4. Saint
4
SAINT
M y brother missing is like a knot in my stomach. Except it seems to rise higher and higher up my throat until I feel as though I’m going to choke on it.
Up until this moment, I’m not sure I appreciated just how much the two of us are connected.
I don’t care about anything else—not the stupid Preachers or whatever stupid magic they might have tried to use on me. I’ll do whatever it takes to get him back.
I glance over at Vani. She seems as worried as I am. This isn’t a girl who has gotten what she wanted by spying on us for Jarl. She’s too devastated for that. If she’d been the one to put all this in motion, she wouldn’t still be here with us and be so openly upset. Unless she’s a genius mastermind manipulator, and I deep down know she’s not. Despite my earlier misgivings, I believe her.
Which means we have an enemy within the college. A ghost who has been lurking in the corridors, unseen, waiting for their moment. Is this ghost the same person who has been sending Vani terrible notes? The same one who put the leaflet in the mailboxes for everyone to see? It makes sense. Play us all against one another, make it so none of us knows who to trust. It’s what I would do if I wanted to mess people’s heads up. Divide and conquer.
It makes finding out the truth ever more urgent. If the same person is behind everything, we need to take them down. Fucking destroy them. They’ve messed with the wrong people.
We find Angelica in the library, of all places. She doesn’t seem at all worried about the sirens that had been blaring, but instead is sitting at one of the communal desks, studying.
The library is much quieter than normal. Row after row of floor to ceiling, dark wooden shelves are lined with books, and there are cubbies with computers, should anyone need to use them. Right now, no one is. I’ve never known it to be so empty.
Since she’s Vani’s friend, we’re letting Vani take the lead on this. Zane and I are right behind her, though, ready to give her whatever support she might need.
Vani approaches the desk, and Angelica glances up.
“Angelica, can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Yeah, of course.” Angelica’s gaze flicks over Vani’s shoulder and lands on the two of us. “Have you heard what’s going on at the college? They think someone has breached security.”
“Yeah, that someone was Jarl Olsen.” Vani leans against the desk and tries to get Angelica to focus on her, but she keeps glancing at me.
Angelica claps her hand to her mouth. “What?”
“He came on campus with some of his men, and it looks like he’s taken Lex.”
“Oh, my God.” She sinks back in her chair. “I hope this doesn’t have something to do with me inviting Jarl here the other day to speak to you.”
Vani’s tone is hard. “Well, there’s a possibility it did.”
Angelica stares up at her with wide, innocent eyes. “I am so, so sorry. I had no idea something like this would happen. You know I was only trying to help.”
Vani’s expression softens, but only slightly. “Yeah, well, we need your help again, if you truly want to help us.”
Her brow furrows. “Of course I do, but to do what?”
“To get Lex back. You’re the only person we know who has a way of contacting Jarl Olsen.”
Angelica’s pretty complexion drains of color. “I can’t contact Jarl and ask him to return Lex.”
I want to ask why not. Her reaction is a bit extreme. If she’s friendly enough with him to invite him here for a tête a tête with Vani, surely, she can at least ask him if Lex is okay.
“That’s not what we’re asking. We just want you to give us the number,” Vani explains. “We’ll be the ones who speak to him.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t do that either.”
Fucking bitch . I bite back my temper, but I won’t last long before I explode the way this is going.
“Yes, you can,” Vani insists. “For me. We’re friends, right, and you wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to a student because of something you did. It’s just his number, that’s all.”
“I don’t want to get into trouble with Jarl!” Angelica worries at her lower lip with her teeth.
I get the distinct impression she’s acting. Patience snapped, I lean in. I pound my fist against the table, and Angelica jumps.
“Lex is already in trouble!”
“He is trouble!” she throws back. “Everyone knows what the three of you did to Reagan.” She shakes her head at me.
I’m going to wrap my hands around her pale neck and squeeze. If I do, though, I won’t have any leads on getting my brother back, so I try to restrain myself. I growl, “We are not having this conversation again.”
“Maybe Lex is only getting what he deserves.”
Vani gasps. “ Angelica! ”
“Sorry, but it had to be said.”
“No, it didn’t. Lex is innocent, and he does not deserve this. None of them do.” Vani’s voice trembles as she speaks.
Angelica shrugs. “We’re allowed to have a difference of opinions. I happen to believe they are utterly up to their necks in what happened to your sister. That’s my choice. We can agree to disagree.”
“Not on this!” Vani declares. “Not on whether or not my sister died because of them. I’m not saying the Vipers are perfect—far from it—but I believe I know them better than anyone now.” She pauses to gaze over at us, and Zane and I give her a tiny smile and a nod, permission to show others that we’re close. “I don’t believe they were behind Reagan’s death.”
