18. Locke
Chapter eighteen
Locke
W alking into Granger Hall, I was met with the scent of floor polish as I came through the doors, the facilities staff giving me a deferential nod as I walked in.
DC had taken longer than I wanted, forcing me to miss a couple of classes.
The Statlers were still alive . . . for now. After losing a couple of their top men, they were suddenly more amenable to negotiations .
Dominic had informed me that Luz had in fact shown up to lecture last week, despite the cold advisory. Apparently, she had been in a right mood about it.
What a shame .
I, of course, assured him that I’d included Luz in the class message and felt awful that the poor girl had made a mistake.
“Good morning, Dr. Blackwell,” cooed Stephanie, the department receptionist.
The only reason I knew her name was the large placard on her desk.
With her box-blonde hair, caked-on makeup, and polyester clothes, a woman like Stephanie existed in a different stratosphere than I did.
Still, contempt for someone never stopped me from using them before. And the easiest way to use people was to convince them that you liked them.
“Good morning, Stephanie, how have things been?”
“You know, quiet around here. Most of us stayed home last week.”
I kept a grin plastered on my face as I pretended to listen to her prattle on for precisely another minute before politely cutting her off to excuse myself and head for my office .
Having Stephanie fired and replaced with a less chatty receptionist was a regular consideration.
Unfortunately, that would simply mean having to build a false rapport with a whole other human being, and frankly, it didn’t seem worth the effort.
Tension lingered in my shoulders as I cracked my neck and unlocked the door to my office.
As I swiped my pass, an awareness kicked in and I spun to confront the intruder, only to be confused by the lack of anyone in the space.
Nothing was out of place, except . . .
A crudely drawn dick in the middle of a dried-up, filmy puddle of what looked like glue at first but clearly wasn’t stood out against the blackwood of my desk.
“I’ll skin him alive.”
There was only one person both brave enough to break into my office and stupid enough to come up with such a childish and disgusting prank.
“Stephanie,” I roared, flinging open the door, “get Facilities in here immediately.”
“Oh no,” she said, scurrying over. “What seems to be the problem, Dr. Blackwell?”
“Did I ask for your concern, or did I ask you to get Facilities?” I snapped.
Her cheeks turned crimson, and her mouth fell open .
“Why the fuck are you still standing there?”
“You . . .” she stammered, “you can’t talk to me like—?”
“I can talk to you however I damn well please, and if Facilities isn’t here in the next ten minutes, you had better not be either.”
“You can’t . . .”
I stepped forward, pulling my shoulders back and straightening my spine to look down at her from my full height. “I can and I will, Stephanie.”
She opened her mouth to argue.
“Do you know why? Because this is my department," I said. "And it is not mine because I have tenure, or because I bring in the most funding by a landslide. It is mine because I am a Blackwell and Hollow Oak is my school.”
She turned pale, but I wasn’t finished yet.
“I’ve indulged you, plied you with kindness, and that was clearly my mistake, Stephanie . You’ve gotten too comfortable and forgotten what position you’re in. You’re nothing. Less than nothing. One word and the last five years of your career here will mean nothing. No severance, no reference—nothing.
“Now, I believe you have eight minutes and forty-five seconds to get Facilities here.”
I marched back into my office, my fingers already hitting speed dial for Lucian .
After three rings, he answered. “What?”
“He’s gone too far this time!”
Lucian let out a weary sigh. “If you didn’t let him . . .”
“He broke into my office and fucking jerked off all over my desk!”
“He . . . Wait, what?”
“He left me a message, in his fucking spunk. He drew a dick, Lucian! Like a fucking fifteen-year-old boy!” I spat.
Silence followed, then a faint rumbling.
Lucian was laughing.
“You’re acting like a fucking child, Lucian. This sort of bullshit is beneath all of us. We’re fucking Blackwells, and you let that lunatic run roughshod over the family—?”
The laughter abruptly ceased. “Enough. If I cared for your opinions on Everest, I would have asked them. He has his role in the family, as do you. You call me a child, yet you give him the reaction he is looking for every time he provokes you.”
“It’s about respect,” I seethed.
“You want respect, but here you are, running to tattle on him, like a child.”
“Get him under control or I will.”
Lucian scoffed. “I’d like to see you try, cousin. ”
“You know as well as I do that one day he will go too far, and I will be there ready to put him down,” I said, hanging up on him with a muttered curse.
There was no way I could work here, not now.
I looked at my watch and cracked my neck again, pacing back and forth in my office, before eventually I opened up my email and composed a quick letter to the dean.
There was a knock at the door, and I opened it up to see a sweaty-looking Stephanie standing in front of a man from Facilities.
I checked my watch. “Two minutes and twenty-six seconds.” I watched as a look of pure relief came over the frazzled receptionist.
“Two minutes and twenty-six seconds,” I said again slowly before continuing, “late.”
Firing Stephanie was supposed to improve my mood.
Instead, here I was, sitting in my study well after the midnight hour, still stewing, and avoiding Lucian.
It wasn’t hard. I kept to my own wing, with my own staff. Sometimes weeks could pass without us crossing paths, until I was summoned to his office .
Polishing off another drink, I slumped back and rested my head on the chair. Despite being aged fifty years and costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the exquisite Scotch still tasted bitter on my tongue.
At first, the path forward appeared simple.
Ignore it, it’s a childish prank .
The problem was, ignoring Everest never worked. The killer was deeply embedded in our family, in some ways even more so than me.
Exact the revenge he deserves.
If it were possible.
Despite his many . . . deficits, Everest was in some ways the purest soul of all of us. The man cared for nothing and no one, save for killing and Lucian. How did one strike back at a man who was ambivalent about everything save but death?
Then strike at the heart of the problem.
Lucian.
But a move against my cousin was a move against the Blackwells. Betrayal.
The girl . . .
I sat up and reached over to pour myself another drink.
There was a thought .
For the longest time, Everest had only one weakness—Lucian. Though that was like calling Conquest Death’s weakness.
But, for some unfathomable reason, it appeared as though the girl mattered to Everest. That she was still alive was a testament to that.
Before, Luz had been merely a pest, a contemptuous little creature who had burrowed her way into my world and needed to be eradicated. I assumed that either Alister or Everest would eventually chew her up and spit her out. Once she was down, I would be well positioned to deliver my killing blow, forcing her out of my class and out of Hollow Oak.
But now . . .
Everest has a weakness . . . and her name is Luz.