I have to stop her. I have to get her back for all the lives she cost, all the people she hurt, and all the trouble that she’s caused me since we became enemies, including taking Astor away from me.

  No more cowering. No more being bullied.

  It’s my turn to take revenge.

  Despite that fact, and that Dana finally woke up, a dark cloud comes over me as soon as the car pulls up to the hospital doors. Immediately my shoulders fall, my head falls, my spirit falls inside of me. It’s the saddest looking place, just as gray as the day outside.

  I leave the car and head towards Dana’s room. The nurses recognize me by now, and just nod in my direction when they spot me coming down the hall. This wing is dedicated to private rooms that have to cost a fortune; as if hospital stays didn’t already. The nurses here are hired privately and the rooms, though still sterile, look more akin to a hotel suite than a hospital. Like all things Hawthorne style, only the best for Dana.

  At least she deserves it.

  Today will be the first time I see her awake since the party. She walked in with me to the wine cellar, but she never walked back out. Victoria came back, though, and I saw her. I grabbed her so tightly with my hands and demanded that she tell me what was going on … even though, deep down
, I knew it was her fault.

  She didn’t have to tell me the truth; I saw it painted on her arms. She set a fire to get me kicked out of school. The fire became an explosion, and the aftermath was grimmer than any of us could ever have imagined. Her pettiness made her a murderer.

  I pause at the door and force a smile on my face. Just because I feel like my whole world is shattering before my very eyes doesn’t mean Dana has to know it too. She has enough on her plate as it is.

  So, with that fake hopeful grin plastered across my face, I open the door to Dana’s room and walk in. I see her in the bed; half her body wrapped in plaster, her face so pale, and her looking so weak. It’s like her eyes have sunk back into her head. She looks dead, but I see the corners of her mouth turn up just a little when her eyes meet mine. I wondered if she would recognize me, or if she would be so drugged up that she wouldn’t know who I am. I’m relieved to see recognition in her eyes.

  “Hey, there you are!” I tell her with the lightest, most cheerful voice that I can muster. I hope and pray that it sounds believable, because I have a terrible poker face and I know she can read my every thought just by looking at it. I move to stand beside her bed, one hand reaching out to gently touch her cheek before pushing her hair back away from her face.

  “This isn’t how you’re supposed to party, you know.” I wink at her and hope that I sound convincing.

  Dana watches me for a moment and smiles a bit. “It’s good to see you,” she says. Her voice sounds so dry; scratchy and foreign.

  “Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?” I ask, hoping that I can do something to ease the hell that she’s going through.

  She closes her eyes a moment, and she shakes her head.

  “Just tell me what happened.” She speaks in a whisper. “All my parents and the doctors told me is that there was an explosion in the school and I was injured. Nothing else. They won’t tell me anything else. Come on … Teddy, tell me what really happened.”

  She’s a smart one, coma or not.

  I look at her seriously. “What do you remember?”

  Dana sighs and closes her eyes. I can see that she’s struggling to think about it. “I don’t really remember much. The doctor says that I have partial amnesia and a minor brain injury that will heal, given time.”

  Amongst other things. It takes everything in me not to stare at the cast, the scrapes and bruises, and wonder at the kind of pain she must be in.

  I nod and sit on the side of her bed, taking her hand in mine to comfort her. “Well …” I trail off, not sure what I should tell her.

  “Come on,” she pleads with me, almost desperate. “My parents are here. They’re just in the cafeteria for lunch. They’ll be back in a while, and we won’t be able to really talk. I’m going to have to be in here for a long while, so I won’t hear it from anyone but you, if you tell me now. Tell me what happened!”

  Her pleas fall hard on my heart and I give in.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll tell you. I know if it was me there laying in that bed, I’d certainly want to know.”

  She looks at me gratefully, and I begin where I think it would be easiest. “You and I were working on a special science project. Rainbow Flames. Do you remember?”

  It takes her a second, but she eventually nods.

  “Well … part of what happened next is what the fire department determined, and the rest I figured out myself. Victoria Waldorf found it, and she took it in one of the back boiler rooms and lit it on fire.”

  I watch her carefully, looking for any sign of recognition. Seeing none, I continue.

  “It caused an explosion. The Christmas party was so full of people, and …” I trail off, not really knowing how to tell her the rest.

  Dana grimaces in pain, but I can see that it’s more from her heart than from her body. “Was anyone else hurt?” she asks me, and my heart sinks again.

  Really, no one’s told her anything?

  I try hard to swallow the lump in my throat, and I take a deep breath. “Um … yeah. There were lots of people hurt, and … there were even a few that … that didn’t make it through.”

  Her mouth falls open and I understand that she really didn’t know anything about it. Maybe I should have let her parents tell her when the time was right.

