16. Pandora #2
“We’ve got you,” Asch’s voice says, but it sounds so far away.
River twists my wrist, insistent and unrelenting, and the knife clatters to the floor.
My entire hand is red.
“I’m… I’m… I’m calling the—” Stringer stutters.
Blaze levels a glare at him. “You’re calling a doctor, and you’re going to shut the fuck up.”
“What did you do?” Asch demands.
At first, I think he’s talking to me, but then I realize his furious words are directed at Stringer.
“I didn’t do anything!” Stringer gets up, his hand trying to stem the blood-fountain on his arm. “She’s insane.”
Insane.
When everyone else gets mad, it’s fine.
When I get mad, I’m unreasonable.
Crazy.
Psycho.
Stringer isn’t bleeding enough. I want him to bleed more.
“She is not insane,” River says fiercely, but he goes over to Stringer. He swears. “Take your fucking shirt off so I can try to stop the bleeding until a doctor gets here.”
I laugh, and I drag my bloody hand along Asch’s face. “Nobody ever did anything, boyfriend,” I say.
Asch grimaces. He starts to speak, but River interrupts him.
“What the hell is this?” he demands, staring at the computer screen.
“Oh, don’t be shocked.” I kiss Asch’s jaw. “It’s only the viral porn that’s been going around.”
“The viral porn?” Asch repeats, glancing at River. “What are you looking at?” He looks at the screen, then he hisses in a breath. “No wonder she stabbed you. What are you doing with this?”
“It’s…” Stringer cuts himself off. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“It’s proof!” I say. “Come on, Asch, you can read the subject line. Keegan was sharing proof that I’m a crazy slut. Who else would let people film her like this?”
Blaze’s face gets beautifully red, and in the next breath, he’s on Stringer, his hand around the man’s throat.
“You don’t get to see her like that,” Blaze growls, dark and deadly and so, so hot.
“We’re going to delete all those videos, and you’re going to tell everyone there’s been a mistake about Pandora.
She’s going to stay here, doing her own thing.
Because right now, the only thing keeping you alive is the fact that killing you would be too messy. ”
Stringer whimpers, uselessly clawing at Blaze’s arms.
The blood continues to flow from the teeny, tiny stab I gave him.
I move over to them and wrap my arms around Blaze from behind. I kiss his shoulders, sighing happily.
Perfect, amazing Blaze. I knew I’d picked him for a reason.
“Blaze, you’re so violent,” I say with a laugh. “I’d listen to him, Dean Stringer. Blaze is serious.”
Asch leans over the desk, and his expression is intent as he clicks and hits keys on the keyboard. “Deleted,” he says. His eyes narrow at Stringer. “If we find out you get copies of those again, this whole encounter will seem like child’s play.”
“It is child’s play,” River mutters, still binding the wound on Stringer’s arm like Blaze isn’t choking him. “He’s lucky he’s going to survive this with only a scar.”
“Though if you want him to survive, Blaze might need to let up on him a little,” Asch notes, watching the two of them with an unreadable expression on his face.
Blaze’s hand stays steady on Stringer’s throat. Stringer’s face is already an interesting hue. His struggling has gotten more sluggish, too.
“Do it,” I whisper to Blaze. “Kill him.”
Blaze breathes heavily. “Yeah. I’ll—”
“Blaze,” Asch says, his voice quiet but holding an edge of warning. “We don’t have the resources to hide a body here. We can’t cover this up.”
That doesn’t sound like a good reason not to kill Stringer.
Blaze makes a frustrated noise and releases Stringer, shoving him away.
Ugh, how disappointing.
“Boo,” I jeer. I let go of Blaze, wondering if I can kill Stringer myself. I look for my knife, but before I can pick it up, River wraps his arms around me.
“Your… your father,” Stringer says, breathing heavily. “When he hears of this—”
“Don’t even think about complaining to him,” Blaze says to Stringer. “He’s in NewVa. You’re not. We know where you live, and how easily your skin parts. I also know that your wife probably doesn’t want to know about how you were watching rape porn of college women.”
Rape porn?
What rape porn? There was no rape happening. Those vids are perfectly normal videos of a perfectly normal person who was not being forced to do anything!
