Chapter 14
Fourteen
Journal Entry
Twenty-two years old
Through the double glass pane three stories up, I study the students strolling the grounds of DF. The world looks so ordinary from this viewpoint. What would it be like to be normal? To have a different life?
My contemplation shifts to the horizon beyond where the sky meets the curvature of the earth, the lowering sun coloring everything in hues of orange and coral pink.
Unfortunately, the serene view of campus outside the bell tower’s window does little to help dispel the tension Patrick Knight’s phone call just created.
I wasn’t ready to make a move yet, but the bastard wants his wife dead sooner rather than later. I don’t understand the rush. Maybe his new side piece, Natasha Zephyros, has something to do with it.
“You look like you want to kill someone.”
If Aleksei wasn’t spot on, his comment would be humorous. “Patrick just called.”
He crosses his thick, inked arms over his chest and cocks his head. “What the fuck did he want? And please don’t tell me it’s what I think it is.”
I turn away from the window. “Then I won’t tell you.”
His head droops forward on a sigh, chin to sternum, before identical gray eyes lift with capitulation. Aleksei would walk through hellfire for me if I asked him to. “When?”
“Next weekend at his Catskills estate.”
Although premature, Knight’s plan works in my favor. He’s using the guise of a dinner party to have his wife murdered. Francesco, Helena, and Tristan will be there, which means Aleksei finally gets his wish, and I finally get my revenge. But there’s one very massive problem.
“Whatever happens, promise me that you will not hurt Syn.”
Aleksei’s brow furrows. “The redhead you’re stalking? Why would I hurt her?”
“Patrick invited her.”
His frown deepens. “Why? She’s not Society.”
I pace to the couch and straighten a throw pillow, needing a little order in the chaos. “Syn is this year’s recipient of the Knight Foundation scholarship. But I think it has to do more with Tristan’s big fucking mouth since he’s been telling everyone that she’s dating Hendrix.”
Cue my humongous eye roll because that’s the biggest pile of bullshit he’s ever said.
Syn isn’t that kind of girl. The kind Hendrix likes to fuck and ruin.
She’s sweet, extremely na?ve, and as far as I have been able to tell, she hates Hendrix Knight’s guts.
How do I know that? Stalking her across campus isn’t the only stalking I’ve been doing.
Aleksei’s no longer frowning. He’s laughing. “If Patrick believes his son has decided to try monogamy, he’s delusional. Serena said she was just with—”
I stop him before he goes into any detail.
“I don’t care what Serena said.” I will never understand why he wants to sleep with a woman who screws Hendrix on the regular.
The stuff Knight is into makes a sadist look tame.
Needing my brother to take this seriously, I don’t broker my tone.
“Promise me right now that you will not touch Syn.”
I know Aleksei. I know what he’d do to her if she were fair game in our plans. Her scars show how much pain she’s endured and survived. I’m not going to allow my twin to cause her any more, regardless of her relationship with Tristan, or Constantine, or even Hendrix, if there was one.
His lips curve in a smirk. “She’s living with them. Seems like she wants to get touched—”
“Promise me!”
Aleksei’s expression flares with surprise at my unusual outburst. I rarely raise my voice.
“Jesus fucking Christ, A, learn how to take a joke. Why do you care what happens to her? If she chose to be with them, she willingly put herself in the crossfire.”
Normally, I wouldn’t care. I’m in too deep.
My hatred of Francesco too consuming. I would do anything, kill anyone, to make him suffer.
But the thought of anything happening to Syn just doesn’t feel right.
My black soul was damned a long time ago, but there is still a remnant of my conscience that holds onto the mangled threads of compassion Mama instilled in me.
“Fine,” Aleksei huffs. “The redhead is off limits.” He stomps off like a petulant child who has been told he can’t have a cookie before dinner.
Just as I start to text Pyotr to tell him what’s going down this weekend, a notification pops up on my screen. Motion detected, camera two.
We installed several wireless security cameras around the bell tower. As insulated as we think we are at DF because of the Society, the campus is in no way secure. I also don’t like it when people just drop by unannounced.
Seeing Tristan and Hendrix coming up the walkway, I exhale an exasperated fuck.
I knew he was going to find out about what happened with Syn earlier today—I was counting on it—but his timing sucks.
With a tap of a button, I send the elevator down to the lobby to greet them, my way of saying, I know you’re here, asshole.
He and Hendrix stop outside the entrance, whatever conversation they’re having not a happy one.
