I HATE YOU TOO... RIGHT?!

What happens when a former mob boss and an ex sex worker have a kid?

~

For those of you who have been waiting patiently for BOOK 3... First of all, suspicious behavior 👀

Second of all, I love you.

Now bring snacks. Clear your schedule. And for the love of everything, do not get attached to your comfort zone.

Take a step closer... your next obsession is ready.

SIR BOOK THREE

(Can be read as a standalone)

~

The thing about stealing is that the hard part was never the taking. It was the getting away with it.

"Left, left, left!" Emma hisses beside me, her ponytail whipping across my face as we round the corner.

"I heard you the first time!" I snap back, tucking the folded test papers tighter against my chest as we sprint. The manila envelope crinkles with every stride and I want to scream at it to be quiet, but that would require slowing down, and slowing down is not something I can afford right now because two of Westbridge Academy's finest security personnel are thundering behind us and they are, unfortunately, more athletic than their faces suggested.

"They're gaining!" Emma breathes.

"Thank you, Emma, I would never have figured that out on my own."

She ignores my sarcasm, which honestly, after four years of friendship, she's gotten very good at. We skid around another corner and I catch the exit sign at the end of the hallway, green and glowing and beautiful, and for exactly three seconds I think we're going to make it. Then I see the second pair of security guards coming from the other direction and those three seconds evaporate completely.

Emma grabs my arm and yanks me sideways into the alcove near the old supply corridor. We press flat against the wall, both of us breathing hard, and I peek around the corner just enough to confirm what I already know. They haven't seen us duck in here yet, but it's only a matter of thirty seconds, maybe less, before they close in from both ends and we become very cornered, very expelled students.

Emma looks at me. I look at her. Her eyes are doing that wide, frantic thing they do when she's about three seconds from a full spiral, and I already know what has to happen here. I just don't love it.

I glance down the supply corridor beside us. It's dim and it smells like old cleaning fluid and broken dreams, and I know exactly where it leads because I made it my business in freshman year to know where every corridor in this school leads. It dead-ends at a storage room that hasn't been unlocked since 2019. There's no exit, no window, no convenient ceiling tile situation. Nothing.

Emma follows my gaze and then looks back at me with that particular expression that says she's already doing the math and doesn't like the answer she's getting.

"Give me the envelope," I say.

"Lucia–"

"Emma." I hold out my hand. "Give me the envelope and go down that corridor, get to the storage room, and wait until it's clear. They're not going to check a dead end once they have someone to chase."

She stares at me, considering.

“Besides,” I add, “you know I’m the safest person to get caught.”

She bites her lip so hard I'm surprised it doesn't bleed. "I'm not letting you take the fall for this alone, that's insane, we planned this togeth–"

"And now I'm changing the plan." I wiggle my fingers. "Come on, I'm running out of patience and we're running out of time."

There's a beat where I can see her warring with herself, and then she makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan and shoves the test papers into my hand. Her fingers curl around mine for just a second.

"Don’t think this makes you a hero or anything," she whispers, but she's smiling when she says it.

“I’m gonna hold this over your head until we die" I say with a quick, urgent smile. "Now go."

She goes. I watch her slip into the dim corridor quietly and then I turn around, smooth out my blazer, tuck the envelope visibly under my arm where they can see it, and step directly into the path of the approaching security team.

It's honestly a little insulting how relieved they look when they see me standing there.

Principal Mercer is sitting behind her office desk looking at me the way people look at something they want to fix but can’t, which is a look I have been receiving since approximately the fourth grade so I’m quite comfortable with it by now.

She has the stolen test papers on the desk between us, still in the envelope, and she’s been talking for about four minutes in that measured, deliberate way people talk when they’re trying to make you feel the weight of every word. I’ve been listening. I’ve also been looking at the small framed photo on her desk, a beach somewhere, a husband, two kids, a golden retriever, all of them squinting happily into what looks like a New England sun.

“…unauthorized access to a faculty office, theft of academic materials, and evading security personnel.” She folds her hands. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Miss Ellis?”

“Completely,” I say, and I give her a pleasant smile.

She doesn’t like the smile. I can tell because something behind her eyes shifts, then goes looking for a new angle. “This is an expellable offense.”

“Mm,” I say, still smiling.

“At best, we’re looking at suspension. At worst, your enrollment at Westbridge is–”

“Principal Mercer.” I tilt my head just slightly. “I have the utmost respect for how seriously you take the integrity of this school. I really do. And I’m not trying to minimize what happened today.” I pause just long enough to be polite. “But… I’m, uh, just sitting here thinking about how generous my father’s contribution to the new science building was, and how he mentioned at the last donor dinner that he was considering extending that to the west gymnasium renovation as well, and I just…” I give a small, warm shrug that communicates absolutely everything and nothing. “I’d hate for today to become a bigger thing than it needs to be. You know… for everyone’s sake.”

