Chapter One: The Artist Bleeds Red
The painting wasn’t dry, and the blood hadn’t stopped dripping.
It hung from the hallway bulletin board like a threat—fresh, grotesque, and deliberate. Someone had smeared the corners with thick red paint… or something pretending to be. It ran down the frame and puddled on the tile beneath it. And just like every piece from Oculos, it came with a single chilling caption written in jagged black strokes:
“No matter how careful you are, you always get caught.”
This time, it wasn’t just a scandal. It was a death blow.
The girl next to me clutched her blazer, her lip trembling as she whispered, “That’s Ms. Varela, right? The chem teacher?”
Wrong.
It wasn’t Varela.
It was my mother.
Once upon a time, she was a jazz singer who could silence a room with one note. Now she silences them with her screaming, her threats, her gin-fueled breakdowns. And for the last seventeen years, she’s been the dirty secret of Graham Ellison the man whose children walk these very halls like they own the place.
Kade and Teagan Ellison: golden, glossy, completely untouched by the shadows that crawl behind their father’s fortune.
And me? I’m the shadow.
The scholarship kid. The nobody. The gutter-girl pretending to blend in among marble staircases and old money.
But I’m not pretending anymore. Because if this is what I think it is, if Oculos has turned their brush toward my mother, then I know what’s coming next.
They were going to paint me.
The crowd thickens. Phones come out. Whispers become accusations. Someone’s already crying. Someone else is already denying.
I back away from the chaos and slip out the side exit of Silver Oak’s West Hall, breathing in the sharp winter air, my heart pounding in my chest like a drum before war.
What game is this?
Oculos has always been dangerous, but distant. A phantom with a paintbrush, hiding behind canvases that destroyed careers, reputations, scholarships, families. But until now, there was always a buffer, students, staff, scandals I could watch from afar.
But now it’s personal.
Now they’ve drawn first blood.
My blood.
I’m halfway down the path to the dorms when I hear it. Those heavy, deliberate footsteps behind me. The kind that belong to someone who thinks the world should move when they walk through it.
I don’t need to turn around. I already know it’s him.
Oliver Torres.
Of course.
Silver Oak’s favorite legacy. A trust-fund golden boy with a god complex and a fan club. We’ve hated each other since sophomore year, when he “accidentally” got me kicked out of the art program’s winter showcase. It was one of the few places I actually belonged.
I had worked for weeks on a piece that meant something to me. He submitted last minute, charmed the review board, and my name magically disappeared from the roster.
He called it a “misunderstanding.”
I called it sabotage.
I turn to face him now, arms crossed, already annoyed. “If you’re here to brag about your GPA or flex your money again, I’m not in the mood.”
He doesn’t smirk this time. Doesn’t even blink. “I want to know what your mother was doing on campus this morning.”
I blink. My blood freezes.
“What?”
“Don’t play dumb.” He steps closer, voice low. “She stormed into Sullivan’s office like she owned the place.”
I feel my throat tighten, but I force my face to stay still. “You spying on me now?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” His jaw ticks. “But when people like her come uninvited, it causes problems. Especially when they start screaming in the admin wing.”
“She’s not ‘people like her,’” I snap, stepping forward. “She’s my mother. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“It becomes my business when she threatens the deputy principal.”
I laugh bitterly. “Right. Saint Sullivan. You’d defend her to the death, wouldn’t you?”
His expression hardens. There it is.
That reaction.
Bingo.
“You think I don’t know?” I whisper, eyes narrowing. “About you two?”
His eyes darken. “Watch your mouth.”
“Or what? You’ll pull another stunt like last year? Get me kicked out of something again?”
“That wasn’t me,” he says through gritted teeth.
“Sure it wasn’t. Just like it wasn’t you who told Headmaster Rowlings that I ‘wasn’t Silver Oak material.’”
“I never said that.”
“Please. You think it.”
Silence stretches between us like a blade.
I hate how tall he is. I hate that he smells like expensive aftershave and clean linen. I hate that he’s still looking at me like he sees through me when he doesn’t know a damn thing.
“You walk around like this place is your kingdom,” I say. “But you don’t know what it’s like to earn your way into a room and have someone like you slam the door behind them.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “No. But I know what it’s like to lose control of everything in it.”
He turns and walks away before I can ask what the hell that means.