Tristan flings open the door, and once inside, he looks around the small lobby.
Past Society members who attended DF used the bell tower for meetings…
and other things, like orgies. Before we moved in our freshmen year, I made sure to have everything stripped down to the wood framing and joists.
New floors, new drywall, new paint. I converted the second and third floors into apartments. Aleksei lives on the floor below me.
When Tristan and Hendrix get into the elevator, I turn the audio on for the camera installed in the ceiling and go into the kitchen to pour myself a drink.
“Are you going to be a bitch and ignore me for the rest of the day?” Hendrix says.
Tristan continues to stare straight ahead. My half brother has never been good with confrontations, which should make the one we’re about to have interesting.
“How are we playing this?” Hendrix asks.
Coming back into the living room, I take a seat on the couch, mute the audio, and wait. The lift slows and bounces to a stop when it gets to the third floor, the ding sounding just as the doors slide open.
I smile when he sees me and raise my tumbler of whiskey. “Tristan.”
“Aleksander,” he bites out.
Oh yeah, he’s very pissed. I recognize that all too familiar darkness that lives inside both of us, courtesy of the monster who sired us.
“Would you care for a drink?” I offer.
He sits down in the leather armchair across from me. Hendrix purposefully stands behind him, protecting his back.
Setting my glass down on the coffee table, I flick my gaze to Hendrix. “Knight.”
In typical Hendrix assholery, he gives me the middle finger. I show him with my wide grin what a dumb fuck he is. The man has the maturity of a ten-year-old.
Cutting through the pretense, Tristan leans forward, elbows to knees, all serious. “You wanted my attention, you got it.”
“Funny that, but we’ll get to your redhead in a minute,” I reply and say to Hendrix, “Heard Serena isn’t too happy with you.”
He’s quick to come back with, “She was very happy this morning when I was dick deep in her ass.”
His crass comment erases my grin, not because I’m going to jump to defend Serena’s honor, but because a woman deserves some goddamn respect from the man she’s sleeping with. “Help me out because I’m a little confused.”
Tristan acts like he’s already bored. “Isn’t that normal for you?”
I pick my glass back up and envisage throwing it at his head. “Katalina will be displeased to find out that you’re slumming it with a waitress—”
Tristan talks over me. “I don’t give a shit what Katalina thinks.”
“—here on a scholarship granted by his family,” I finish, taking another swallow of whiskey while nodding at Hendrix. “Miss Carmichael must be something extraordinary to have you and Constantine sniffing after her. She’s not Society.”
I despise every word coming out of my mouth, and I despise the both of them even more for making me lower to their level.
“You and your brother seemed very interested in her the other night.”
I hate that I was that obvious, so I counter with, “Interesting that she’s now living in your house when she just leased an apartment.”
The air grows thick with animosity. “Seems Serena’s been running her mouth about shit she knows nothing about. The girl isn’t mine or Con’s. She’s Hendrix’s.”
I love how lies just tumble off his tongue like honey, but I play along to see how far he’s willing to go with them. The stiff leather of the couch squeaks when I recline back into the cushions. “She doesn’t mind you fucking other women in front of her?”
“She doesn’t watch. Not her style,” Hendrix flippantly answers.
“Sounds like she’s fair game then.”
An unexpected chink in Hendrix’s armor rips wide open. He looks like he wants to lunge over the coffee table and beat the shit out of me. He’s acting like he actually cares about Syn. I’d laugh off such a notion, but I see his jealousy written all over his pompous face.
“Are you really that desperate for all my sloppy seconds?”
Jesus, this motherfucker and his posturing. “Fuck you, Knight.”
“Was there a point you wanted to make at the library or do you just like stalking innocent women?” Tristan says.
In my periphery, I catch Aleksei standing under the archway, silently watching while eating a sandwich. I pray he doesn’t do anything that will make things go nuclear. Like pull out his gun.
“Miss Carmichael is far from innocent if she’s his,” I retort and regret it as soon as I say it.
Tristan bounds out of the chair. “We’re done.”
All this righteous fury over a woman he just met.
Where was his anger when our father murdered Aoife, his best friend and the girl he claimed to love?
He should have done something to save her, and it makes me livid that he’s here, breathing air and living his life, when Aoife never got to live hers.
Standing as well, I approach my half brother and force myself to look him in the eye, needing him to understand just how bad everything is about to get.
“Things between us are just getting started, Tristan. You have no idea what’s coming for you.”
But he will.
I guaran-fucking-tee it.