Chapter 6 #3
“Okay!” he blurts, looking in horror as his dead friend. “I’ll unlock the phone!”
I smile coldly as I clean the gory golf club off on the dead guy’s shirt. “Masterful negotiating skills this one has, wouldn’t you say, Loch?”
“A true statesman,” Lochlan chuckles as he walks over and picks up the two phones we took off these idiots from a side table. “Password, and you’d better have your little fucking buddy’s, too.”
“One-two-three-four-five!!” the guy sobs. “Both of ‘em!”
I glance at Lochlan, who looks pissed.
“Fucking hell," he sighs. "You made us brain your friend for that?”
He opens the first phone and hands it to me before unlocking the other one.
Lochlan frowns. “What the fuck is this, you little perv?” He shows me the phone’s camera roll, which is a ton of grainy zoomed-in shots of various female Knightsblood students dancing and partying the other night.
Lochlan turns back to the weeping guy tied to the chair. “Did you seriously sneak into our fucking mansion to take bad upskirt pics of college girls, you dumb prick?” He scoffs. “Fucking hell. Achilles, can you believe—hey, Achilles?”
I barely hear him. Not over the dull roar in my ears as I look at the camera roll of the second phone.
…It's entirely photos of Yelena.
The man in the chair whimpers when I lift his chin with the golf club.
“Why the fuck is Angelo Santoro so interested in this girl?”
Confusion furrows his blood-splattered brow. “W-what??” he snivels.
“Your boss,” I growl. “Why is he—”
“Who the fuck is Angelo Santoro?!”
“The guy who paid you to slip into our party, fuck-face,” Lochlan snarls. “You had his office number on your fucking burner.”
The guy blinks in genuine confusion, his eyes darting between the two of us.
“I—I don’t know any Angelos! I swear!”
“Then who the fuck told you to take pictures of this girl?” I hiss.
“I don’t know!” he sobs, shaking. “I swear! H-he didn’t use a name, and I never saw his face. He gave us each a grand and told us to sneak into the party and photograph that chick all night! Said he’d pay extra if we caught her hooking up with anyone or doing anything incriminating.”
Just walk the fuck away.
I’ve already connected the dots on who has an interest in Yelena.
It’s Kyle.
Kyle, who used to hook up with her.
Kyle, who she was leaving fucking panties for.
Hell, maybe she thought I was Kyle the night she shattered on my fingers.
“We’re leaving,” I growl tightly.
If I don’t get the fuck out of this room right now, the red mist swirling through my vision isn’t going to go away until I’ve ripped someone in half.
Lochlan shoots me a confused glance. But he knows me well enough to recognize the look on my face right now.
I make it out of the basement, past Leo and his boys, and all the way outside, almost to the car.
Almost. But not quite.
The mask is too tight. The venom under my skin is too acidic.
We hooked up.
She was okay, I guess.
He gave us each a grand and told us to sneak into that party and photograph that chick all night! Said he’d pay extra if we caught her hooking up with anyone.
I can’t destroy Kyle.
But I can destroy someone.
“Yo, Achilles!”
Lochlan bolts after me, but he’s not fast enough to stop me. I go storming back into the cabin in a blind fury, ignoring Leo and his guys as I charge back into the basement and all but rip the metal door off its hinges.
When I'm done, it takes Lochlan, Leo, and both of Leo’s guys to drag me off the now extremely dead second guy still tied to the chair, with a bonus golf club rammed halfway down his esophagus.
Recklessness.
Impulsiveness.
Giving in to baser desires.
…So much for curbing those lesser urges that have no place in my world.
Lochlan knows me well enough to know that when the rest of the world looks at me, I’m usually wearing a mask. He’s never seen it completely off, but he’s seen it as off as it was just now, so he lets us drive back to campus in silence.
Selene’s right: men will drive around not saying shit to avoid going to therapy.
“Thanks,” I growl when I finally throw the Range Rover into park at Kingsward Hall. I glance at him. “I mean it.”
He nods slowly. “You know I’m making a conscious choice not to ask what it was about those totally benign photos of Nero De Luca’s daughter that made you Hulk the fuck out back there, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what I just thanked you for.”
He chuckles and claps me on the shoulder. “You good?”
I nod. “Yup. Just had to blow the pressure off.”
“Heard.”
“Hey, Lochie.”
He turns to me. “Yeah?”
“You know I’m making a conscious choice not to ask you why you’ve had Velvet Villainess playing on repeat on your phone with the volume off since we got back in the car, right?”
The SUV engine is still running, and I watch in amusement when Lochlan’s gaze darts to the bottom of the glowing navigation screen on the dash between us, which shows the current media streaming via Bluetooth from “Lochlan Kildare’s iPhone”.
Instead of one of his usual 90’s rap and hip-hop playlists, it says Velvet Villainess: Villains do it Better.
I chuckle at the title as Lochlan scrambles to yank his phone out of his pocket.
“Just dumb TikTok shit,” he mutters, quickly thumbing his phone open and closing the app.
I grin and finally turn the engine off before we both get out.
“Fun stuff tonight, man,” he grunts, not looking me in the eye. “I’m gonna turn in for the night, though.”
“Got some bedtime reading to do?” I grin.
“Fuck you.”
“Some morally gray book boyfriends to—”
“One more word, and I may forget that you’re blood, dickbag,” he mutters through gritted teeth.
I chuckle, patting him on the back. “Relax, I’m done.”
“Good.”
I linger outside as Lochlan heads for the side door to Kingsward Hall.
“Hey, Lochie.”
He turns to me, glaring. “What?”
I grin widely. “Mr. Grey will see you now.”
“Swear to God, asshole, I will murder you in your sleep.”
The woods outside Morvaine Manor are silent except for the occasional sounds of night animals. From my perch in the tree, I let my gaze slide through the darkness to the glow of the bedroom window.
Yelena is sitting on her bed, back against the headboard, with various textbooks and notes open in front of her. She’s got her glasses on, her dark hair is tied up in a messy bun, and a baggy hoodie covers her like a nun.
Despite all that, I’m rock fucking hard.
I don’t care about Lochlan's stupid TikTok videos right now. Or the fact that I just killed two men. Or even fucking Kyle, and whatever his past or even current situation is with her.
Kyle didn’t chase her through the dark the other night.
Kyle didn’t get to feel her pulse jolt in excitement under his fingertips, or the softness of her skin beneath his knife, or the sweetness of her pussy as she shattered all over my fingers.
A few close people have seen me with my mask askew: Lochlan and Ronan, Drago, a bit.
My father.
But the other night was the first time I ever had the mask fully off in front of someone…and that someone was Yelena.
Yelena, who has completely caught my attention.
If only she knew how fucked that makes her.