Monsters' Crew (Crude Hill High Book 1) Read online

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2021 Sam Crescent

  ISBN: 978-0-3695-0297-1

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Audrey Bobak

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  MONSTERS’ CREW

  Crude Hill High, 1

  Sam Crescent

  Copyright © 2021

  Chapter One

  Emily

  I thought about death a lot. It wasn’t morbid or for some quest to finally find the end. At eighteen years old, I hadn’t really lived. There had to be more to life than this empty shell of nothing. Life seemed to be playing out, and the longer I was part of it, the less I seemed to be relevant. I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t part of any crowd. To most, I was a loser. I didn’t mind. It helped me to dwell in my thoughts of death. For all I knew, a lot of kids thought of dying. About how their final moments on this very earth were going to go.

  Glancing around the cafeteria, I couldn’t help but wonder if that wasn’t a whole crock of shit. The pretty girls. All with their long hair, styled pretty much the same, but there was always one girl who liked to change it up. For the team here, it was Nancy. She ran with the pack but the truth was, she danced above them all.

  Then, of course, around them were the jocks. The football crew who believed they ruled the entire school, but the truth was they weren’t in charge, not really. I’d firsthand seen them really bowing down to one group of people, and they sat in the corner. No one messed with them.

  Monsters’ Crew or the Monsters’ Boys. Depending on who you spoke to. Caleb Falls, River Block, Gael Parson, and finally, Vadik Keller. All of them deadly. No one crossed them. Even now as I glanced at them, I saw River with a knife between his fingers. He flicked the blade back and forth as if it was nothing more than a pencil. I’d seen him do this many times and yes, he’d even nicked himself, but he’d often just lick it up or wipe the blood away on his pants.

  They were all scary as fuck. Caleb, their leader, made all the decisions. He always took the helm and the other three surrounded him, protecting him. Black hair, blue eyes, and he never smiled. It was odd to think about. He never laughed. When he found a target, he’d get this weird look on his face that vaguely resembled a smile, but it never was.

  Taking a large bite of my burger, I averted my gaze as Caleb looked right at me. The last thing I wanted to do was to catch their attention. Everyone knew what happened if you caught their attention.

  The girls loved it. I’d heard the rumors of the boys tag-teaming girls and then discarding them. A couple had left the school as they spent way too much time sobbing about the fact they couldn’t win one of them over. They were Monsters and were more than happy to wear the label as well.

  Out of some of the guys who wished to join them, a couple of them had never been seen or heard from again. To the outside world, this was a prestigious school. Wealthy kids came here. All of the Monsters came from money. They were all filthy rich, but no one here was from the squeaky-clean kind of group. Nope.

  My parents dealt in sordid deals and blackmail. They owned an entire city, and I’d even caught conversations about trafficking. There had been a lot of young women coming in and out of their house. Most of them covered in bruises.

  I hated it.

  There was nothing I could do about it. This school was the one place where I could breathe without worrying someone was watching. Of course, they were watching. Even the jocks, they came from backgrounds that had a double-edged sword.

  I grew up surrounded by competition and the enemy.

  Slurping up my banana milkshake, I jumped, nearly choking on the straw at the sound of a loud clattering.

  Near the Monsters’ table stood a kid I didn’t recognize. He was clearly a year, or several years, below us.

  River got to his feet and the tension in the room mounted. Silence fell.

  “Please, no, please.” The boy’s whimpering filled the air.

  The biggest mistake he could make.

  In hell, no one ever showed weakness. We were all monsters, all destined for lives we didn’t want. At the top of the tree stood the four Monsters, and we were nothing but their minions. I hated it.

  River slammed the kid to the table. The blade pressed against the boy’s throat.

  “You think it’s funny to throw a spitball?” River asked.

  See? All of this over a wayward spitball that had come at the beginning of the school day.

  Nibbling on my lip, I watched as the boy held his hands up in surrender. He was in the wrong place and was about to become target number one in a sea of sharks. I’d seen enough as River landed the first blow. As if on cue, Caleb, Gael, and Vadik got to their feet, and away they went. Anyone who dared to step up would feel his wrath.

  With my tray in hand, I dumped the trash into the bin and left the dining room. My heart pounded.

  Violence disgusted and fascinated me in equal measure. I hated myself for it. There was no way for me to get away from it.

  The marks on my back were already evidence of my absolute hatred of it. My father wasn’t known for his patience and since I was his only daughter, he always made an example of me. Unlike my brother, who was always considered the best thing in the Crane household.

  Stepping out into the cold day, I stayed perfectly still.

  Would dying from being left in the cold be so bad? In the movies, it never looked painful. I’d rather go out with no pain than to be screaming.

  After a few seconds of stillness, I moved, heading toward my next lesson. There were five minutes of lunch left. Teachers rushed past me and I stepped out of their way. The last thing I wanted to do was step in their path. They had a boy to save.

