I wasn’t going back to Chicago. Not this time. The last thing I needed was to be anywhere near the Rossi family, especially if there was a traitor among us. So, I told my father just that. “I’m safer here, believe me. If the traitor’s anywhere, it’s back in Chicago, not in the land of bratty teenagers and overpriced school lunches.”
He didn’t argue, which was a first. Maybe he finally realized I had a point—one I wasn’t sure he was ready to admit. The traitor could be anyone, and I wasn’t about to sit around waiting to see who’d try to put a bullet in my back.
Now, I had a red ruby to find, and the fact that it was gone wasn’t just a bad inconvenience. It was personal. It was the Rossi family legacy—stolen. And I knew it wasn’t going to just disappear into some random thief’s pocket. Whoever took it knew what they were doing.
I had one lead: the school’s security cameras. Except, the problem was, when I checked the footage, everything went dark the moment the ruby disappeared. As if someone had flipped a switch and turned the entire campus blind.
It didn’t take a genius to know that wasn’t a coincidence.
Liam Sterling—class president, goody-two-shoes, and general pain in my ass—saw me brooding like a storm cloud and offered his assistance, which I never asked for. “I can help,” he said, all polite smiles. “But in exchange, you tell me about the red ruby’s true origins.”
I stared at him, my patience wearing thinner than the fabric of my uniform. “What makes you think I’ll tell you anything, Sterling?”
“Because you’re already going to,” he said, his voice smooth as butter. “So let’s save time.”
I didn’t have time to argue. His offer was the only shot I had to get to the bottom of this. I had to admit—I was curious what he knew about the ruby. Maybe more than I was comfortable with.
We ended up sneaking into the library’s restricted section, which, if you asked me, should’ve had a sign that said: "Keep out unless you’re ready to dig up a mountain of dirt." But I didn’t care about rules. I cared about getting answers.
It was in the dusty corners of the library that I found it: a secret archive. Papers, files, and folders of “problem students” stacked high like they were just waiting to be dug into by someone too curious for their own good.
Liam was reading through some of the reports on the school’s so-called “troubled students” when I found something interesting. Jax Malone’s file. Of course, it wasn’t just any file. The name on the folder was already a red flag. But the real kicker was what was written on the report: “Potential violence, monitoring level: A. Ties to ‘Bloodblade’ gang in South LA.”
I leaned in closer. "Bloodblade?" I asked, my voice low, not entirely sure I believed what I was reading.
Liam nodded. “Sounds like someone’s been busy.”
I wasn’t sure if it was more the mystery or the thrill of having dirt on someone as dangerous as Jax Malone, but I was itching to dig deeper. That was until the real bomb dropped.
Liam, who seemed to have the gift of digging through files like a pro, came across the recovered footage from the cameras. My heart sank. The footage was blurry, but you could still make out Chloe Vanderbilt—one of the so-called “elite students” from the school’s wealthiest family—slipping into the room where the ruby had been kept.
“Chloe?” I blinked, trying to comprehend what I was seeing. “But why? She’s—”
“She’s hiding something,” Liam finished for me, looking a little too smug for my taste. “I think she knows more than she’s letting on.”
It wasn’t just that Chloe had stolen the ruby—it was why she had done it. I needed answers, and I needed them fast.
I found Chloe in the art room later that afternoon. She was sitting in front of a canvas, tears streaking down her face, not bothering to wipe them away.
“Chloe?” I said, my voice softer now. “What the hell is going on?”
She looked up, her eyes swollen and red from crying. “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice cracking. “They told me if I didn’t keep quiet, they’d hurt my brother.” Her hands shook as she wiped away her tears. “My family… they’re using him to control me. They said if I didn’t do what they wanted, he’d end up like… like the rest of them.”
I stood there, trying to piece everything together. Chloe Vanderbilt—the heir to a pharmaceutical empire—was being blackmailed by her own family. And somehow, I had become tangled up in it.
“I’m not letting them do this to you,” I said, my voice hardening. “We’ll fix this. You’re not alone.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “What are you going to do?”
I smiled, the cold calculation starting to take over. “I’m going to get your brother out of here. But it’s going to cost your family.”
What came next was a little more than I had bargained for. Jax—yes, Jax Malone, the thug who had been a thorn in my side ever since I stepped foot on campus—somehow ended up in the middle of it all. He barged into the art room, looking confused but oddly sympathetic.
“I don’t like blackmailers,” he said, crossing his arms. “And I hate people who use kids as pawns.”
That’s when I saw the tattoo on his arm. The familiar one, the one I had been wondering about for days—Bloodblade.
“You’re in the gang?” I asked, too stunned to hide my surprise.
“Does it matter?” Jax shot back, his voice full of bitterness. “I’m trying to make things right. You think I like having blood on my hands?”
I didn’t know what to think about Jax anymore. But right then, he wasn’t the enemy. He was a piece of the puzzle I had to work with.
With his help, we staged a fake kidnapping to get Chloe’s brother out of her family’s grasp. The plan worked—too well, actually.
But as we searched for clues in the chaos, I found something chilling. The ruby—Chloe’s brother had it stuffed inside a teddy bear. It was the same ruby, but this time, something was off. The back of the stone was etched with a code.
Liam looked at it, his expression draining of color. “This is… this is a federal case. Scarlett, this is government property. Your father wasn’t just involved with the mafia. He was laundering money for someone on the government’s blacklist.”
The weight of what Liam had said hit me like a freight train.
“Tell me you’re joking,” I whispered, my voice suddenly hollow.
“I’m not,” he replied, his eyes grim.
There was more to this story than I’d thought—and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the rest. But one thing was for sure: no matter where this went, I wasn’t stopping.