  No. There’s never a right time for this. If I know Dana at all … I know she wouldn’t want to be kept in the dark.

  But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard to watch how it affects her.

  Dana’s eyes well up with tears and she chokes on a sob. “Anyone … anyone I knew?”

  I bite my lower lip, and answer her in a soft voice. “Maybe.”

  I list out the names of those who died. Two I knew, Alisha Kane and Chris Hardy. The rest, including the unfortunate man Eli, the Columbia rep, brought with him were strangers. But their deaths still weigh heavily on me.

  Dana closes her eyes tightly to try to squeeze the tears in, but they push through her dark lashes and stream down her pink cheeks.

  She can’t breathe, and for a long moment, neither can I. We feel the pain of the loss of our classmates together.

  It’s devastating to think of the people we once knew. I remember Sadie White, and I think how surreal it when she died … and I knew her even less than the others. I stole her identity to go to Hawthorne, but I didn’t really know her, and when she died I wasn’t broken up about it.

  This time, I was there. Dana was there. Dana could have been killed, and in fact, she’s damn lucky she wasn’t.

  “When are the funerals?” she asks, opening her wet eyes again and looking at me. “Or did I miss that too?”

  I shake my head. “There’s a memorial at the school today. Their parents are letting us all say goodbye, before the families take them and bury them somewhere else. They agreed that all the students should get to say goodbye together.”

  I wonder if those same parents would be so generous if they knew it was the actions of a vengeful student that got their children killed. If they knew it wasn’t some freak accident, would they behave differently? Would I?

  Dana lifts her hand carefully and wipes at her eyes. “That’s good. That’s really good. I know it will mean so much to so many people.” She frowns a little then and looks sharply at me, as realization dawns on her. “Wait. What about Victoria? Has she being arrested or anything?”

  I shake my head. “No. No one knows what she did except her and me, and she isn’t coming forward of course. They’re just calling it an accident, and that’s it.”

  I see the rosy color bloom upward over Dana’s face as her heartache turns to anger, or something much deeper. She’s been in love with Victoria since they met at school in their first years, so this comes as the biggest surprise of all.

  Maybe she damaged the part of her brain that loved Victoria too.

  “She’s getting away with it? With murder? Those people are dead because of her!” She’s breathless, her words tumbling out with the same righteous indignation that’s been bubbling over in me. “Their families will never be the same again because of her! And she’s just going to get away with it?” The volume of Dana’s voice shoots up several decibels. I’ve never seen her this furious.

  “Dana,” I sigh and my shoulders slump a little. “There’s no proof. There’s no evidence to tie her to it, and no one’s going to take my word for it. Not when I’m a liar and she’s Victoria freaking Waldorf.”

  Dana narrows her eyes and looks away from me bitterly. “I don’t know how I ever fell in love with her, or why, but I’ll tell you this. I’m done.”

  I arch up an eyebrow, and have to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “Really?”

  She nods. “I’ve put up with enough of her crap; watching her hurt the people I love, watching her destroy lives. Literally. There’s nothing left about her to love.”

  I think she means it, and though I want to rejoice … now doesn’t seem the time. I reach for her hand and give it a squeeze.

&n
bsp; “I know you’re hurt and angry. Let me know if I can do anything to help you.”

  Dana shakes her head. “The only thing that’s going to cure this is time.”

  I look over her body; part of it in a cast, lots of it wrapped in bandages. “I think you need a lot of curing just now, actually. How badly did you really get hurt?” I still don’t know, because, like Dana, no one would give me straight answers.

  Dana frowns and looks down her form to her feet. “Well, I have broken bones and internal injuries. The brain problems, which includes a little bit of spotty amnesia, they say should all heal fine. I’m not in great shape, but I’m getting better, so that’s something good. I guess it’s just going to take some time.”

  “Just like everything,” I agree with her. “I’m here though. You’re not alone. You have your parents and me. If you need anything, you just let me know.”

  She gives me a small smile. “I will. Thank you. That means so much to me. More than I can even really tell you.”

  “You bet. I’m glad to be here for you. You’re my best friend.” I stand up and lean over to give her a careful hug. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  Dana gets emotional again, and sad. She looks up at me with sleepy eyes as her medicine begins to take effect. “Please tell them I’m sorry and I wish that I could be there for them.”

  “Of course.” I hug her once more, and then we wave as I walk out of the hospital and wait for another car to pick me up. I’ll do something to right these wrongs, I swear it. But for now, I have a funeral to attend.

  Chapter 2

  It’s a somber scene at the school. The large field between the school and the forest is filled with rows of chairs and there’s a big tent up over it all bringing up the twisted image of a winter wedding. The main difference lies at the other end of the tent; a row of coffins surrounded by so many flowers that it looks like they’re all in Eden.