Chapter 5
LOCHLAN
Goddammit.
I’ve got blood on my shoes.
Although, when you consider what just went down in that basement, the fact that it's only on my shoes is a miracle.
“Sooo…” I bite back a grin as I glance across the center console of the Range Rover at my cousin Achilles. His face is dark, and unlike me, he's got blood on a fuck of a lot more than his shoes.
Flecks of it spatter the collar of his shirt. There’s a streak of it near his ear where he probably wiped at it with the back of his hand, because I notice it’s on those, too, as he grips the steering wheel like he’s trying to choke it to death.
“So what, Loch,” Achilles mutters.
I resist the urge to bait him. I’m almost as close to my cousin as I am to my own brother. At times I’ve probably been even closer. And it’s because of that love that it’s so fun to push him a little when I see he’s teetering on the edge.
Okay, Bella might have been right earlier today. I can be a dickhead sometimes. But it comes from a place of love, I swear.
That said, it’s obvious that my cousin isn’t just “ticked off” right now. I think we’re getting into “murderous rage” territory.
Well, clearly. He just killed two guys in a basement with a fucking golf putter.
In fairness, they sort of had it coming. We caught them skulking around the party the other night taking covert photos, and the fact that they’re…sorry, were, past tense…in their late thirties was a dead giveaway that they weren't Knightsblood students.
Their tattoos tying them to the Volkov Bratva didn’t exactly help, especially since Adrik Volkov, heir to that empire, is the head of The Reckless this year.
Adrik and Achilles have a not-so-fun history involving a scrimmage hit between the two of them during football practice freshman year, the result of which was a broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder for Adrik which ended not just his season but his entire college football career.
It really wasn’t anyone’s fault, but the two of them have hardly been besties since it happened. And now that Adrik is running The Reckless and Achilles is helming Para Bellum, there’s definitely an ice wall between the two clubs.
That said, it wasn’t the two goons’ possible Volkov affiliation that sent my cousin off the deep end just now. It was when one of the guys finally gave up the passwords to the phones we caught them with, and one of those phones was filled with covert pictures of Yelena De Luca.
Yelena is a sophomore in The Order, and the daughter of notorious mafia don Nero De Luca.
Achilles has no reason to have anything to do with her.
And yet, when he found those sneak shots of her on that motherfucker’s phone, he went full ballistic, leaving two very messy bodies in the basement to clean up and yours truly with several questions.
But I’m not suicidal, and it only takes one glance at the black, venomous look on my cousin’s face for me to realize that now is not the time to ask him why he hulked the fuck out over Yelena.
So instead I open my phone and tap a certain social media profile as we drive back to campus.
I glare daggers at the screen.
I don’t know why it bothers me so much that Velvet Villainess has more followers and higher engagement than I do.
Actually, I do.
I am a slut for attention, and it galls me that her account has a bigger number next to it than mine, even though I’ve been doing this longer, for fuck's sake.
But I can’t be mad right now.
A grin creeps over my face as I scroll through her feed, looking at thumbnail after thumbnail of her.
I know who you aaaarrre, little villain…
I’m not gonna lie. The sheer thrill that comes with knowing her secret identity, or I suppose more accurately knowing Galina Nikitin’s secret identity, is addictive.
And very, very fun.
Watching Galina discover my…arrival in her online world before Professor McGrath’s Social Psychology of Deception class the other day?
Amazing.
I figured Ghost leaving a comment like that on her latest video would start some fireworks, but holy fuck. Her fans, a lot of whom are probably my fans too, lost their collective fucking shit.
To be clear, scaring her isn't the goal.
The fact that a small part of me finds her fear a little arousing is something I'm not examining too closely right now.
Again, especially considering my lineage.
Freaking her out isn’t the reason I left that comment on her video.
It’s because I know Galina has another secret account.
Achilles is, academically, the top of our class at Knightsblood.
But again, that’s because I let him be. When you’re the smartest, you’re also under a microscope.
That’s a big fat “no thanks” from me under any circumstances, but especially if you’re secretly running one of the biggest MaskTok accounts out there.
Being publicly “the best” also means that everyone knows you can do that thing. But being good at something can be ten times more effective if no one knows you're good at it.
Case in point: my skills as a hacker.
