Chapter 12
Twelve
Journal Entry
Twenty-two years old
Leaving the bell tower, I cut across campus to Main Street, then decide to take a winding route to the Bierkeller.
Walking down the sidewalk, I breathe in the evening, enjoying one of the few times a day I can just let my mind go blank and enjoy something as simple as a leisurely stroll along the picturesque streets of Darlington.
With students arriving for the start of the academic year, the quaint college town is buzzing with renewed activity, even at this time of night.
On the outside, Darlington Founders appears to be your typical ivy-pedigreed university, where “shaping leaders and defining legacies” is its motto.
However, the only legacy it’s concerned with is the Society’s.
Most of the students who attend DF are the children of Society members, the rest are just pretty window dressing.
A false face to mask the rampant nepotism and what really goes on behind closed doors.
Aleksei and I came back yesterday after spending the summer with Pyotr in Russia. It wasn’t a vacation. Our summers rarely are. I wish I could say I was looking forward to another year of pretentious education, but graduating and getting a degree was never my end goal.
My phone vibrates in my back pocket. Thinking it’s Aleksei, I step out of the way of a group of guys not paying attention to where they’re going and stop under one of the Boulevard streetlamps that line the sidewalk—and release a harangued sigh when I see Patrick Knight’s name flash on my screen.
He must have heard through the grapevine that I was back stateside.
I left before giving him an answer. The only joy I can take out of it is knowing that he’s been waiting for three months to find out.
The man is the highest grade of asshole.
He wants me to kill his wife. If I do, his quid pro quo will bring me closer to what I want.
It was an easy decision. I just like making the jackass sweat.
Not one to mince words, I swipe to answer. “I’ll do it.”
I hang up on him before he can reply. Of course, my phone starts ringing again, so I shut it off and keep walking. I can already see Aleksei up ahead, waiting for me outside the Bierkeller.
“Took you long enough,” he says when I finally get to him.
“Somebody’s hangry.”
He scowls at my attempt at humor. “Tristan and his fuckboys arrived five minutes ago.”
Fucktwins. Fuckboys. The nicknames he and Hendrix love to call each other are beyond juvenile.
“Did they see you?”
“Please, fucker,” Aleksei replies, acting almost insulted that I would think otherwise.
Pulling the long handle, I open the heavy wood door and step inside. Three things immediately hit me. It’s crowded, it’s noisy, and I really want a cheeseburger. With bacon and fried onions smothered in barbecue sauce. I’ve missed Keith’s burgers.
Keith is the baldheaded giant behind the bar who owns the Bierkeller.
He’s also a former enforcer of the Society.
He was lucky. He was able to get out and have a normal life.
A wife and kids. Although, I don’t know why he’d want to live in Darlington where he’s constantly surrounded by Society nepo-babies.
Guess you never can really walk away, even when you want to.
Not in the mood to battle through the throngs of bodies crowding the bar to get drinks, I note where Tristan is sitting and head toward the opposite side of the room where a table is being cleaned off.
“Move,” Aleksei says to the two guys trying to claim the table first.
They look at him, then at me, and decide it’s best to walk away. My brother and I may not have Hendrix’s or Constantine’s reputations because we like to keep our shit low-key, but our height and our size say not to fuck with us.
The wood chair groans when Aleksei sits down, and I take the seat next to him near the wall. The recessed ceiling light directly above our heads creates a spotlight effect on our table. I want Tristan to see us.
“You good?” Aleksei asks, flagging down one of the servers.
“Yeah.” I drum my fingers against my thigh, a distraction to help block out the cacophony—overlapping conversations spoken in raised voices, the excited shouts of the commentators giving a play-by-play of the football game being shown on the wide screen, the low music being pumped out that only adds to the auditory chaos.
“This stalking bullshit is getting old. Why can’t we just kill them?”
Because I know what Francesco Amato did to Aoife.
I’m going to take everything he covets, one by one—his power, his money, his son—and then carve out his beating, black heart while he watches.
Revenge is all about the long game. It requires patience and moving the pieces of your chessboard into position until the opposition’s king is surrounded. I’m almost there.
“What can I get you?” our server asks.
“Whatever IPA Keith has on tap tonight,” Aleksei tells her.
She aims an overbright smile at me. “What about you?”
I’m distracted by the fragrance of gardenia that suddenly invades my space, but the sweet, floral scent doesn’t belong to our server.
It belongs to the woman with red flame hair five feet from us.
She hastens a quick glance in my direction toward the wide screen when shouts of celebration erupt at the touchdown that was made, and I lose my damn breath.
Not because the woman is gorgeous, but because of her eyes.
Cornflower blue. Those same color of eyes have haunted me most of my life.
Turning her attention back to her table, she uses the end of her pen to swipe at a curl of crimson hair that falls across her brow, inadvertently exposing a fibrous patchwork of skin and old scars on her left arm—remnants of burned flesh that run all the way up to her shoulder and disappear under the shirtsleeves of her T-shirt.