Angelica shakes her head, but her eyes narrow dangerously, and she keeps glancing between Vani and us, the color on her cheeks growing. “What do you know? You’ve barely been here five minutes. You didn’t even know Reagan. We did! You weren’t here when he—” she glares at me with murderous rage, her cheeks tinted deep red now, "was leading her on, making her think they had something. I don’t know…maybe they did something terrible to her, and then they thought she was going to talk, so they lured her to the top of that tower and pushed her off.”
Why is she so convinced about this and so emotional? She’s acting like Reagan was her sister, not Vani’s, and she’s looking at me with such an odd mix of emotions swimming in her gaze.
I grind my back teeth. “None of that happened, Angelica. It’s all in your head. We didn’t harm Reagan, and I certainly wasn’t leading her on. Jesus.”
“Not just my head. It’s what everyone was saying!” Her expression turns sullen, and she glares at me, but as I hold her gaze, she drops hers.
“It doesn’t mean you have to believe it.” I sigh. “People gossip, Angelica.” I try to reason with her. “You know this. College is full of endless gossip and intrigue. Doesn’t mean it’s all true.”
Angelica doesn’t look at me, and I want to tear my hair out with frustration at the way this is going.
Vani crouches next to Angelica’s desk to bring them to eye-level. “Please, Angelica. I’m not asking you to do it for them—do it for me.”
Angelica nibbles at her lower lip and seems to consider what Vani is asking, reluctance all over her face. “What do you need from me?”
“We just need Jarl’s number.”
“Jarl is not going to be happy about me just handing it over to you. He’ll figure out it came from me. I’ll be the one who gets in trouble.”
She seems anxious, and I guess that’s understandable. Jarl is a complete psychopath. Who knows how he’ll react to us being the ones who make contact with him first, instead of it being the other way around.
“The Vipers will protect you,” I offer.
She gives a half snort-laugh at that. “The Vipers couldn’t even protect themselves. Your brother is missing, and you need my help. I don’t see how you can keep me safe.”
I exhale a breath, trying to keep my temper. “Jarl won’t know where we got the number. Or, if he guesses, we’ll say we forced it from you, that we threatened you and tortured you.”
“Or that we stole it,” Vani throws in.
She shakes her head. “I can’t.”
I’m getting desperate. “What do you want in return, Angelica?” I say. “There must be something. Everyone’s got a price, no matter what the risks.”
Angelica seems to think for a moment. “There is something I want, but I need to speak to Saint alone.” She glances at Vani and Zane.
We all exchange looks. Zane gives a tiny shake of his head. Yeah, I don’t like the idea either. Is this some kind of setup?
“What is it, Angelica?” Vani asks. “Why can’t you say it in front of all of us?”
She sighs. “I care about you, Vani, but you have to realize that you’ve only been here a short while. There’s stuff that’s happened before you came along. We all have history, and I’m sorry that some of it doesn’t involve you.”
I frown. What kind of history is she talking about? Angelica and I don’t have any history, except for her to make it clear how much she hates me…and my brother.
“Vani’s right,” I say. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say in front of her.”
Angelica purses her lips and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Like I said, it just doesn’t concern Vani.” Her gaze flicks to the giant at Vani’s side. “Or Zane.”
Vani lifts her chin and meets my eye. “If it helps get Lex back, then you should speak to her.”
Zane types on his cell and holds his phone so only we can see it.
What if this is some kind of trap?
He has a point. Angelica was the one who got Jarl Olsen into the college on a previous occasion. She could be in on this. Vani might seem to like her, but I’ve never trusted her, and I don’t see any reason to start now. Still, it’s worth the risk.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell Zane and Vani.
Zane writes down, What if you’re the next one to be taken?
Angelica grabs the phone from Zane and reads the note and rolls her eyes, before passing the phone back. “He’ll be right on the other side of the door, I promise. Your precious bro isn’t going anywhere.”
I nod. “If it means getting one step closer to getting Lex back, I can speak to her alone.”
No one is going to bust into the library and snatch me from under their noses, and I’m not frightened of Angelica—not in the slightest. She’s just some idiot girl so far as I’m aware.
Vani says she’s her friend, but Angelica has been nothing but a gossip and a pain in our asses. She’ll be lucky if I leave here with her breathing.
Vani and Zane exchange a glance and seem to agree silently between them. Zane reaches out and links his fingers through Vani’s. A tiny pang of jealousy hits me that he’s the one who gets to do that while I stay here with Angelica.
“Okay,” Vani says, “we’ll be right outside, Saint.”
I watch their backs as they leave, fully conscious of the young woman still sitting at the desk beside me. The door swings shut on Vani and Zane, and I turn to face her.
“What happened to your mouth?” Angelica asks.
