Ruthless Heart Read online

  Queeny: I think I know what it was, call me.

  Me: Where are you?

  Queeny: Class

  Me: Meet you outside when you’re done

  Queeny: Ash? Gray?

  Me: Practice. See you in ten

  Leaning against the tree, I welcomed the shade from the hot sun as I waited for Quinn to come out of class. When I saw the doors open and students coming out, Quinn was easy to spot, tall and graceful. I noticed she had changed her clothes from earlier into three-quarter-length yoga pants and a pink T-shirt knotted at the back. She came down the stairs of the phys ed building, ignoring most of her classmates. With her hair now in a high ponytail, she cut an impressive figure as she crossed the lawn to meet me.

  I watched her as she put her sunglasses on before offering me a wide smile. We were all hoping to head to the NFL, and Quinn had never been happy about being left behind, so she’d decided when she was fourteen, if she couldn’t play beside us, she would treat us, and she held onto that determination. She was now studying sports therapy, and she was damn good too.

  “Hey, twice in one day,” she murmured when she was close enough to be heard without drawing attention to us. Which would be impossible. She looked hot, and I was the school’s quarterback. We were probably already on someone’s Instagram or TikTok.

  “It’s how rumours start,” I told her, causing her to look around uncertainly at my comment, but she laughed despite the underlying truth of it. “They’re both at practice,” I told her quietly as I pointed at my ankle. “I’m not, I’m injured.”

  “Bullshit story.” Quinn lowered herself gracefully to the grass, and I followed. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I hesitated, but this was Quinn. “I’m fucking furious.”

  “You have a right to be.” As she pulled at the grass, she looked a little uncertain.

  “What is it?”

  Handing me her phone, she gestured towards the screen. “It’s open.”

  As I read the article she had open on a website, I felt my insides twist. “Is this shit legal?”

  “Yes, it’s used sometimes as an anaesthetic. They call it twilight sedation.” Quinn leaned forward to scroll on her phone. “See here,” she said as she pointed. “It’s used for conscious sedation. Many people are awake and talking when they are given it, and after the procedure, they have no idea what happened.”

  “Is it possible,” I asked her as I kept on reading, “that this is what I took?”

  “Yes. It’s called Versed, and it gets given in liquid format as well as IV. In a drink, it can be slightly bitter, it says…so I assume you would notice…but in beer? I don’t know if you would. I think it can also be diluted down, from what I understand reading it all.”

  “I didn’t put the beer down though,” I said as I looked up at her in concern. “I don’t remember much, but I know this.”

  “You had to have. Or you drank something else?” Her brow was scrunched in thought as she read on her phone. “Are you sure you only had one beer?”

  “Positive. The only other thing I drank was water.”

  Quinn’s head snapped up as she tore off her sunglasses to glare at me. “You said one beer, nothing else.”

  “No other alcohol. I picked up a bottle of water when I left.” Rubbing my jaw, I thought about it. “I don’t even know if I opened it.”

  “You dumbass,” Quinn grumbled as she stood. “It was in the water.”

  “How?” I said as I rose to my feet with her. “How would anyone know which bottle of water I was going to pick up?”

  Quinn hesitated, looking thoughtful before she looked at me in horror. “Unless you weren’t the target and everyone at the party was.”

  Taking a step back, I looked at her. “How long does it last? You said it can be diluted down, but how long does it stay effective?”

  Quinn read down her phone, and then her fingers were flying over the screen as she looked it up. As she relied on her medical references, I tried my hardest to remember Friday. I had the beer, I spoke to Derrick about routes as I searched the room, but the prick I was looking for wasn’t there, so I left. Did I pick up the water? Or was it given to me?

  I couldn’t remember.

  Shit.

  “Depending on what else it’s mixed with, it can stay as potent in water for up to twenty-four hours.” Quinn looked at me, her brown eyes wide with concern. “Well, that’s just horrifying.”

  “How long does it stay in your system?” I asked numbly.

  “Four to six hours.”