Believe me, as a total jock, no one looks at me and has the slightest idea that I could crack my way into their email accounts or see what sort of porn they watch.
But I can.
Which is how I was able to IP-trace Velvet Villainess’s account and cross-reference it with other accounts on the app.
That, predictably, got me into the wi-fi connection at The Atheneum.
There's about a hundred students living there, but narrow down search parameters to viewing habits involving books, masked men, and ads for J. Crew?
Ding ding fucking ding.
Galina’s other handle is DeluluForDarkRomance. It’s what she uses to browse and watch other BookTok and MaskTok content, and to comment on videos.
I've spent the last two days going through every comment she's ever left.
She comments here and there as Velvet Villainess, of course. But those are comments that are engineered to bump engagement, pull followers, create interaction with fans…that sort of bullshit.
The comments she leaves as DeluluForDarkRomance are her thoughts.
Galina’s.
She watches a lot of MaskTok and leaves a ton of thirsty comments on many of the other more popular male content creators’ stuff.
DeluluForDarkRomance:
Who else needs a cigarette after watching that?
DeluluForDarkRomance:
I have several questions but ALL of them will get me banned from this app.
DeluluForDarkRomance:
With respect, fold me up like a lawn chair.
DeluluForDarkRomance:
It takes guts to post shit like this. Speaking of guts…rearrange mine?
DeluluForDarkRomance:
Not me collecting red flags like Pokémon cards.
Okay, they’re funny. Oddly, they also make me want to IP-trace these other MaskTok motherfuckers and cut their goddamn throats…but I digress.
She's also commented on my content.
A lot.
Not just fangirl noise. Very specific. She left one just a few weeks ago that referenced a similar edit I made months ago. In another, she lamented not having downloaded a video of mine that got deleted from the app last spring, after it got a stern warning from the platform on content guidelines.
She has, several times, told other commenters they were misreading me.
Bottom line: while you could view her Velvet Villainess comments, posts, and content as all part of her brand and a curated persona that she’s selling to people, the comments she makes as DeluluForDarkRomance are the real her.
Which means the content she watches, likes, and comments on is the sort of content that she—Galina—truly is into.
The more comments of hers that I read, the more I can map out exactly what Galina Nikitin enjoys.
…Turns out Velvet Villainess might not be much of a curated persona at all.
I think she’s actually into the whole masked man thing. She gravitates for real to the idea of being watched, and stalked, maybe a little hunted.
At least, the fantasy versions of those things. I’m not delusional enough to think that being into the fantasy of something means you’re into truly experiencing it.
I mean, I want to jump around on the moon. But fucking hard pass on being shot into orbit sitting in a tin can with five million moving parts and a million gallons of highly flammable propellent, you know?
Ultimately, the takeaway here is that I know what the real Galina is into now. Which is…thrilling.
Even more thrilling, I know exactly what she sounds like and just how fucking wet her pussy gets when she comes—a scene that has been on permanent replay in my head for the last several nights, by the way.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a problem, because there are other things I should be focusing on.
Not school: I could probably do school in Norwegian, backward, in my sleep, and still ace it.
But there are other questions that need my full attention right now.
Like why Kirill Tsarenko, the deviant little psycho, was apparently naked and waving his dick around at our party on Friday.
Not to mention sharing a hot tub with Achilles’ and my cousin, Selene.
Or, perhaps even more concerning, why my fucking dick has decided to pack up his balls and go on fucking vacation, complete with a “sorry, can’t play right now” out of office message when I try to interest him in any female attention.
Believe me, I have been trying.
I chalked up his unenthusiastic reaction to Carrie on Friday as a glitch. I told myself my head was in a weird place, having just discovered that Velvet Villainess was none other than Knightsblood’s own Galina Nikitin.
But this has since become a repeat occurrence, several times. And now, after a dozen “wyd?” texts to a handful of former hookups, all of which resulted in similar failures to launch?
Again, Houston, we have a fucking problem.
It’s not as simple as “my cock doesn’t work anymore”. Because it does. It’s just decided to stop working for anyone except a certain red-haired secret villain.
And oh boy, does it work for her. Obnoxiously so. Worryingly so.
Text a former hookup to come over and play? Or two of them at once?
Nope. The motherfucker hides.