The silence in the room has a texture to it.

Mercer looks at me for a long moment and I watch her do the math that everyone in this school eventually does. The west wing. The generous annual donations my father keeps giving. The Ellis name on the bronze plaque by the main entrance. Her jaw tightens in a way she’s trying very hard to control.

“Two weeks,” she finally says. “Detention every day after school, starting Monday.”

My smile evaporates. "I'm sorry, did you say weeks? As in… plural??"

"Every single day."

"That seems–" I sit up straighter, the pleasant performance dropping for the first time since I walked in here, because two weeks is genuinely, actually, historically unfair and I need her to understand that I understand that. "With respect, that's ten sessions, that's two full calendar weeks of my life, and I think if we look at this proportionally–"

"Another word," she says, and her voice drops to a quiet and almost pleasant register, "and I will personally place a call to your father this afternoon. I will tell him exactly what transpired here today, in full detail, and we can discuss your future at Westbridge with him present, donations or not."

The rest of my sentence dissolves somewhere between my brain and my mouth.

She pauses just long enough to let the words sink in and the clears her throat. “You will not miss a single session. You will not be late. And you will sit there and you will reflect, genuinely reflect, on the choices that landed you in that chair.” She fixes me with a look that could probably strip paint. “Are we clear?”

My father who thinks I am currently maintaining a 3.8 GPA and excellent moral standing. My father, who would not yell, would not even raise his voice, would simply look at me across whatever room we were in with that quiet, total disappointment that makes me feel about eleven years old and deeply, profoundly unworthy of the name I carry. My father, whose reaction to this specific information would result in a level of monitoring and restriction that would make two weeks of detention look like a vacation in the Maldives.

I close my mouth. I find my smile again, the sweet one I keep in reserve for exactly these situations.

“Two weeks of detention,” I say warmly, picking up my bag from the floor beside the chair, “feels more than fair. Thank you so much for your understanding, Principal Mercer. Really.”

She stares at me for a beat longer, like she's looking for the joke, and then she gestures toward the door and I leave.

Zeke is leaning against the wall outside the administration wing with his arms folded and that infuriating expression of mild amusement he wears specifically when he's trying not to laugh at me. He's in the standard Westbridge uniform, blazer and all, which still looks faintly absurd on someone built like he is, because Ezekiel McCarty was not constructed to look like a prep school student. He was constructed to look like someone who gets paid to stand between dangerous things and the people who need protecting.

Which is, to be fair, exactly what he is. My father decided last year that the car and the driver waiting outside wasn't sufficient enough protection, and that having someone actually inside the school with me was the only logical solution. So here Zeke is, seventeen on paper, enrolled in three classes he definitely doesn't attend, and following me around Westbridge like an extremely well-dressed shadow.

I love him, genuinely, the way you love someone who has been a fixture of your life since you were thirteen. But right now I need him to be very specifically useful, which means being very specifically quiet.

"Not a word," I say before he can open his mouth.

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

"Was I?"

"Zeke." I stop walking and turn to face him fully. "I need you to hear me very carefully right now. Whatever you saw or heard or think you know about the last forty minutes of my life, I need it to stay exactly here, in this hallway, between us. My parents do not need this information. My father especially does not need this information. Can you do that for me?"

He looks at me for a long moment with those dark, unreadable eyes, and I can see him weighing things, loyalty to me against obligation to my father, care against duty. It's a familiar calculation. He runs it often.

“Please Zeke," I say, softening just slightly. "Just wait for me after school, and I'll explain everything, okay? Just… just please don't say anything until then."

He exhales slowly. "Go to class, Luce."

It's not a yes. But it's not a no either, and with Zeke, the absence of a refusal is the closest thing to agreement you're going to get.

The detention hall is exactly as grim as I imagined, with a proctor at the front who looks like she'd rather be literally anywhere else on earth.

I scan the room and there are three other students already seated with their heads down, radiating various flavors of shame and boredom. There's only one empty seat left.

Right next to Elias Arden.

I curse myself and send a quick prayer up to the heavens for a bus to run me over, or for a sudden sinkhole to open beneath my feet, or for a rogue gorilla to crash through the windows and carry me into the wild. Honestly, I’d even accept spontaneous combustion at this point.

"Well, if it isn’t Westbridge’s finest criminal,” Elias says pleasantly, leaning back on his chair like he finds the whole situation faintly entertaining. “How nice of you to join the lower classes.”

I pull out the chair, sit down with every ounce of composure I have left, and open my notebook.

"Bite me," I say with the fakest smile I can muster.

Come on… come on… Where’s a good old spontaneous combustion when you need one?

“Well, since you asked so nicely…” He responds with a smirk and I roll my eyes.

Apparently, heaven chose to screen my calls.