  That wasn’t long enough. “I don’t think it was that. I left around one.” I wanted to punch something. “I was tested at nine, that’s too long.” Saturday morning came rushing back to me. I had been fuzzy, which I thought was due to alcohol, but my memory was clearing, and now...now I was going to kill someone. “I drank from a bottle of water in my room when I took a painkiller before I left for fucking practice,” I groaned in realisation. “Come on, we need to tell Gray and Ash. Don’t fight me, Quinn, I need you there to answer their questions.”

  With a curse and a lacklustre punch to my arm in protest, she started to follow me, grumbling the whole way about asshole Santo men.

  When we got to the stadium, practice was over, and I texted Gray to tell him to meet us in a box. We needed quiet, and we needed somewhere without the team seeing us, so I opted for one of the boxes, and even though we had access to most of them, I’d gravitated towards our family one.

  It was adequate in size. Eight plush comfy chairs covered in black leather. Silver and black was very much the theme in Cardinal Saints College. Light grey walls with black uplighters gave a more muted effect. Overhead spotlights were an option if you wanted a brighter atmosphere. The carpet was a dark grey, but the main area of the floor was black wood, easier for cleaning up spills, which happened often during a game. Fans would never learn to put the drinks down before jumping to their feet to cheer, no matter how well-bred the family. A faux black marble countertop with five bar stools in front of it separated the guests from the booze and the three fridges behind. Quinn had already grabbed a soda as I waited by the windows for my brother and cousin.

  When Gray and Ash joined us and had also taken drinks from the fridges, I quickly ran down what Quinn had learned. It was gratifying that Ash and Gray were as speechless as I had been when I read the articles.

  Quinn stood slightly behind me, answering their questions with what she had gleaned from the internet and also from her professor when she had asked careful questions. His answers had made her start looking into the drug.

  “How long does the memory loss last?” Gray asked.

  “It can be a few days.”

  “So it will come back? He’ll remember who this was?” Ash spoke as he studied her phone. Neither of them ever made eye contact when they were in the same room now. That ship hadn’t only sailed, it had sunk.

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “How did it even get in the water though?” Gray asked as he looked between us. “You said it was unopened, was it sealed?”

  “Gray...I don’t know.”

  “We would have heard if the whole fucking party lost their goddamn memory over the weekend,” Ash spoke suddenly. “Those parties can be wild, but not everyone’s smoking or snorting.”

  “Or drinking alcohol,” Quinn said softly in agreement. “Who else would have seen the water?” she asked me.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can’t you even think about it?” Gray asked me in exasperation.

  “Brother,” I warned him as my jaw clenched.

  “His memory from right before it could also be affected,” Quinn said as she took her phone off Ash. “I hate to say it, but I think you need to just wait.”

  “I’m not waiting,” I snapped as I turned away from them and looked down over the field. The gridiron looked welcoming, and I wanted to be down there, throwing balls, not up here, trying to recapture a lost memory.

  “You thi
nk you drank the water before you left right on Saturday morning, right?” Gray started to pace. I could hear him crossing the carpeted floor. “Why do you remember practice before the game?”

  “That’s a good point,” Ash said as I turned to look at them. “You were kinda hazy, lethargic even, but you were aware.”

  “I was?” My head was spinning trying to make sense of it all. “Quinn?”

  “I dunno.” She shrugged as she leaned against a seat, her foot tapping as she thought. “Unless...the familiar is so routine that you didn’t notice?”

  “He didn’t notice he lost his memory?” Ash asked with more bite than he needed.

  “You fell asleep,” Gray exclaimed suddenly. “At break, you ducked Coach, and you sat in the bleachers, remember?” he asked me as he crossed to stand in front of me. “I woke you up. It wouldn’t have been more than ten minutes.” When I started to nod in recollection, Gray looked over at Quinn. “That’s not normal, not on game day.” He turned back to me. “You said it was the hangover, and I said you were lucky we were at home to a shit team.”

  “I...” Jesus, this was hell. “I think I remember that.”

  “And all you did after that was throw and catch, Coach didn’t want you too tired for the game.” Gray was practically vibrating with excitement. “It pisses me off that we didn’t notice.”