I’d almost forgotten about my split lip, but now I raise my fingers to lightly touch it. “Zane punched me,” I admit.
She giggles. “Good for him. Maybe I’ll like some of you Vipers after all.”
I give an irritated sigh. “So, what do you want, Angelica? Why do you need to speak to me alone?”
I genuinely have no idea what she’s going to ask for. Money would be my first guess, but it’s not like she doesn’t have plenty of her own. Some kind of favor for her family, then? She swishes her shiny, straight, brown hair, and the scent of strawberries hits me.
She gets to her feet and slowly makes her way to me. Her hips sway as she walks, and her demeanor is suddenly different than it had been when Vani was in the room. She pouts her lower lip and looks up at me from under her lashes. She places her hand on my chest, fingering the buttons on my Versace shirt.
“Saint Laurant,” she says in a singsong voice, “I always thought the two of us would make a great pair, didn’t you?”
What the fuck? Talk about a change of pace.
“You accused me of being a murderer!”
“Well, not murder exactly, but playing a part. Still, I like bad boys, and I like that you’ve got style, and you’re not ashamed to flaunt it. You don’t seem to care what people think about you, and I admire that.”
I have no idea why she’s heaping praise on me now, after she’s just accused me of murder, but then, I guess with the kind of families we come from, what’s a little murder between friends?
I clench my jaw. “Get to the point.”
She loosens the button enough to pop the top of my shirt open, revealing my chest beneath. “I’ll get you in contact with Jarl, but first … I want a night with you.”
I jerk back. I hadn’t been expecting that. “ Quoi?”
In my surprise, I’ve reverted back to my native language. What?
She smiles like the cat that’s got the cream. “See, all the French stuff is hot, too. One night with you, and you have to speak to me in French while we fuck, and then I’ll get you in touch with Jarl.”
My head reels. I think of Vani and how hurt she’ll be by all this.
“You can’t expect that of me. I thought Vani was your friend. How could you do that to her?”
“She won’t know. It’ll be our little secret, though I’m sure, once you’ve had a taste of me, the name Vani won’t even be on your mind.” She smiles and licks her lips slowly. “You and me, Saint? We could run this college. We might even make a great marriage, but that’s for the future.”
The bitch is insane. She’s looking at me and smirking as if she’s got me right where she wants me.
She has no fucking idea how I feel about Vani. The girl I am fucking obsessed with. Even when I thought she might have had something to do with Lex being taken, and that she was spying on us for Jarl Olsen, it didn’t lessen my feelings for her. If anything, it only made me more obsessed, more tortured, more conflicted. She’s the only girl I’ve ever felt this way about, like I might shrivel up and die if I’m not around her enough.
Hell, I was sneaking into her room on the regular just to be near her and be able to watch her, smell her, touch her.
I don’t expect Angelica to understand this. I’m not sure I even understand it myself, though I believe the other Vipers feel the same way. What is it about Vani that coils itself around us and refuses to let go?
It’s not just that she’s pure sex wrapped up in that curvy body of hers. I love the smell of her, the softness of her skin, the sound of her voice. I love the way she has a snake tattooed across her back, as though she already dreamed of us and had prepared herself for our arrival into her life. Hell, the fact that she has ink in itself makes her unlike many of the other girls here. She stands out as being so different, and she isn’t ashamed of it, either. None of the girls here would ride a bike like she does or listen to deeply untrendy music the way Vani unapologetically does.
Deep down, I loved how she’d slapped at my hand when we’d been on the stairs. I even love that she’s the person behind our beloved possessions being destroyed. That’s the kind of messed up actions I can relate to. She’s not just going to lie down and take our shit, and I admire that about her.
Angelica doesn’t even seem to know how my brother and I roll. We’re a package deal. We don’t really fuck girls separately, unless it’s part of the sick games we play. She is looking at me like she can see our future all mapped out, but the girl doesn’t even realize she’d be getting two-for-one. It is the stupidest proposition I’ve ever had, and something about her shiny, perfect exterior turns my stomach a little. She’s not my type, at all.
But I’m also torn.
Lex is my brother. I’ll do anything for him. What if we’re unable to contact Jarl, and Jarl decides to kill him? What if Lex is already dead? My stomach knots. Merde. What the hell am I supposed to do?
“I should go back out there and tell Vani exactly what you’ve just said.” I try to play hardball, hoping she’ll back down.
She crosses her arms across her chest. “Then there will be no chance of me helping you.”
Fuck. She’s got my balls in a vise.
Give Angelica what she wants or at least make her think that’s what she going to get. It’s the only answer.
