Midnights in New York were always Orson's favourite hour to be in the city. A veil of elegant dusk would cloak the city filled with nothing but scandal and secrecy behind a starless sky- it provided security for making those back-alley deals, hands shaken over arrangements that would never be spoken of again when the sky lightens for the morning. Midnights are when he meets girls he'll never meet again, leaving him with blurry, vivid memories of them taking off their clothes and hundred-dollar bills raining through the air.

In the city true safety lies in learning to embrace the spotlight like a second home and knowing where to run when the world turns its back on you. But after dark, it's all written out: the moon lights the path of the sinners, the myriad of city lights shine a spotlight on the saints, and the rest are left armorless with nothing to do but look on helplessly in fascination.

Orson Calloway believes himself a sinner in wanton of being reformed. He was never made this way. At least that's what he tells himself. His dad is what made him like this, or it's the world around him. It's the only way he could survive.

But the truth is, Orson is the master of the trade. He's a bit too good at this game and just as he likes to lie to himself, he knows deep down everything just bored him. Being reformed bored him. He doesn't want to be a good person.

Simply because he never knew how to.

And of course, all this lying to himself stopped the minute he met Amory. Amory Scout, if that is even her real name.

Looking at her is like looking at a mirror, multiplying by tenfold. She is everything he didn't like about himself, plus a little more. Instead of beating herself up for it, she embraces it. She has perfected it to the point of it being an art form. She parades it, like golden armour. A fucked-up Joan of Arc.

Cunt.

He's fucking terrified of it and maybe, just a little impressed. But also turned on. (He hates how his stupid dumb boy brain works- how does someone that scares the living daylights of him makes his dick hard as well?)

Worst of all, as much as he hates that stupid bitch, she was right.

They were the only two people crazy enough to put up with each other.

-

The FBI never found a lead on who killed Elijah Calloway.

Orson still has a hard time digesting the fact that the man he thought was his father this whole time has been his half-brother. The man whose approval he lusted over and fought for had been his bitter half-brother, drunk on jealousy and greed. His real father, meanwhile, lay shackled to a cage of dementia, his mind was reduced to a crumbling fortress of half-memories and forgotten truths. Behind the fragile old man was a locked vault of answers Orson had been waiting for his whole life.

It all made him cold, jaded and hard- whenever he came close to experiencing a modicum of a normal, peaceful life, it was always ripped away from him.

So that's why he keeps drinking. And contacting his dealers.

He permanently sedates himself so he can just...deal with it all.

"How the fuck did you do it?" mutters Orson, stumbling home one day to their vast, dark apartment. They've just came home from a charity gala; one that's thrown in their honour. Now that he's the head of Calloway Industries; he's required to attend one and a million of these things. "How the fuck did the FBI not find anything?"

Amory purses her lips; she scans him critically. "Ways, Orson, ways."

"No, but how?"

Amory unclasps the emerald earrings she's taken- no, stolen- from Delia's collections. Even if Orson tried to intervene to stop her from messing around with his family's belongings, he doesn't feel too sorry for the former matriarch so he's perfectly fine with Amory taking as much as she wants from that evil bitch. "I wipe the apartment clean," says Amory, "And solidify our abilis. I've had a friend pose as a waiter to confirm we were at a restaurant when it happened."

Even when she's admitting to grossly miscarrying justice, Amory still looks fucking hot. Her long white-blond hair falls in a waterfall to the small of her back. Her cheekbones are two baby apples, her lips two silken pillows, and her sooty-lashed eyes surprisingly dark against her bronze skin. A swanlike neck leads to graceful shoulders, which curve into full, luscious breasts. Her waist is minuscule, really; it swells to smallish hips and then to golden legs that travel the distance. Her dress is shimmering gold, tight around her hips.

"Tell me how you did it," Orson demands drunkenly, "How you got away with it."

When they're alone, Amory strips off her grieving expression and the black dresses, putting on lipstick and a sharp smile. "I've just told you."

"Georgina?"

"She had to go," Amory says, "She knew too much at the time."

A hard, cold ball falls into the pit of his stomach. It's the way she buried an innocent girl without any hesitation. Just because it didn't line up with what she was trying to achieve.

"You're fucking terrifying."

Amory simply places her clutch on the nearby glass table. "But you fucking love it."

And it's that face she makes; one that truly reveals to him her true nature- a cruel little smirk playing across her angelic features. The Amory he first saw used to hide away all the terrible, broken, vicious parts of herself, while the new her, the real her, wears them like badges of honour.

It brings out the worst in him too. He slams her against the wall and puts his hand around her throat, stepping so close that they're breathing the same air.