  “Why would you though?” Quinn said thoughtfully. “You were hungover, you were active, talking, walking, playing. You were normal.”

  “He’s never normal,” Ash quipped before he scowled when he realised that he had made a joke to Quinn.

  An uneasy silence followed, but I knew better than to push it.

  “I have the three Elises on it,” I said, breaking the tension. “By the end of the day, I’ll be well versed.” I sneered at the name of the drug even with my play on words. “Again.”

  Gray snorted in contempt, and Ash was suddenly looking anywhere but at Quinn, who was looking at me with her lip curled in distaste. “You went to Elise?”

  “Queeny, you said you weren’t helping.”

  “I know but…Elise?”

  “The more the merrier, isn’t that right, Ash?”

  Yes, I went there. Yes, I was a bastard. Yes, it made Quinn’s lips twitch into a smile.

  “Still, we didn’t have to go to desperate so soon,” Quinn said regally as she collected her bag from the counter. “Okay, I’ll find out more about this, and if you find out more about who, let me know.”

  “What are you going to do when we know who it is?” Ash asked as he stood, his arms extending high over his head as he stretched. “Glare at her?”

  “Enough.” I stopped Quinn’s or my cousin’s reply. “I got this now, thanks for finding out what it was.”

  “I’m not done with this,” Quinn warned me as she secured her bag on her shoulder. “Not by a long shot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jett, are you serious?” Quinn looked more pissed off than normal. “I’ll deal with this bitch.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.” She gave an angry toss of her hair and I was ready for a lecture, but when she met my gaze, her look was one of concern. “She drugged you, she slept with you, because she’s twisted or to make sure you had it in your system for practice?” I realised Quinn was as furious as I was and wanted to cause harm. It pleased me how much I was on board with that. “This bitch is mine, I’ll kill her.”

  “She’s mine,” I growled as I met Quinn’s fierce look.

  “You’re going to hurt a girl?” Quinn mocked me slightly, a perfect eyebrow rising in question. “You would never hurt a woman.”

  “Hurt her? No.” I looked around the room at my family. “Annihilate her? Absolutely.”

  I was sitting in class when I got the first hint that something was happening. The usually dull, stale atmosphere of finance was almost throbbing in intensity. I hated finance, but being an English major, mom had convinced me that even editors needed to live in the real world, and a few backup courses in practicality weren’t such a bad idea. She was wrong, they were a terrible idea.

  Jett was in this class, I knew, but it was so huge I never usually saw him. Because he was probably getting sucked off in the back row, I thought maliciously. The only time I actively looked for him was after a game, checking to see if he took any knocks or dents that would’ve rendered him injured.

  He was never injured.

  As I doodled on my page, I did need to remind myself I didn’t actually wish bodily harm on him. Well, not before Friday. Before the weekend, if he got a torn ACL, I would have felt genuinely sorry for him. Now I wanted to tear every ligament in his body and watch him squirm in pain.

  Okay, Ava, that may be too savage, even for you.

  The flower I was doodling had now become a little flower garden, and I was shading them happily as I waited for the class to commence when the seat beside me scraped back.

  “We illustrating for children’s books now?”

  Quickly I sketched some headstones and looked up at my friend Wade, who was watching with interest.

  “You’re a sick fucker, Ava,” he said as he plucked the pen from my fingers and, in a few strokes, had added both our names to the gravestones. “Sweet and innocent on the outside with something sinister lurking beneath,” he teased.

  “You know it,” I agreed as I turned the page in my notebook to a fresh one. “What time do you need me tonight?”

  “Gig starts at eight, need your pretty little butt at the van at a quarter to.”

  “Cool.” I kicked my feet out in front of me. “I have to go to the print shop to pick up the flyers for next week, but they came out...amazing.”

  “Course they did, my favourite artist drew them.”

  I smiled at the compliment. I met Wade through an online ad last year. He was in a country rock band and played bass guitar, and Wade needed someone to design and distribute his band’s flyers and posters.

