The Bully by Sophie Lark EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Sophie Lark
- Language: English
- Genre: Action & Adventure Romance
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
DEAN
MOSCOW
The Bratva high table meets tonight in a private room on the top floor
of the Bolshoi Theater. This is a meeting my father cannot skip. He’ll
have to leave our house on Noble Row for the first time in months.
As accustomed as I’ve become to the chaos inside our mansion, I was still
shocked when I came home from school in the spring. From the exterior, the
sandstone facade looked as expensive and well-maintained as ever. But the
moment I opened the front door, I was hit with a wave of fetid, rotting air.
No clear path into the house remained. My father’s burgeoning collection of
trash overflowed into the entryway: stacks of books, newspapers, magazines,
boxes, bags, and packages piled to the ceiling in labyrinthine channels that
forced me to weave my way down the hallway and up the stairs.
Where the house used to smell of dust and mold, now I had to pull my shirt
up over the lower half of my face to filter out the stench of something that
had died beneath the mounds of garbage. Rats certainly, and perhaps even a
pigeon or a cat.
He banned the maids from the house years ago. I doubt you could offer them
a king’s ransom to return.
My father hadn’t met me at the airport—I had no expectation that he would. I
scaled the stairs in anger and resentment at how far he had allowed our house
to continue to decay. It’s like he wants it to collapse on top of him so he can
suffocate in the rubble.
I went straight to his office.
That space, at least, he had always kept clean. And he had always maintained
his personal appearance, even as the rest of our home fell to ruin.
But I found him sitting behind his desk in a filthy robe, his hair down to his
shoulders and his fingernails two inches long. He looked up at me, confused,
with his one good eye bleary, the other milky and blind.
“What are you doing back here?” he muttered.
“School is done for the year. It’s summer holiday.”
He stared at me like he had no idea of the year, let alone the month. Then,
slowly, he seemed to understand.
“They sent me your grades,” he said, nodding toward a heavy gray envelope
with a handwritten report.
“I finished second in my class,” I told him.
“Who was first?”
My jaw twitched.
“Anna Wilk,” I said.
“A girl?” My father sneered.
“She’s heir to the Chicago Braterstwo. You know her father.”
Then it was his turn to flinch. We never mention Chicago. And we certainly
never mention the people who live there still—not even our closest living
relatives.
“Next year I expect you to place first,” he snapped.
“I intend to.”
Anna and I scored within a percent of each other on our final exams. We
didn’t know who had triumphed until the results were posted in the
commons.
She congratulated me as if she hadn’t beaten me.
It was the first time we’d spoken since . . . a very long time.
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