Their Vicious Games(24)

“How did you know?” I spit.

“I’m from the area. My family has been really close to the Remingtons for generations, just like the Bonaviches and the Alderidges. The girls who are invited to Finishes like this usually are close. Makes the whole thing… not cleaner, but easier. The risk is understood. But a Finish like this hasn’t happened for a long time.”

“A Finish like this?”

“The kind where a Remington heir turns eighteen and hosts the Finish, not to further a girl’s opportunities, but to find a wife.”

Her declaration cuts through clear, like a sudden break in the static friction of an old radio. The words sound foreign and they don’t make sense, but also do. A wife.

Strangely enough, all I can think about is icy blond hair and hard eyes and the ringless finger of Dr. Leighton Remington.

“So… Leighton?” I whisper, but neither seems to hear me.

“I suspected,” Saint adds. “But I didn’t know. Not for sure. Hawthorne is right. It’s kept really hushed. Very insular. I did research before I came. Like I said, most years—totally normal. But every year that a Remington heir graduated, no one ever talked about those years. I couldn’t find any of the losers. Only the winner. And there was a pattern. She won. She became his wife.”

I shake my head against Saint’s casual theorizing, because it makes no sense. It can’t.

“What about Leighton?” I demand, voice ringing through the bathroom.

Hawthorne sighs and confirms. “It was a Finish like this one.” She levels a look at me, like she’s waiting for me to break down again, so I hold my breath, steeling myself. “Dr. Remington… Leighton, she was a nobody. Her father was the stable master here. Her mother was a homemaker. She lived in town her entire life as nobody. But she had been around the Remingtons her whole life. She knew what they wanted for a Remington wife and she was smart, ambitious, ruthless. Everything Matilda Remington was. So she played their games and she won expertly. And by the end, Third’s younger brother wanted to marry her. She’d made herself into his dream girl.”

I open my mouth and then close it again when I can’t manage any words. Every word from Hawthorne’s mouth shatters the reality I’ve made for myself. Every plan means nothing now. Because the Remingtons have their own plans. I will die. Or I will be a Remington. Every accomplishment I could ever have, any future, even if by some miracle I win, would always be second to being Mrs. Remington. Not Adina Walker. I wouldn’t be regaining what’s mine, because I wouldn’t even be me. Not that that’s even a possibility because—

Every girl would kill to be a Remington.

Except me.

“I can’t be here. I’m leaving.”

“This is why they took our phones,” Saint reminds me, edge creeping into her voice again. Her hands slowly clench into fists. “This is the first real Finish since social media was created. They are in control now and we can’t leave unless they let us.”

“This is illegal,” I say.

“They are the Remingtons,” Hawthorne says. “They own this town. This state. All of New England. Nothing is illegal for them.”

Suddenly, Graham’s words ring true. “I hope you and that soul survive this,” he’d said. He knew. He knew all about this and he didn’t warn me. None of them warned me.

I’m alone here.

“This is a nightmare. I’m going to die,” I realize.

Hawthorne shrugs once. “Maybe. Maybe not. It’s different now.”

“What’s so different?”

“There are more girls from outside the usual circle. More variables. There’s you,” Hawthorne says, but that doesn’t reassure me. It just drives in the point again that Pierce didn’t invite me here to save me. He invited me to end me.

“It’s a new era, a new game. Get ready to play.”





CHAPTER 9





I DON’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT.

I lie in the darkness, on my back, head turned toward the door, wondering if Esme will darken it at any moment with her poisoned perfume. Every time I think to close my eyes, I see Margaret’s face as she clawed at her arms and her neck, like the pain would bring her back to life. My stomach turns, but there’s nothing to throw up, not after that first time, when I spewed champagne into the toilet.

Saint called for a meal to be brought to our room. She ate it when I didn’t. I sat against the chaise, knees tucked against my chest, staring straight ahead as Saint talked at me. Then she put me to bed.

With the moon pitched low in the sky, I feel my hackles rise, adrenaline thundering through my veins. I turn in my bed and look over at Saint. She’s buried in the sheets, planted facedown, and finally a soft snore tells me all I need to know. I roll out of the bed without a second thought, gliding across the chilly floors, swinging a sweater around my shoulders and grabbing my Air Forces from my bag. I stuff my feet into them, tying the laces in a stranglehold around each ankle.

I don’t want them to get loose when I start running.

The door hinges whine with age. I still, waiting for Saint to wake up, but she doesn’t budge. I slip out, and leave the door open just a crack, wishing her well, this brilliant girl who figured out what she was walking into, who saved me from falling down the stairs, who washed poison from my skin. She’s safer than I would be. Smarter.