She raises her chin and bares her teeth in a mocking grin. "Do you want to hurt me, Orson? Do you fantasize about punishing me? Do what you wished I did to you?"

"Shut up. Just shut the fuck up, you fucking bitch," he hisses, suddenly furious, because he can't stand it, can't stand her.

He reaches down and fumbles with the zipper of his pants, shoving her skirt and panties out of the way before he pushes into her without care or preparation, pleased at the way she gasps.

He fucks her hard, face to face against the wall, with her fingernails scratching down his neck and her legs wrapped around his waist, a string of violent fantasies of what she thinks he wants to do to her spilling from her lips, every single one of them things he already imagined a million times over.

When she comes, she clings to him, her hair fanning over his cheek and her face hidden again his neck. He smoothes the sweaty blonde strands back and thinks how easy it would be to tumble them both down over the grand stair rails. Just a few steps backwards, that's all it would take. He can almost hear it: wood cracking, her scream, the echo of their bodies hitting the ground.

Amory pulls back and looks at him, smiling like she knows exactly what's going on in his mind.

"I like it when we're honest with each other," she says, walking back to the bedroom naked and leaving her dress in a pool on the floor.

He can't hold back the laughter that tears from his throat like it desperately needs to break free.

-

Every time he thinks about crossing her or gaining the upper hand, she does something that reminds him why Amory Scout always wins.

The weekend he was leaving on the red eye to visit Carmen in Connecticut, to sign the release papers and let her out, Amory forwarded him a link over text. He thinks it's another copy she made of that damning surveillance footage she had of him standing over Elijah's body but it's not.

It's a link to a New York Times news story, one documenting Aidan's father's arrest for children sex-trafficking crimes. Orson's been trying to reach his old boys ever since the death of his father but Aidan has disappeared from the face of earth for no fucking reason- his brother since birth, and now Orson knows why.

There's no text attached to the link but the message is pretty clear.

The nature versus nurture argument has often fascinated Orson. Some people are made into an Elite due to their surroundings around them. Their environment moulds them to become the weapon they are today; they fashion themselves into cruel beings because it was a necessity for their survival in this cut-throat court of Manhattan royals.

But Amory is a convincing case for being born like this. She grew up in a loving family with present parents and strong, morally sound upstanding beliefs. New money family with middle-class values.

And yet somehow she is darker than them all.

He would've admired her for it if it hadn't been so inexplicably fucked up.

-

Sometimes, he thinks he gets closer to understanding the way Amory is.

She is born a nobody. To her core, she is some new money loser trying to scam her way into the ranks of the Elite. Since she's never been baptized with direct entry into the East Coast upper-crust circles, she had to claw her way in using every filthy trick her depraved mind could think of.

One thing he gives her credit for is her relentless ability to be able to get her hands dirty.

It's so unlike the women he's grown up with- Parker, Carmen, and hell, even Georgina. Women who their whole lives had gotten everything and everyone they ever wanted. Not because they earned them but because of who they are.

The girls he grew up with are forged by privilege and nepotism, which has completely warped their worldview and perception of other people. They grew up between a New York City penthouse, an Aspen estate, and an Arizona compound surrounded by full-time household staff. They had birthday parties in St. Tropez and are used to travelling aboard private jets and super yachts. Their parents are divorced or unhappily married, vacant and superficial, and view and treat their children as spectacles and examples to just as equally vacant and superficial parents.

To be an Elite, to be a Calloway or a Yeong, you understand what it means to have all eyes on you. At every given moment of the day, and how your actions carry weight. Not only to you but to the respective institutions your family legacy represents.

When you're born into the world of an Elite, you trade privacy and peace for accolades and popularity. It's like being famous. Only somehow worse because when you're being torn to shreds, it's by people who don't know you. When you're an Elite, it's your family and friends.

Everyone is scheming, and everyone is looking out for number one.

Unlike him and the women he grew accustomed to, Amory is different. She had parents who loved and cared for her. Putting up Christmas decorations, loading up the dishwasher and kitchen counter bills; family members that put forward her health and happiness. And yet, Amory had craved the power that came with being one of them. From the sidelines, she observed and emulated.

She tells him about her days in LA, how the popular kids in Beverly Hills took her in as a spare charity case. They taught her how to belong; the tasteful and artful clothes, the right surgeon to make you look unattainable yet natural. A new nose, and collagen-filled tits so they bounce like real ones. She shops at the best department stores; one with all mirrors and deep carpets. Invested in a workout routine and an Equinox membership, crafting legs of a twenty-year-old Vegas showgirl, a hundred feet long and with just enough curve and give and promise.

Originally brunette, she says she was told blonde matched her colouring more. Orson had to agree- even though her hair has been chemically transformed, the honey hues of platinum and gold fit her warm gaze and her easily-tanned complexion fit her like a glove. It's like Amory was born to be blonde.

