I came to Westmore with two bags, a full scholarship, and a secret that could bring down the most powerful crime family on the East Coast.

I did not come for him.

That part was never in the plan.

His name was Dante Vitale. He was already in the room when I arrived, standing at the window like he owned the building, which - given whose son he was - he practically did. He looked at me the way chess players look at pieces they have already decided how to use.

I should have left.

I did not leave.

"Whatever you're looking at, you should be careful with it," he said to me once, in the dark, across two feet of floor that kept getting harder to maintain.

He was right. I should have been careful. I should have been careful with the files I was building, with the university that laundered money through its own endowment, with the man I was falling for who had been sent to this room specifically to assess whether I was a problem that needed to be solved.

Permanently.

"You are compromised," his father told him. "This is how you uncompromise yourself."

Here is what nobody tells you about chasing the truth: sometimes the truth puts a kill order on your name. Sometimes the most dangerous person in your life is the one who makes you the second cup of tea without thinking about it. Sometimes love and a loaded assignment wear the exact same face for seven months before you can tell them apart.

My father disappeared when I was twelve. The man I love was sent to finish what his father started.

We both have blood on our hands.

The question is what we do with it.

Some scholarships cost more than money.

BLOOD ON THE DEAN'S LIST - a dark MM college mafia romance.