I think of the plan for Vani and Zane to leave Verona Falls and travel back to her father’s MC in order to claim Jarl’s necklace. The drive each way is around five hours, so they’ll most likely need to stay overnight. It will leave me here, alone. It would be enough to give Angelica what she’s asking for—plenty of time to rock her world; I could promise her that so she’ll give us the number. The thought of actually going through with it sickens me, though. Before Vani had come into my life, sex hadn’t meant anything to me. I could have fucked Angelica, even when I hated her, and made her come multiple times, and not given her a second thought. She’d have just been a hole to put my cock in, a nice pair of tits to feast on, a throat to wrap my hand around while I called her a whore.
Yeah, it might have been weird without Lex there, but I could have done it.
Now, though, everything has changed. I don’t want to be anywhere near another girl. The only person I want is Vani, and maybe I’ve done some suspect shit in her mind—like lying to her about my identity and sneaking into her room—but I’ve only done those things because I wanted to be near her. I needed to be near her. If I do what Angelica wants, even if it is for Lex, and Vani finds out, then she’ll never want me anywhere around her ever again.
And it’s not just about her finding out, either, because I’d know . I’d have this huge, terrible secret that I’d be keeping from her, and it would destroy everything. I’d have to keep it from Lex and Zane, too. The four of us would have this secret between us, slowly eating away at us. Like a fucking moth eating at the fabric of a shirt, we’d end up with nothing but tattered holes between us.
Is this what my choice is going to come down to, Lex or Vani? Saving Lex but having to lie to them forever?
That’s not a choice I’m able to make.
It occurs to me that Angelica doesn’t know Vani and Zane are planning to leave the grounds. She probably thinks our only opportunity to be together without Vani knowing is tonight, when Vani is asleep, but they’ll actually be gone long before nightfall.
“We can’t wait until after we spend the night together to get the number. Lex could be dead by then.”
She shrugs. “That’s not my problem.”
I clench my fists to stop myself striking her. I’ve never hit a girl, and I don’t want to start now, but she’s making it fucking hard.
“There’s no deal if I don’t get the number now.” I stare her down, hoping she can see how resolute I am.
Her eyes light up at the possibility that I might be willing to agree to what she wants. Her gaze rakes up and down my body, and her pink tongue peeks out and licks her lower lip.
I could just grab her cell from her and hold her down while I use her thumb to unlock it. It’s tempting—more than tempting—but I have no idea what name she’ll have the number saved under. She might not even have it in her contacts, but instead could be hidden behind some innocent looking app. We might be able to figure it out eventually, but it’s all going to be time wasted, so I force myself to be patient.
“What’s to stop you from backing out of our agreement the moment I hand over the number?”
“My word,” I say, deliberately holding her eye.
Am I a man of my word? Probably not. Besides, she doesn’t deserve to get it. I should storm back out to Vani and tell her exactly what Angelica has said. Vani thinks Angelica is her friend, but what’s happened in the past few minutes proves Angelica’s idea of friendship is even more fucked up than I am.
The only things stopping me are my brother, and how much Vai has already been through. It’s barely been an hour since she almost fell from the tower.
Why had she even gone up there? Had it been because of Reagan? Subconsciously, had a part of her wanted to follow in her sister’s path? That worries me deeply. What if finding out that one of the few people Vani believes is a friend is trying to steal one of her men behind her back pushes her—literally—over the edge? I want to think Vani is stronger than that, but she was on that tower.
She could have died.
No, this needs to stay between us. I need to make Angelica think she has a deal.
“Listen,” I say. Maybe if I give her this secret, she’ll be more likely to trust me. To believe I’m on the level about everything. “Zane and Vani are leaving the college soon.”
“To go to Jarl?” she says.
I shake my head. “No, for something else.” This is a big risk. If she tells Jarl, it might put them in danger. Still, I don’t tell her where they’re going. “You can’t breathe a fucking word. Anything happens to them, if you tell Jarl, our deal is off, and not only that, but I will kill you.”
Her eyes widen and her chest heaves. I can’t tell if it’s from terror or arousal.
“I swear, Angelica,” I continue. “I’ll fucking end you. But if you wait until they’ve gone, then … yes, we can be together.” I force myself to smirk. “It won’t be a hardship. But you need to be patient and keep quiet until I fucking come for you.” I grip her chin, tightly. “Understood?”
Angelica seems to think for a moment, and then she huffs out a breath. “Fine. But if you go back on your word, Saint, I will fucking destroy you.”
She pulls up a number on her phone, which she has saved under ‘Pizza’, and hands it over, her face serious as hell.
My gut churns as I think about what the hell I’ve just agreed to. I am determined to find a way out of it, but in the meantime, I want to find Vani. My twin is missing, a madwoman wants me to be her plaything, and I’m not going to be able to sneak into Vani’s room at any time due to the fact she’s not going to be here. It heightens my desire for her, and I grit my teeth. If Zane gets to be the one to whisk her away, I need a few moments of alone time with her.