Cellphones are forbidden on the island. Also laptops and iPads. Speakers and iPods are allowed, as long as the only thing they do is play music.
Even just the charging is a hassle. There’s barely any outlets in the castle, none at all in the dorms.
No cell phone service, so all calls home to family have to be made from the bank of telephones in the Keep. No internet access. All assignments must be written by hand.
Of course, those rules are for the plebs.
Ozzy and I have GPS phones that work anywhere, and we’ve figured out how to hack into the school’s server. We’re about to secure a whole new way of connecting—our very own Starlink satellite. We just have to figure out where to hide it.
That’s the project for this afternoon.
This morning I’m dealing with Rocco Prince, Jasper Webb, Dax Volker, and Wade Dyer, who have apparently decided that they’re willing to jeopardize their access to the school black market in favor of airing their grievances against me.
We’re all in Chemistry class together, in the Keep with Professor Lyons. She looks like your average lab assistant, standing in front of the class in her white coat and her safety glasses, her gray hair cut in a sensible bob. You might even think her grandmotherly, with her sleepy-lidded eyes and her casual lecture style. Yet she has one of the highest kill counts of any former assassin, specializing in undetectable poisons and deaths that could be ruled as heart attack or stroke.
She taught us all about those poisons in our Freshman year. As Sophomores we focused on homemade explosives. Now we’re moving on to the manufacture of hard drugs.
“Opium is one of humanity’s most ancient drugs,” Professor Lyons says, looking a bit like she’s taken a hit from the pipe herself as she blinks at us with those heavy-lidded eyes. “The use of opium, both medicinally and recreationally, can be traced back to ancient Mesopotamia. That precious nectar comes from the common poppy—papaver somniferum, the very bloom you grow in your garden, from which you can extract seeds for pastries or bagels. The very bloom you see upon your desks right now.”
We’re sitting at wide tables outfitted with lab equipment. I’m sharing with Ozzy, while Rocco Prince and Wade Dyer sit directly to our right, and Jasper and Dax behind us. If that’s supposed to be intimidating, it’s not. Dax breathes so loud he’d have no chance of surprising me, and Rocco’s dirty looks are B+ at best after you’ve been on the receiving end of Uncle Nero’s death stare.
As Professor Lyons indicated, each table bears a brilliant scarlet poppy with an ink-black center and a fuzzy stem. She instructs us to don our latex gloves so we can slice the poppy’s bulb to collect the thick, sludgy opium gum.
Rocco picks up his scalpel but doesn’t touch his poppy. He grasps the handle, silver blade pointed in my direction.
“Don’t be shy,” I say to him. “Or do you need me to hold it down for you?”
I’m provoking him, I know that. The truth is, I’m also holding a grudge from our little confrontation. If I’ve triggered Rocco’s animosity, he’s sure as fuck triggered mine.
Deftly, without even looking, Rocco slits the poppy bulb. White sap oozes out.
“I could slit your throat just as easy,” he hisses, his eyes fixed on me.
“You could try,” I scoff. “You might have an overinflated sense of your own abilities. Not everybody’s as slow as your boy Dax. Or as dumb as Wade over there.”
Dax shifts his bulk in his chair, and Wade growls, “Fuck you, Griffin. You’re not smart enough to mind your own business, are ya?”
Whenever Wade gets mad, he reminds me of a bully in an 80s movie. It’s something about his bland good looks, the blond hair and the cleft chin. He looks like Rip from Less Than Zero, or Ace Merrill from Stand By Me.
Ozzy says, “Wade, you’re not the dumbest guy on earth, but you sure better hope he doesn’t die.”
It takes Wade a couple of seconds to figure that out, and in the interval Ozzy and I burst out laughing at the blank confusion on his face. Professor Lyons gives us an irritated glare.
Under her quelling stare we all go quiet for a minute, but I know it won’t last. Dax, Wade, and Rocco are all riled up, like a pack of dogs when somebody drags a stick along the fence. Only Jasper seems indifferent, behind and to the right in my peripheral. He’s working on his poppy, his skeletal tattoos still visible through the translucent gloves, seemingly deaf to the storm brewing around him.
“Once you’ve collected the sap, we’ll use solvents to extract the morphine solution,” Professor Lyons says, writing the chemical ingredients on the chalkboard.
“I’ll get all that shit,” Ozzy says, scribbling the list in ink on the back of his hand so he won’t have to make multiple trips to the supply cabinet if he forgets anything. “You jerk off the poppy.”
Wade follows Ozzy to the cabinet.
I pick up my own scalpel, intensely aware that Rocco and I are now both armed with only two feet of space between us. Holding a knife gives me a strange impulse to slash his fucking face open. Or maybe stab him in the eye, like he tried to do to Zoe. My hand feels twitchy and charged, as if it’s taken on a life of its own.
Technically, I’m the one in the wrong. Rocco and Zoe are engaged, and I have no right to interfere in their business.
On the other hand, Rocco fucking sucks and the more I get to know Zoe, the more I think it’s tragic for her to be the plaything of this lunatic.
“You don’t want to make an enemy of me. It wouldn’t be wise,” Rocco says. His sibilant voice draws out the “s” in “wise.”
Usually I’d say, “I have no interest in being enemies.”
I’ve seen the havoc it wreaks. My family’s long and bloody battle with the Bratva in Chicago resulted in my grandfather’s death. Uncle Dante was shot, Uncle Nero almost killed. The grudge has lasted twenty years and is still carried on at this fucking school by Dean Yenin, the Bratva heir who tried to drown Leo last year.
The problem is . . . I really don’t like Rocco. I don’t like anything he stands for. The idea of making peace with him tastes like vomit in my mouth.
So I say, “Zoe’s best friends with my cousin. Me, Leo, Anna . . . we’re looking out for her. If you don’t want to be enemies, then keep your fucking hands off her.”
“You have a strange sense of justice,” Rocco says, his blue eyes fevered. “Would I tell you not to drive your own car? Or eat the food in your own fridge?”
“You’re not married to her yet,” I say.
“The contract is signed.”
“Yeah? Where’s the clause about cutting her eye out? Are you too stupid to take care of your own property?”
“It’s none of your business what I do to Zoe. I could set her on fire just to watch her burn.”
My stomach churns at the look of amusement on his face. I don’t believe in good and bad people. But Rocco radiates a level of evil I’ve never encountered before.
I’m good at reading people. I look for micro-expressions—hints of fear, anxiety, desire, deception in their face.
Rocco doesn’t have micro-expressions. His emotions aren’t complex. His intentions are simple: he wants to hurt Zoe for the fun of it. And he wants me to stop inconveniencing him.