Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91979 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 460(@200wpm)___ 368(@250wpm)___ 307(@300wpm)
His smile was cruel but so beautiful I ached. Straight white teeth, a small dimple on the right corner, jet black hair and teal eyes. “You’re forgettable. That’s not my fault, is it?”
Maybe I would murder him today. It wasn’t like anyone would blink an eye at me. Then again, he was the heir to the Nicolasi crime family. Ugh, why did he have to be important? And why the hell had I ever allowed him to see me naked on numerous occasions?
“See you in class, princess.” He sped past me.
I followed, slower this time, maybe because I thought this year would be different. This year things would be… normal.
I almost laughed out loud. Right, when has my life ever been normal? I was basically born with blood on my hands. I would die the same way.
At least I had a nice car and unlimited cash. There were worse things in life than being forced to work with your ex-boyfriend and cousins at Eagle Elite.
Oh, it looked like we were just average college students, but everyone, including the faculty, knew the truth, knew who our parents were.
Who ran the world?
The five families.
The Chicago mafia.
Crime syndicate.
Whatever you wanted to call it.
We were it.
It… owned us.
Talk about it… and you might just get killed.
Brag about it, you’re already dead.
A freshman last year was found hanging outside his dorm room with the word “rat” spray-painted across his chest.
The faculty said it was a suicide and told his parents he was depressed—but we all knew the truth.
It’s not like I pushed him anyway.
Ash always did the dirty work, not me.
Junior spray painted it across the kid’s chest.
Breaker pushed.
And I took a picture for my social media.
Because that kid could have gotten our family killed, or worse, in trouble, and blood protects blood. And he was bragging about having intel on our families. It didn’t matter that he had nothing—what mattered was that we still had enemies, and I would do everything to protect my blood.
We had to warn people that this wasn’t some sort of social experiment. This wasn’t a reality show. And this wasn’t a TikTok you could just go viral with.
This was our lives. And the fact that we let anyone live by our sides meant that they had to follow the rules… and follow us.
The idea was this: make sure that the world around the University understood how dangerous you were—as individuals and as a group—and then make sure that they followed our rules, which created fear. And that fear seeped into the students’ friends, families, to the most influential people in the known world, because—newsflash—those were the only people allowed in the University. This fear then trickled quite joyfully down the line until everyone in power understood that the five families of Chicago were here to stay, and there wasn’t jack shit anyone could do about it.
I used to hate that it would eventually put me in the spotlight, eventually force me to put on a mask that said fuck the world—I ran it, but now… now it just felt like putting on a fresh coat of lipstick and fluffing my hair.
All in a day’s work.
Who ran the world?
Us.
I pulled into a parking spot next to Junior and waited while Ash’s Tesla pulled up behind me at least four minutes later.
He got out of the car and wrapped an arm around his girlfriend Claire and my cousin Izzy, his twin. Sometimes she rode with me, but she’d told me that her dad put her on spy duty so she was the bad cold they couldn’t get rid of.
It’s not like Izzy would stop them from having all the sex, Claire and Ash went at it like they would die without touching each other. And honestly, I had to bite back the jealousy that at least one of us was happy.
I made a face at the happy couple while Izzy managed to walk toward me, cell in hand, texting one of her many boy toys. She never did anything but flirt, which almost made it worse, especially since all of us knew Maksim held a bit of a candle for her, which she promptly ignored since she didn’t want to die.
“Put that away,” Ash barked at her. “We got shit to do.”
Izzy held up a finger.
Ash looked ready to break it.
Typical Monday.
“Cool nails.” I winked and grabbed a thumb. “I like the red, nice touch.”
She laughed, put her phone away, then glared at her brother, who was already kissing Claire like his life depended on it. I mean, would it kill them to come up for air and stop groping?
“Gross.” She made a face. “Could you guys not do that in public?”
He ignored her like always.
Claimed he was in love.
We were all taking bets on when he got bored because Ash was too good looking and charismatic to just stick to one girl—we knew it, he denied it, it was a thing.