  This was what you got at Crude Hill High. There was a time it was a boarding school for our very kind, but there was too much death, leaving the families no choice but to keep the gates open.

  On rare occasions, the gates would be locked and it was like a free-for-all. Two years ago, that had happened. Someone had broken the rules and brought a gun. That had ended messy. Mom tried to persuade my dad to send me elsewhere. To let me have a normal life.

  No Crane was normal.

  We were sharks, thriving to be on top.

  The truth was my father craved a place at the four. He wanted to be the fifth shark, but with what I knew, he didn’t have the balls to do what these guys did.

  I arrived at English, taking a seat in the back near the window. School sucked. It was boring. Teachers tried to pretend we were like other kids. The ones who weren’t going to be responsible for killing people when we got out of here, but no matter what they tried to tell themselves, it was never going to happen.

  We were the enemy. Plain and simple, and if one of them stepped out of line, their lives would be forfeit. It was hard for a teacher to threaten you when you could have them killed at a snap of your fingers. The cops were useless here, so was security footage. Money talked and the more you had, the better it was for you.

  My family was wealthy and throughout the years, I’d learned how to take care of myself. I had to. Without it, I’d have been dead in the water long ago.

  The English teacher came in. It was Mr. Bucati, who had re
placed the previous teacher two years ago. The one before him had been caught sleeping with a student, and seeing as he was supposed to be teaching all the fine arts of literature, and the girl in question was supposed to remain a virgin until her precious wedding night, the previous English teacher was now lying dead in an unmarked grave, at the bottom of the lake, or just plain dead. No one knew, and the girl had also disappeared. This was another precious little detail in our world. We weren’t just shipped off to some foreign place until the scandal died down. Nope, sometimes the girls or the guys were never seen or heard from again.

  Keeping your nose clean was more important in this world.

  I licked my dry lips, keeping a close eye on the door as one by one, students filed in. To the outside world, we were set up like every other school. Like in the cafeteria, jocks, cheerleaders, the rebels, the nerds, and me, the loner. But the truth was, lower your guard for even a second, and we were all dead.

  It was odd to think how many of us actually went here. I don’t have an exact number, but we filled a rather prestigious school. The crooks’ kids. Criminals. Taking over from our families when the time was right.

  Since I was a female, my only role, according to my dad, was to get my education so I could marry. I was sure he already had a man who I would hate lined up. Unlike some of the more exclusive mafia types who liked to keep their daughters virginal and completely cut off from the rest of the world, there were those who wanted us to be prepared. For my dad, I was potentially a spy. With a daughter in high school, right in the middle, he could find out who was who. It gave him an excuse to come to my parent-teacher nights. Those were fucking fake. I knew he was fucking my art teacher. I was shit at drawing or painting, but yet, it was a subject I had to take. My mom never came to my parent-teacher nights. She always had to stay home.

  Father’s rules.

  I hated him more than I hated anything else. If I had the courage to do one thing in my miserable life, it would be to take a blade to his fucking neck, slice him open, and watch as the blood leaked from his useless, pathetic body. He was a scary piece of shit.

  All of our families were. There were rarely any coward’s kids, but it did happen. There were bastard kids as well. Drake, one of those kinds of kids, came in. He had short hair, a torn shirt, and ink completely covered his arms. He took one look at Bucati and went in for a pretend attack.

  Bucati was used to this and didn’t even flinch. On the first day, he did and went running to the principal. From that day forward, he had to learn to grow a spine. I imagined the teachers here got paid a fortune. Money always changed hands when they were told to look the other way.

  Drake dropped down into a chair, spreading his legs out. He was the bastard of one of the English family’s gangs. His father owned part of London or something, and he was the one who kept the streets clean. Drake was a loose cannon. Rumor had it he came from a rapist father, and he wasn’t used to being told no.

  He was one of the few guys I steered well away from. Catching him on a bad day led to bad things.

  The activity in the room paused. There was no need for me to see who had actually entered. For all of Drake’s craziness, it didn’t take the whole Monster Crew to create tension. It only needed one, and right now, Caleb Falls had entered the classroom.

  The girls were all fawning over him. Me, I stayed perfectly still, used to keeping to myself. It was the only way to survive in hell.

  ****

  Caleb

  “Dude, Bucati is a pussy. You remember what happened to him on the first day of school?” River asked. He bent down, grabbed a stone, and launched it across the parking lot toward the English teacher.

  I smirked. There was nothing else to do.

  Watching Bucati wander the school halls as if he was better than all of us pissed me off. It got on all of our nerves. Mr. English could keep his dick in his pants, but I’d been present when my father finally decided to pay a visit, and it hadn’t been pretty. Bucati pissed himself. Begged for his life. Then actually got down on his hands and knees and offered his body for personal use. Anything. My father had turned to me and told me this was what weak looked like.

