King of Cups: A Dark College Bully Romance Read online

  KING OF CUPS

  A DARK COLLEGE BULLY ROMANCE - STORMCLOUD ACADEMY BOOK 2

  NICOLE CASEY

  CONTENTS

  Trigger Warning

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Book 3 Coming Soon!

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  © Copyright 2022 by Nicole Casey - All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Cover designed by MiblArt.

  TRIGGER WARNING

  This is a Dark Romance novel and is not for the faint of heart. It includes themes such as bullying, dubious consent, murder, and other disturbing situations that some may find uncomfortable reading.

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  Coldhearted murder. Gorgeous, dangerous boys. Lethal, power games. Who knew boarding school would be this noxious?

  My first year at Stormcloud Academy?

  A total mess.

  Now, the second year is here.

  My limits will be tested, as new troubles brew on the horizon.

  On my to-do list?

  1. Clear my name before I end up behind bars for muder

  2. Stay alive

  3. Understand what the Kings’ want from me

  Speaking of the Kings -

  My desire for them is uncontrollable.

  I can’t give up Theo, or Zephyr.

  No matter how jealous they are of each other.

  Worse, now I can’t get the cocky Arvo out of my head either.

  In addition to my heart’s confusion,

  The intrigues around me get more tangled by the day.

  Soon I’m ordered to spy for the Kings.

  If their suspicions are correct, there will be consequences.

  Blood will be spilled.

  Better somebody else’s than mine.

  At least, that’s my attitude until I discover that nothing is as it seems.

  Will I survive my second year at Stormcloud Academy, or is this the beginning of the end?

  King of Cups is the second book in the Stormclouds Academy. This reverse harem/bully romance series contains elements that may be sensitive to some readers. Filled with cruel and damaged men and a determined protagonist, this romance will take you on a dark, wild ride.

  PROLOGUE

  BIBA

  “Finger, bitte.”

  The stocky officer wore a light blue shirt tucked into slightly darker trousers. A navy blue beret sat on his hopelessly disorganized desk. He couldn’t have been older than thirty-five, but his hair was already thinning, only offering slightly more coverage than the mangy beard on his face.

  Before him was a black ink pad.

  “I’m sorry?” I asked, trying to hide my shock.

  “Bitte, frau,” the guard said coldly.

  “Unless you are booking me for a crime, you’re not taking my fingerprints.”

  “Sehr gut,” he grumbled.

  My surprise, I think, was understandable. This appearance at the Wachsbrunnen police station had been framed as a polite chat about the unfortunate events surrounding Gail Monfort’s suicide with the girl who was closest to her, the American orphan, Biba Quinn—a.k.a. me.

  The conversation was turning out to be remarkably less polite than the police had implied. I had been checked in at the front desk, photographed, and marched back to the room for questioning. Now, they were attempting to fingerprint me, and I refused.

  So I was left alone in their interrogation room for a half-hour. Cooling my heels, I think they call it.

  The interrogation room had plastered walls on three sides. The fourth, behind me, was mountain granite. Like many buildings in Wachsbrunnen, the local police station was built into the side of the mountain. One of its load-bearing walls was the rocky edifice. If you stood to the rear of the structure—in the holding cells, the armory, the evidence locker, or the interview room—you were essentially pressed against the Alps.

  I sat there, the day after Zephyr had left for his summer holiday. He hadn’t wanted to be separated from me in the weeks following Gail’s death. He hadn’t wanted me out of his sight. But his father, Peter Williams, the shipping magnate, would not have his son moping around with some girl at Stormcloud between terms. So he left. It turned out the Wachsbrunnen authorities were waiting for the scion of one of the world’s wealthiest, most powerful families to leave town before taking his lover in for questioning.

  It might not have been so bad, except for the one item left on the table in front of me: a glossy photograph of Gail.

  It must have been taken when she was in high school. Her hair was longer and fairer than I recalled, and she wore a school’s crested blazer and Oxford shirt. But her eyes were as large, round, and hopeful as I remembered, her toothy smile totally devoid of guile. This was before her parents’ untimely death, probably—a more innocent time in her life.

  I stared at the photo and thought of the last time I saw her, as her pallid corpse was cut down from the rafter. Her face was imprinted in my memories, beet-red from pooling blood, with bulging tongue and eyes, lips blue. Her arms and legs were stiff with rigor mortis. It was like she was a poorly carved statue of the vivacious, wonderful girl who had become my friend in our first term at Stormcloud Academy.

  We two understood what it was to lose the most important person in your life only to find yourself in the strangest, darkest, most mystical place. More than that, Gail showed me through the openhearted way she approached Stormcloud how death, loss, and relentless negativity didn’t have to define us. I loved being around her and longed to be more like her.