Asch sits down at Stringer’s desk. “Let’s make sure he doesn’t have anything else like that,” he says as he starts to go through emails. “This is a total mess, Blaze.”
“He can get it cleaned up,” River says dismissively. He glances at the doorway. “Let’s finish up in here and get Pandora home.”
I don’t want to go home. I want to see Stringer’s insides on the outside.
“Why does everybody think your daddy walks on water, Blaze? My Papa is scarier,” I complain. I take a step toward my knife, but before I can pick it up, River wraps his arms around me and pulls me against his chest.
He’s warm and solid, and I let him hold me despite how much my fingers itch to scratch somebody up and destroy them.
Not River. I don’t want to hurt him.
He’s the best.
“Yes, but your scary papa would burn the whole place to the ground,” River says. “With us in it. So if you want to survive, Stringer… you won’t give Pandora a reason to call in her family.”
Blaze picks up my knife and wipes it off on Stringer’s shirt.
I don’t think that’s doing much, on account of the shirt being soaked in blood.
“You must know about her family, Dean Stringer. Giulio Pavone is semi-retired, but I think threatening his daughter and watching those videos would be enough to make him reconsider that retirement status.”
I laugh, because don’t they know Papa is already preparing for war on my account? He didn’t give me a gun for nothing.
I don’t want him to be worried about me.
I don’t want anyone to be worried about me, because that would mean there’s something wrong, and nothing is wrong with me.
Stringer immediately shakes his head. “I… I don’t… I won’t…”
“No, you won’t,” Asch says, getting up from Stringer’s chair. “And if you even try, we’ll know.” He nods to Blaze. “I forwarded the emails to you that I think are worth looking into.”
River strokes my hair. “Good. Then let’s get out of here before that woman outside decides to do something stupid.”
“We aren’t done,” I complain, but River pulls me along, and I don’t have it in me to resist his flow.
Stringer cowers when I look at him, and that expression of pure fear has my smile lighting up.
Blaze is the last one to the door. He stops there and turns to Stringer. “By the way. I have your Kappa Alpha pledge video. It was very… enlightening. What would the entire school board think if that got made public?”
Stringer’s eyes widen, but Blaze shuts the door before we can hear a response. The door handle is crooked though, and the door creeps open a few inches as soon as Blaze lets go.
They must have broken it to get in.
They could have asked me. I would have opened the door for them. Probably.
Unless I couldn’t hear them over Stringer’s screaming.
The waiting room is empty now. No assistant, no other students.
“Do you think there are cameras in here?” I ask, looking around.
“No,” Blaze says with surprising confidence.
Asch shakes his head. “He wouldn’t risk it.” He glances at River, whose hands are red. “Might want to wash your hands before we head out.”
River’s hands briefly tighten on me, but then he sighs. “Yeah. Let me duck into the bathroom. Pandora’s shirt is a mess too, though. So’s your face.”
“All of us should wash up then,” Asch says. He leads us to the small faculty bathroom. “You take care of her, Blaze.”
Blaze places my bloody knife into the sink and turns on the faucet. The water around the knife gains a pink hue.
It’s a work of art.
Blaze stands behind me and directs my hands under the water, like I’m a toddler who needs help.
“I can do this on my own,” I say as his thumbs rub the blood from my skin.
“But will you?” Blaze asks. He kisses the shell of my ear. “You’re so fucking hot, Pandora. Blood is a great color on you.”
Asch must finish cleaning up first, because he comes to stand beside me. He kisses the side of my head. “He’s lucky that’s all he got,” he mutters.
River takes longer to get all of the blood off of his hands, but he’s soon on the other side of me. The three of them cage me in between them and the sink.
I stare at us in the mirror. It’s some sort of painting, me in the center with three men around me.
Are they protecting me?
Or are they protecting the world from me?
There are blood flecks on my face. I didn’t know blood could leave trails like that, from my eyes down to my cheeks.
“I told you it wasn’t an issue,” I say to River, shattering the painting.
“I think it was a little bit of an issue,” River counters. “Come on. Let’s get your face clean, then we can go back to the house. Stringer should’ve left to get medical care by now.”
Unless he decided to tough it out.
Blood loss would be a hilarious death for him.
I do have one other problem to deal with though.
Keegan.
He didn’t take my warnings seriously.
I’ll have to make his life an even worse hell.