  I’d never forget it.

  Since then, Bucati was paid, not well. The other teachers made sure they got a good deal out of it. Every now and then, he’d turn up at my father’s house to do what needed to be done. If it was a deal that needed to be sealed with a nice fuck, Bucati was there.

  I didn’t like him.

  Bucati acted the part of authority, like he was above all of us, but I saw the way he looked at some of the girls who came to this school. While my father believed he had Bucati made, I knew men like him would use an opportunity to screw up a bigger deal. Virginal girls were still a huge prize in our world. Unlike the exclusive, keep-it-in-the-family mafia, who didn’t frequent this school, our girls were still expected to act the part most of the time.

  Some of the girls who went here were just pawns in their fathers’ lives. They had no chance of going up in the world, just down.

  Getting laid was easy. There were many willing females. Some students, even teachers. I think Gael was the one to prove that a married civilian woman’s love meant nothing. A sweet little scientist had come to the school a few months ago, flashing her ring, again, looking rather smug. All it had taken were a few choice words from Gael, and she’d been bent over her desk, begging for his cock to be driven into her ass. For added proof and I was guessing pleasure, Gael had filmed the entire thing. Once he was done with her, he’d made her lick his cock squeaky clean and then smile at the camera.

  It was what Gael liked to do. If there was ever a job that required toying with someone, he was always the first one in line.

  “I’m not interested in throwing stones at people.” I jumped off the wall and headed to my car. Another gift from my father for a job well done. Where most of the people who went to Crude Hill High were still trying to prove themselves to their respective families, to earn their part, I had my place. I had the ink making me part of the Monsters’ Crew. All four of us had earned our spot.

  At eighteen years old, I already had a body count of over ten. I had no feelings when it came to people.

  My father liked to test me. Had even gotten me to kill a woman who had betrayed the crew. It was what we did. We owned cities, people, and we made sure everyone knew who they were dealing with.

  Apart, we were all deadly, but bringing us together, we were the worst fucking enemy, and what was also rare, all of us were in high school at the same time. Our fathers had knocked up our mothers, and they’d all been pregnant at the same time. It was why our bond was so strong. From the time we were first born, all four of us had been pushed together. Without a doubt, I knew the only people I could trust were right in this room, and that was all I needed. There was no reason to rely on anyone else.

  The only people I needed were right here and now.

  Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention.

  Emily Crane walked out of the school gates. Like all the times before, her gaze was focused around her. She was the only person in the entire school who didn’t have a whole host of friends swarming around her. Fitting in clearly didn’t appeal to her. She wasn’t part of any clique. She made no friends.

  With her arms weighed down by books, she headed toward a blackened-out car. A large man, a security guard, got out and held the door open for her. He tried to take the books but she dodged him, climbing into the car without another look at him.

  Shaking my head, I smiled.

  This school was never boring, with all this entertainment.

  Crane was a well-respected man. Even my father talked about him highly. He was known for getting shit done and killing anyone who failed him. For anyone to get respect from my dad, it meant bad things happened a lot.

  “I always think she’s a bit strange,” River said, climbing into the car, holding a knife in his hand. No matter where we went or what we did, he a
lways held a knife. Today, he’d gone for a little pocketknife.

  I knew him well. It would be one of the sharpest. School or not, he carried a weapon. Not that Crude Hill High was a safe place. Nope. People died. Enemies’ kids were sent there. It was a breeding ground for pain and violence. I liked it.

  I didn’t have to hide away if I was there, and I never backed down from a fight. Even if there was one I knew I wasn’t going to win. Being a Monster didn’t mean I was invincible.

  We’d all lost a fight. The difference between us and everyone else was we didn’t cower or hide. We came back for more. We may lose once, but the next time, our opponent would end up dead.

  As I turned over the ignition, my beauty purred to life, and I pulled out of the parking lot. All the fancy houses were nothing more than a cover. Employees and staff lived here. There were a few civilians, but for the most part, every person who lived in Crude Hill knew what was coming to them. The police department was a joke.

  If someone called for an emergency, there was no cop to come and help. They had two lines. The line to the outside world, and a constant call to whoever had the deepest pocket. This town was our own personal playground, and what was more, every single family here could make sure no press ever made it close to the school or to the town. Some kids thought they had it rough. They didn’t know anything. Not here.

  “I want to get my dick sucked. You think Meg’s is open?” Gael asked.

  Meg’s was a massage parlor. It was run by one of the southern crime lord’s mistresses. So far, Meg wasn’t up for sale, but it would only be a matter of time before her pussy went on the market.

  Mistresses were crème de la crème. A lot of men tended to open up about shit once they’d come, and mistresses were great stress relievers. Of course, in most cases, said mistress was kept away from the wife.