“He’ll have an IPA,” Aleksei eventually says for me.
“Sure thing. Be right back.”
Aleksei kicks me under the table. “Fuck, A, stop being a weirdo.”
That snaps me back, and my scathing glower tells him to fuck off. He knows I hate being called that word. “Who is she?”
“Our waitress?”
“No. Her.”
Resting his elbows on the table, he follows where I’m staring, then sits back. “Haven’t seen her before. I’d remember that fucked-up arm.”
I let his insensitive remark slide, along with the “weirdo.”
He juts his chin out. “Seems like you’re not the only one interested.”
Sure enough, Tristan’s gaze is intensely engrossed on the redhead as he tracks her across the room to the bar. He and Hendrix like to share women, and for some reason, the idea that she is on his radar makes me uncomfortable.
Our server returns with our beer, and Aleksei, being a little shit, asks her, “Can you help my socially inept brother out?”
“Sure,” she replies.
Taking out his money clip, he unfolds three hundred-dollar bills and hands them to her. “The other server, that one right there.” He points her out. “What’s her name?”
She twists around. “Oh, that’s Syn. She just started working here a couple weeks ago.”
Aleksei flashes an amused grin my way. “Her name is Sin.” He waggles his eyebrows, and I mouth, Stop it.
“Synthia, spelled with a ‘y,’” the girl says.
“Thanks.”
“Sure thing.” She happily pockets the money into her half apron tied around her waist. “And just in case you’re curious”—she takes his hand and writes her name and phone number across his palm—“my name is Lydia. Let me know if you want to order anything.”
“We’re good for now.” As soon as she walks away, Aleksei waves his hand directly in my face. “Remember this for me,” he says before using one of the napkins to wipe off the ink.
It annoys me when he does that because as soon as I see it, I’m not going to forget it. My brain is filled with hundreds of random phone numbers of women he’s met.
“Please stop,” I distractedly say when his hand gets in the way of my line of sight.
Balling up the napkin he just used, he chucks it at my head. “You going to talk to her or just stare at her all fucking night?”
I can’t help it. There’s something about the redhead named Syn that draws me in.
While waiting for her table’s order at the bar, the guy next to her shoots out of his stool when the Duke Blue Devils score a touchdown.
Syn tries to jump out of the way, but he spills his beer all over her.
I don’t know what she says to him because her hair is hiding her face, but I know exactly what he says to her in response when I read his lips.
With a pissed-off turn of the heel, Syn heads down the adjacent hallway toward the restrooms. The guy at the bar waits less than two seconds before trailing her.
I push to my feet and stand up. “Be right back.”
Aleksei automatically discerns my change of mood and follows me. “You could’ve waited until after I finished my beer.”
When I catch up with the guy, he’s about to turn the doorknob to Keith’s office. I don’t see Syn, so I assume she went in there and not the ladies’ room.
“Word of advice. The next time you want to call a woman a bitchy cunt, you’ll think twice about it.”
“Who the—”
I punch him. Lead hook to the side of the head. The guy drops to the floor.
“Well, that was very anticlimactic.” Aleksei checks to make sure no one is coming down the hall.
Grabbing the front of the guy’s shirt, he drags his unconscious body toward the back exit door that leads out into the alley where the trash bins are located.
“The alarm will go off,” I warn him.
Not giving a shit, he pushes on the bar, but nothing happens. Keith will need to fix that.
“Give me a hand. Dude is heavy.”
“You’re not seriously going to dump him in the trash.”
I stand aside when Aleksei hefts the guy in a fireman’s carry and lifts the lid to one of the large metal receptacles.
The putrid smell that comes out is stomach-churning.
He tosses the guy in, then slams the lid shut.
“I’m done with the whole Tristan, cloak-and-dagger thing.
You’re on your own for the rest of the night. ”
“Where are you going?”
He throws up his hand in a wave. “To get laid. Something you should do.”
He jogs across the street toward campus, and I know exactly who he’s heading for. Serena Worthington. Everyone thinks I’m sleeping with her, but I don’t touch Hendrix’s playthings. Aleksei, on the other hand…
I consider going back inside, then decide against it and start down the alleyway.
Me: Meet me at the bell tower.
Pyotr: Already here. You need more beer.
Sometimes, I regret that he knows the code to get in.
Me: You drank it, you pay to replace it. DoorDash some. And order a couple of pizzas. We have work to do.
I’m not paying attention and accidentally bump into someone just as I step out onto the main walkway. “Sorry.”
The guy grunts at my apology but doesn’t reciprocate and slides past me down the alley. My mind automatically catalogs him, storing the information away. Hunched shoulders, deep-set brown eyes, thin build, and long hair and beard that do little to mask his pockmarked, pale face.
Pyotr: Good work or bad work?
It shouldn’t take too long to find out everything there is to know about the pretty redhead with the light-blue eyes.
Me: About a girl named Syn…