  But I was afraid there was something essential about my personality that had to steel over and punch back. I couldn’t look for the good like Gail. Now I was alive, and she was dead. And what did that mean?

  Suddenly, the door to the room unlatched and swung open. In stepped a tall, lanky detective with sallow cheeks and stringy gray hair combed straight back over his thin-skinned scalp. He loped in—I suspected this guy loped everywhere. He could barely keep his bloodshot eyes open, let alone solve a murder.

  “Miss Quinn,” he muttered in a Germanic drone, “I am sorry to keep you waiting.”

  I nodded curtly, not feeling like the man deserved the slightest bit of deference. He slumped into the chair across from me.

  “You were rather close, I have heard, vith Gail Monfort.”

  “She was my best friend,” I replied flatly.

  “Ja, and I am most sorry for your loss. You vere both new to the Academy, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you had a lot in
common, both having lost parents.”

  He let that hang in the air. My back stiffened. How did he know about my father? And what did that have to do with anything? That spiny part of me wanted to storm out right then, not only away from this detective but also away from thoughts of that phone call from Dad’s assistant. The car accident. Come home quick. . . .

  I fought back against that urge. Better to stay in the present. Focus on this detective and his interest in my family tragedy. It wouldn't have been too complicated for an officer to learn my family history, but they would have to be researching it. Why was this detective digging into my past? I worked hard not to show my concern, but the guy seemed to recognize it anyway. A smirk crossed his lips.

  “Let me ask you,” he proceeded casually, “did your friend display any changes of personality in the weeks before the end of the term?”

  “No,” I answered quickly, then wondered if that was the wrong answer.

  “No signs of depression, hopelessness?”

  “I mean, Gail was always a little sad, you know, because of her parents….”

  “Ja, and you saw her every day?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m led to believe you and Miss Monfort had been fighting in the weeks before her death.”

  I froze. Yes, Gail and I had fought, but it was because of how close I had gotten to Zephyr and the Kings. She was scared for me. It had nothing to do with her death. I told myself this so many times, every morning and every night. I needed to believe it because I already hated myself for our petty fighting in her last weeks. If I’d contributed to her death . . . that would just be too much to bear.

  “We never fought, Gail and me. We were close, and. . . .”

  I trailed off. This wasn’t good. I was lying to the police.

  It was absurd too. This detective clearly suspected the same thing I did: Gail’s death was not a suicide. So why wasn’t I telling the truth? Why wasn’t I doing everything I could to help his investigation?

  “And vhat, Miss Quinn?”

  “I think . . . um, I think Gail was acting strange around the end of term. Her parents’ deaths were weighing on her. I wish I had spoken up about it.”

  I realized at that moment that I couldn’t tell the police what I suspected. To do so would reveal how Gail, Theo, and I were secretly investigating the last generation of Kings, men who were so powerful they could snuff out both our investigation and our lives. I had to play dumb to protect myself and Theo. Even worse, I needed to protect Zephyr, even though he was the leader of the Kings. He might unknowingly have sanctioned Gail’s murder.

  Which meant . . . I could have been complicit in her death as well.

  What could I say to the detective? Even if I were willing to reveal what I suspected about Stormcloud and the Kings, I didn’t think he would believe me. All I could do was parrot the official line, the story that Gail’s killer wanted the world to believe: she had killed herself.

  “You seem suddenly quite certain, Miss Quinn.”

  “I didn’t want to admit it to myself, I think . . . but I guess Gail was wrestling with demons, and I ignored her struggle.”

  The detective grunted his acknowledgment and stared deeply into my eyes.

  Did he buy my explanation? I didn’t know.

  I didn’t care. He didn’t matter to me.

  I would find Gail’s killer myself.

  CHAPTER 1

  BIBA

  “Do hurry up, Quinn.” Miss Amelia tsked at me as I loaded myself down with student medical reports and scuttled out of her office.

  For the better part of three months, my role as Amelia’s assistant had been like something between a secretary and a student. I would come to her office each morning, and one of two things would happen. If she had concocted an idea in the night—a better rooming arrangement for first-year students, a symposium series of prominent alumni—it was my job to commit it to paper. In these instances, I would sit cross-legged in the middle of her indigo and red hand-knotted Persian rug and take hours of dictation.

  If Amelia had no Stormcloud business, she would pour me a cup of Darjeeling and proceed with a lesson—in whatever subject she judged me in need of learning before my second year began. It was an eclectic mix: Romantic art, industrial chemistry, DH Lawrence, Copernicus, and 20th-century German economic theory. Early in the summer, I’d slipped up and wrinkled my brow when she veered abruptly from Hayek to Sons & Lovers.

