Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76298 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 381(@200wpm)___ 305(@250wpm)___ 254(@300wpm)
And this beast can’t keep his hands off me.
Emilio Bruno is the king of Saint Parras College, an elite institution built in the heart of an island wonderland. It’s all sex, drugs, and beach bodies, and Emilio is at the center of it all.
But the constant party is a mask to cover the darkness lurking around every corner.
My sister died in a mysterious accident at Saint Parras, and Emilio was there when it happened.
I think he killed her, and I’m going to prove it.
He’s a gorgeous monster with rage in his heart and his fingers wrapped around the throats of the administration.
Which is why I have to join his student society and learn all their secrets if I want to find out the truth about my sister.
Emilio’s behind it all, manipulating, controlling, and dragging me deeper into his darkness.
I hate him more than anything, we’re about to be trapped in paradise together.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Kaye
The island where my sister died looms out from the waves like a headstone draped in ivy.
The Pacific is choppy and dark as the sun begins to set, throwing long red slants through seasick clouds, and my stomach twists as the ferry rolls and lolls up and down, and the trees on the island shimmer like mirages, barely there at this distance. I glimpse buildings, a dock, something glowing on the beach. Signs of life, but so far away that they’re meaningless.
I grip the railing. The metal’s cold beneath my fingers and slick with saltwater. It sprays against my face but I don’t turn away.
Did my sister feel the same sense of dread when she first saw this place?
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Dom joins me at the railing, leaning forward as the wind blows through his dark hair. He’s tall and handsome with dark brown eyes, dark tan skin, and dimples on both cheeks. “I checked it out on Google Earth, but it’s way better in person.”
Saint Parras Island is barely a hunk of rock jutting out of the water off the coast of California, not far from the much larger Santa Catalina Island. I’d never heard of it until Lucy told me she was going to college there. Imagine it, Kaye, an entire island with only a single college and nothing else. It’s going to be paradise. I still smile when I think about the day she got her acceptance letter, how happy she was, how she thought this would be the beginning of a better life. She was practically bouncing off the walls with joy. I’m out of here, Kaye, and I’m never looking back. God, imagine real freedom.
She lasted less than a year.
“Pretty,” I murmur, not paying attention to Dom. His cousin Nathan appears at his elbow, slightly shorter, broader shoulders and chest, with curly dark hair and forest green eyes.
“I’ve heard all sorts of rumors about Saint Parras College,” Nathan says, leaning forward over the railing and balancing with his feet off the ground. My stomach twists—if he loses his balance too much, he’ll tumble down into that black ocean and we’ll never find him.
“Stop that,” Dom says, yanking his cousin back. “The rumors are all bullshit. The whole island thing is just a marketing and PR illusion. Saint Parras is just a fancy private school for rich assholes that happens to have nice beaches.”
“Rich assholes like you and me?” Nathan looks over and grins at me. “Dom pretends like we’re not from money, but we were born with that cliché silver spoon lodged firmly down our throats.”
“We work for what we have.” Dom glares at his cousin. “You know you shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Sure, right, we totally struggle, if that’s what you tell yourself, although I don’t think you’ve worked a day in your life.” Nathan sighs and drums his knuckles on the railing. “Seriously though, I’ve heard all sorts of stuff about that island. About pirates haunting the waves and secret coves filled with sunken ships and missing treasure. About how it was a base for smuggling during Prohibition and they say the old rum’s still hidden in barrels beneath the rocks. That sort of stuff.”
“Bullshit,” Dom says quietly, but both boys stare straight ahead as the island gets larger and larger, and I know what they’re seeing: mystery and excitement and four years of college on a remote tropical island with a few hundred other rich and bored kids. They see parties and drinking and bonfires on the beach and girls looking to sleep with boys like them.
I see my dead sister’s body broken on the rocks in the shallow water at the base of a steep cliff, her neck twisted, her limbs splayed out.
I tug at my blonds hair and let the cousins chatter on about Saint Parras and all the things they’d heard about it. I don’t know much about the school and never wanted to attend in the first place. The island thing seemed contrived and weird—like, why would someone build a college in the middle of the ocean, cut off from civilization? Parras was Lucy’s paradise, her chance to get away from our family and to begin fresh in a place even our father’s influence couldn’t follow her.