  He was also the only original member in his band. There seemed to have been a revolving door of band members, but only Sticks remained from the tail end of last year. Sticks was the drummer, obviously. I had no idea what his proper name was, he was just Sticks. Neither of them looked like country rock would be their jam. Wade had a faux mohawk, neck tattoos and several piercings. His black gauges were usually the conversation starter. I had looked him up on Facebook before I met him for the first time and had drawn a few samples of heavy metal themed posters. He had laughed his ass off at my assumption, and we were pretty much friends from then on. Sticks had long hair and also several piercings and always wore a dog collar on his neck. Dog collar and shorts were the only thing he wore on stage; he didn’t even wear shoes. Sticks was odd.

  The band paid for the printing of the posters and flyers I designed for them, and paid me fifty dollars for every new design. They played regularly twice a week in the campus bars and maybe an additional set in Cardinal itself. Because Wade hated the familiar and was always looking for variety, he had really pushed my drawing, always wanting something new. He hated the mundane and comfortable. It was hard work sometimes, but it was fun, and we had formed a tight friendship.

  Despite Wade’s need for change, one of the things that was steady was his girlfriend, Bea. She was the complete opposite of Wade: long blonde hair that she always wore up, pretty dresses, not a piercing or tattoo in sight. Day and night had nothing on those two, but they were absolutely perfect for each other.

  Which gave me hope that opposites did attract and in some cases, stuck.

  “The natives are restless,” I said to Wade as he looked around the class from our usual corner in the large classroom.

  “Hey, did you hear? Your favourite quarterback got mugged or something…I dunno…something.”

  “Dante?” I gasped as my hand flew to my throat in horror.

  “No, this school’s QB. Something was stolen?” Wade thought about it. “Who really cares?”

  “Jett?” I felt my fr
own as I looked around in confusion. “Who would be stupid enough to steal from a Devil?”

  “Dunno, and when did you start calling him by his name?” Wade looked at me with interest.

  “I can’t call him cocky asshole all the time,” I mumbled as I resumed drawing. “That girl almost decapitated me last week when she heard me,” I reminded him dryly. The girl was obviously unhinged. No one, I mean no one, should react that violently to an offhand comment that the lead quarterback of the Saints was a cocky asshole who couldn’t throw for shit. I may have slightly overexaggerated his throwing skills, but I was having a private conversation with my friend, not plastering it on social media.

  “Don’t tell me...you’ve got a crush on the footballer. Please, Ava, don’t do this to me.” Wade laughed easily. “I refuse to allow you to become just another groupie. Groupies are for my band only.” Wade nudged me playfully. “If it has to be a Santo, make it the brother or whatever the other big guy is.”

  “Cousin. And Ash is the tight end for the team. I don’t know why I have to keep explaining football to you. You’re from Texas, for goodness sake, shouldn’t you bleed football?”

  “I bleed rock ’n’ roll, as you well know.” Wade plucked my pen from my fingers as he took my pad and flipped the page back to my previous doodle. He added some music notes to the sky, and then beside one of the headstones, he sketched a quick ball. He grinned at his work and proudly handed me the pad back. An RIP was under the football, and I slapped his arm in protest.

  “You’ll be under that headstone if anyone sees this,” I hissed at him.

  “Guys and their balls,” Wade snorted. “Bunch of bullshit. Plus, football terms are so sexually driven,” Wade said as he stretched, almost knocking me in the face with his elbow. “Tight end, sack, muff, spearing...whoever invented this game was fucking horny at the time and needed to get laid.”

  “So, you do listen, but only to the dirty sounding words?” I laughed at my friend. “You’re such a boy.”

  “Sweet Ava, you say ‘spearing the tight end’ to me in any sentence, and I don’t give a fuck what you’re talking about, I’m listening.” Wade winked at me before we were both giggling, trying to settle down as the professor came through the doors. She looked frazzled, and as I watched her cross the floor, I wondered why she looked so...dishevelled. A few minutes later, Ash Santo strolled into the class, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one putting two and two together and getting sexcapade as the answer.