  She had snapped at me. I suppose you don’t see the value of my lessons, eh? I supposed you’ve become too clever for some past-her-prime administrator’s wisdom?

  No, I’m sorry, I had replied. I just didn’t understand the connection between—

  You don’t need to understand, Miss Quinn. I’m working from the assumption that you do not understand a bloody thing. It’s pure chance that you survived a single term at Stormcloud Academy.

  My expression must have fallen because Amelia had stopped scolding me. It was true: I had just barely made it through my first term at Stormcloud. Gail didn’t.

  Amelia had sighed then. I offered you this opportunity because I see promise in you. You aren’t a vapid trust funder skulking about these halls, looking for a rich boy to take care of you—despite your rather perplexing affinity for Zephyr Williams.

  Nothing makes a first passionate love affair seem gross like hearing a teacher talk about it. I’d felt my cheeks redden.

  Zephyr has a sweet side, I’d muttered, thinking of how sweetly he had caressed and kissed me the night he and Theo saved my life.

  I suppose he keeps it well-hidden. Now, listen, Biba: you don’t get to be in my position at Stormcloud Academy without understanding how it works. The students change, but the system remains the same. I will teach you the secrets of this place at my own pace. And believe me, the morsels of academic knowledge I give you are just as important as the sordid goings-on in the school. Now will you give me the benefit of the doubt and let me teach you?

  I had nodded. That was in June, and for two months, Miss Amelia did just what she’d promised, taking me through the school’s five-hundred-year history—its enigmatic founders, its countless wealthy and powerful alums. She even touched on the Kings in a glancing sort of way.

  Each generation has its kings, Biba, she had said, not just in Stormcloud, but everywhere. Still, this Academy has seen more than its fair share of ruthless, untouchable royals. The same ones keep coming back, decade after decade, through the centuries. It is a symbiotic relationship, you understand. Stormcloud Academy feeds these Kings a steady diet of pleasure and opportunity. In return, the Kings imprint themselves upon it.

  I’d asked her what that meant.

  The very walls of Stormcloud, she’d replied, remain upright only through the benevolence of the Kings. Unfortunately, we must all keep that front of mind.

  Amelia had never said, in plain terms, who had been a King of Stormcloud Academy. She’d spoken of barons, members of Parliament, industrialists, dictators, and great minds—all might have been ancestors to Zephyr and his clique. I didn’t know, and she didn’t say, and that was that.

  After a time, Hegelian philosophy and molecular biology began to merge with the famous alums and institutional secrets, as if life and Stormcloud were inseparable. Certainly, they were for me. My old life in Seattle, my hopes for a Harvard admission, my despair at being an orphan . . . all these concerns seemed to belong to another girl. Even my remorse over Gail’s death and the fluttery feelings I had thinking of poor, lost Theo started to vanish.

  The Biba that made it through her first term at Stormcloud learned to block these emotions throughout the day. It was a coping mechanism, a means of survival.

  The feelings came back when I lay in my bed at night. Actually, it was Zephyr’s bed. The Kings had the best rooms in Stormcloud—huge, sprawling suites meant to house four students, but they had them all to themselves. And they didn’t move between terms like the hoi polloi. So after Zephyr had tried and failed to
convince me to join him for the summer at his family’s estate in Cote d’Azur, he’d gotten over his saltiness and tossed the key to his grand suite to me.

  Stay there for the summer, he’d grumbled. I can’t believe you’re choosing that bony old gull over me.

  It’s an opportunity, Zeph.

  You know what’s an opportunity, Biba? Three months in the perfect Mediterranean summer with the richest families in Europe. Whatever. Stay in the mountains with Miss Manners. But sleep in my room. If I can’t have you to myself, I at least want to imagine you touching yourself on my sheets.

  It was goodbye, cramped dorm room; hello, luxury living. Not that I spent much time there, as busy as I’d been all summer.

  This had been Amelia’s objective, I think, in taking me under her wing. For whatever reason, she seemed to like me and wanted me to be okay. Perhaps she had lost someone like I did, a parent or a friend or a lover. She never talked about herself, anyway. Her goal seemed to be to keep me busy and active for the summer so that I would not think about all I’d lost and all that had been denied me. And somewhere between the tutorials, the gossip, and the drilling of Academy history, I suddenly became, for the first time, comfortable in Stormcloud Academy. To the manner born, as they say.

  My assistant role became a real job once July turned to August and, one morning, Amelia announced that the “fun” was over for now. We had to get things ready for the first day of class.