As he picks her brain more often, slowly uncovering her master plan to assimilate into the ranks of Kensington's elite, he is almost at a loss for words. Amory is so unflinchingly power-hungry and unabashedly ruthless; she's perfect for the world around him.

When it becomes clearer than ever she has won, Parker, Hanif and Phineas have all given up trying to expose her.

Whenever Orson was in New York, Parker, Hanif, Phineas and Orson would hang out in secret. They'd pick places they know Amory thinks she'll never find them, something nondescript and bourgeois like an iHop or a Starbucks, where they sift through Amory's story's dirty sand, trying to find something they could use.

"She's just too fucking good," muttered Hanif darkly to Orson when they caught up for drinks the last time they met, "She's got us all, bro. All that shit about Carlotta, everything. She's already sent Aidan's dad to jail. It's just too risky."

Parker got sent away to Germany with her crazy aunt after she graduated from Kensington, a punishment designed by her parents for getting kicked out of Yale before she even had a chance to attend. Another Amory Scout special.

Hanif went to visit his parents in Kuala Lumpur for what seemed to be three months, which turned to four, then five and essentially, Orson finally realized the visit might turn into a stay. Phineas had also headed back to Singapore. From the last he remembered, Phineas and Hanif still stayed in touch as Kuala Lumpur and Singapore were so close to each other. Orson watches from afar, flicking through their lives in pictures on a phone screen, mourning the life he used to live.

Eventually, everyone decides to peel away with their lives and move on. As much as Orson loves to hold it against them, he couldn't. He couldn't expect to put their lives on hold for him, perpetually playing through details and desperately nitpicking the holes in Amory's evidence. Looking for a way out.

"You could sleep with me in the same room, you know," Amory remarks whenever he arrives from a guest bedroom at the dining hall of Calloway Manor.

As it becomes clear everyone has deserted New York, Amory makes the executive decision to make the UK their new home. She moonlights this move as a Greek tragedy, citing grief as the number one motivator. She tells the press that it has become "too much to bear" to be in New York but Orson knows the real truth.

It's to put him as humanly far as possible from Carmen.

So sometimes, he likes to tease Amory. Like they used to before, like they used to play their little games. When they first started; their cat-and-mouse trap. Back when he first laid eyes on her in a high school hall, when their adolescent bodies were draped in uniform colours.

He figures: if she is sick, if she likes to make me miserable, I will do the same to her.

It's rare, for him to surprise her, but he takes a sick pleasure in it when he can.

He likes to pretend, to act like he's finally going to assume the role she's so meticulously planned out for him. He'll "lovingly" gaze into her deceptively warm green hazel eyes. He'll plant kisses on her neck, nice and slow, in front of the maids as they set the table up for breakfast. He'll wrap his arm around her waist, making it look like he's embracing her as she butters her bread with his grandmother's china.

And then he'll whisper, sickeningly sweet, "Why do you want me to sleep with you in the same room, baby? Is it because you've got a secret knife hidden under the pillow to stab me while I sleep?" right in her pretty ears. Her butter knife slams down on her plate.

It gives him a saccharine satisfaction- one that makes living with this psycho bitch a little more bearable.

In front of the cameras, they pretend to be in love and it feels like love sometimes, because they are so good at putting themselves through the motions. Reviving the muscle memories of their early romances.

Jetsetting across the globe, getting trashed drunk and fucking on the floor of the hotel room, a couple shared lines of coke. Sometimes, Orson forgets briefly what Amory has done and truly loves hanging out with her. Or the girl she is pretending to be.

Yes, Amory is a crazy psycho bitch who killed Georgina, poisoned Luciana and destroyed anyone in her way without so much of a second thought. But at the end of the day, she knows him for who he truly is. She knows every skeleton in his closet and every dark thought that crosses his mind and takes him for what he is.

He even dares to say it- she loves him for what he is.

There are moments they stumble into each other's arms, drunk or high, heavy in lust and hatred. When she falls asleep in his embrace, she's so soft and yielding, almost innocent. Her hair becomes a golden cloud in a mass of white silk sheets, her expression ethereal in slumber. Angel face, devil thoughts.

Sometimes, he fantasizes about smothering her while she's asleep in the space next to him. Grabbing his pillow and forcing weight on her delicate frame, holding her down as she struggles and suffocates. And then finally, he'll be free of her.

But what will that make him?

At the end of the day, Amory is toxic to him and for him, yet he couldn't imagine a world without her entirely.

It's such a fucked-up love story but considering how fucked up his life has been from start to finish, he figures it's perfect for him. 

-

and let me know whatcha think!