My name is Harper Apple, and people say I’m rotten to the core. When my shot comes in the form of a scholarship to Willow Heights Prep, you can bet your ass I take it. If getting out of this hellhole town means spending my last two years of high school at an elite academy full of rich, entitled pricks, then bring it on.

It’ll be easy, my father said. When we move to a small town in the south, we’ll own it, my brothers said. After all, my family is rich as sin and used to getting whatever they want. How hard could it be? Except, when we arrive in Faulkner, someone already owns this town. The Darling family. They are every bit as wealthy as we are, and they’re not happy with our new money moving in.

In one moment, my freedom is snatched away when my father tells me I have to marry a man I’ve never met. I expect an 80-year-old retired boss who craves my virgin flesh in payment for his service. Bright side—in a few years, he’ll be gone, and I’ll be free again. I’m not prepared for the dangerously gorgeous soldier my father presents. Like anything that looks too good to be true, so is my new husband. He’s cold, cruel, and worst of all, young. Suddenly, marriage is a life sentence. That is, if I don’t show him from day one that no one controls Eliza Pomponio.

I used to have it all. Football made me popular. Money made me desirable. My name made me a king. Girls tried to tame me, but I valued my freedom too much to be tied down. Until I lost it all.

I hate Dante Moretti. He is cold, calculating, and vicious. It’s no secret that he wiped out his former fiancée and her entire family on the eve of their wedding. He’s the kind of evil that makes even devils cry. But that’s not why I hate him.

Running away from home at 17 wasn't easy. Let's face it, though, nothing before or in the ten years since has ever been easy for me. And I'm doing okay—sorta. I just need to keep scraping by, living under the radar. Staying out of people's way, off people's minds. When a man walks through my open patio door, stepping boldly into my home and my life, I should be scared, frightened, terrified. I must be more broken than I realized because I'm none of those things. I'm intrigued—and I'm wondering if the way to take control of my life is by giving in to him.

West Golden - so easy to hate, yet so hard to resist. Don’t let that pretty face of his fool you. He isn’t the boy next door, or the kind you trust with your heart. He’s the devil in designer jeans, with all the charm of a bona fide psycho. Trust me. He swears I did something to cross him before I even stepped foot inside Cypress Prep, but it’s a lie. No one knows better than me that I’m all out of chances. His money, status, and the loyalty of his equally entitled brothers makes him seem untouchable. Only, I know better than that.

In the beginning, there was Savannah Shaw. Teasing me with a mischievous, merciless grin by day. Crawling through my window with tear-stained cheeks by night. I was ordered to avoid her. Lectured on her misdeeds. Forbidden from seeing her. But my need to protect her was innate. So natural I never questioned it. So visceral I couldn’t fight it.

When you've been told your whole life that something is sinful, you have two options. Avoid it like the plague, like it has the power to destroy all that is good and pure. Or become as fixated upon it as Eve was upon that apple. I'm sick of the push-pull of terror and temptation. It's tearing me apart. I just want a bite of the apple. More than a bite. I want to devour it. Have its juices spill from my lips. And by apple, I, of course, mean sex.

Some people wear their heart on their sleeve. I wear vengeance like a suit of armor. I’ve got a list with six names on it. Six people who wronged me, who hurt me, who took everything from me. Six people who turned me into the monster I am now. And I’ve crossed off every name but one.

Jess: Meet Mark Donovan. Ex-Army sniper. CEO of a multi-billion dollar global empire. Chiseled to the nth degree. And a man I want nothing to do with.I know the type. Dangerous. Sexy. A bad-boy who fills out a Tom Ford suit or pair of Calvin's in equally drool-worthy ways. At his core, the worst kind of heartbreaker. The kind who doesn't even know he did it.

Shh, I have a secret. The sinfully gorgeous members of the Student Council—Church, Ranger, Spencer, Micah and Tobias—can't ever find out. I already get picked on because my father's the headmaster. I don't need them to know I’m the only girl, too; I’d rather dress like a boy. Adamson All-Boys Academy now has its only female student, but I'm not about to be their guinea pig. Not when there's a secret at this school nobody is talking about. Not when the last female student here ended up dead.

When Wren Jacobi sets eyes on Wolf Hall Academy’s newest inductee, all he sees is an easy mark. A reserved little girl with a target painted on her back. He knows nothing of my troubled past, though. Nothing of my mother’s suspicious death or the horrific treatment I’ve had to endure at the hands of my psychotic father. And he has no idea of the lengths that I, unassuming little Elodie Stillwater, will go to in order to break the savage beast who dreams of breaking me first. 

"Girls like you aren't exactly welcomed at a place like this, so keep your head down and look the other way." Those were the exact words of my social worker when she dropped me in my newest hellhole, a place for "troubled teens". I didn't listen, and now I'm on their radar. Too bad for them, I don't follow rules. Too bad for me, they're determined to make sure I do. Inconceivably attractive and treated like kings...these are the boys of Brayshaw High.

I had a foolproof plan. Finish college playing the best sport on earth. Hockey. Get drafted by an NHL team. Make my senator father at least a little proud of me. I was on track to do just that…until Violet Reece and I collided. Literally.