29. Venetia
Venetia
T he door bursts open, and I sit up suddenly, my heart pounding, not dragged but yanked out of a deep sleep by whatever commotion is going on.
Blake and Viper storm in, their faces grim masks of urgency, to come to a skidding halt when Rafferty points a gun at them, which he had hidden under the pillow.
“The bodies,” Blake says without preamble. “They weren’t dead.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, though ice is already forming in my stomach.
“We mean, the graves we dug are empty,” Viper growls.
The room spins for a moment as the implications hit me. “And that explains that they weren’t dead to begin with?” I ask, my sleepy brain trying to catch up. “No one dug them up?”
“Tetrodotoxin,” Blake confirms, rushing to get it out. “Paralytic agent. Slows the heart rate and breathing to almost nothing. Creates the appearance of death for several hours.”
“So, Lloyd didn’t poison them, he drugged them? Made them appear dead so we’d… what? Bury them alive? Why?”
“Are you okay?” Viper asks, coming closer, looking like he’s about to lose his shit big time.
“I’m fine. I was asleep. What is going on? Really going on?”
Blake closes the door and locks it. “I had an interesting conversation with my dad,” he says, moving over to his desk.
“Oh?”
“The Cravenmoor Institute,” Blake says, turning back to face us.
“They’re the ones pulling the strings. Jonathon Cravenmoor is the descendant of William, who, as we already know, owned this building and land before it became an Academy, and built the library as an add-on.
The treasure we found isn’t just loot—it’s blackmail material.
Evidence of centuries of Cravenmoor family crimes, and the rest.”
My blood runs cold. “And the Graduate operation?”
“Funded and directed by Cravenmoor interests. It’s why this place was a major recruitment centre. Your role in all this is something you might want to sit back down for.”
His serious tone makes me do just that.
“The Hale bloodline sprouted from an illegitimate son of William’s, so that apparently gives you a legitimate, yet controversial, claim to everything Jonathon Cravenmoor owns. You’re not just a threat to his operation, you’re a threat to his entire empire.”
“Okay, so we got it wrong? The Graduates don’t want me to rule, they want to wipe me off the board?”
“I think it’s both,” Blake replies carefully. “I think there are factions who, obviously, follow the Hale line. You. The rest follow Cravenmoor. There is a conflict of interest, and I think it’s a game to see who gets to you first.”
“So why the diversion with the poisoned students? Who are they?”
“They are the heirs of the families who are up to their necks in this trafficking shit. Their ‘deaths’ were a diversionary tactic.”
“For what?”
“It was orchestrated to get everyone away from their home territories so they could be taken over.”
“By who?” My hands shake slightly as the scope of this just got bigger and way more dangerous than we first thought.
“By your father.” The words drop from Blake’s lips like stones into still water, sending ripples of shock through my entire body. I stare at him, my mouth opening and closing as I try to process what he’s just said.
“What?”
“Your father sends you here to supposedly unearth the Graduates and burn them to the ground. Instead, the library burns to the ground, and we end up with a pile of blackmail gold and jewels and more links to the crime families than we know what to do with, with information coming at us from all sides.”
“Exactly,” I snap. “Who do we trust? And why not just kill the students then? Why go to all this trouble to make them look dead, and then voila , they all come back to life?”
“They are the heirs to the territories your dad, or whoever, wants to take over,” Raff states.
“Probably already has taken over,” Viper mutters.
“So why lock them in here with me after pretending to kill them? And where are they now, by the way?”
Blake shrugs again. “Why lock them in here with you?” He shakes his head. “I don’t know yet.”
“This is a bit much,” I mutter and move past Blake to go to the bathroom. Some of it makes sense, but so much of it doesn’t.
Why? Why did they fake their deaths? Or why did someone fake their deaths?
“Blake. Are you sure all of them are alive?” I ask, coming back out of the bathroom.
“Well, we didn’t stop to check, but it looked like most of the graves were disturbed.”
“We need to make sure. Now.” I’m already reaching for my clothes, but Rafferty steps forward.
“It’s not safe,” he says. “If someone’s playing games with fake deaths and real takeovers, walking around in the dark makes us sitting ducks.”
“I don’t care about safe,” I snap, pulling on jeans. “If some of those students are actually dead while others are walking around playing whatever twisted game this is, I need to know.”
I stride across the room to grab my jacket, ignoring the three pairs of eyes boring into me.
My hands are steadier now that I’m moving, focusing on action instead of the mind-fuck Blake just dropped on me.
Dad orchestrating a hostile takeover using me as some kind of lever?
It’s precisely the kind of ruthless, calculated move he’d make, and the fact that I can’t immediately dismiss it as impossible makes my stomach churn. It’s diabolical.
It’s… my mother.
It has her ruthlessness and her cunning written all over it.
Before she got really sick, she used to play the dutiful mafia trophy wife, but I know.
I saw her and my dad working together. I saw the hours she put in.
I saw her kill. She was more bloodthirsty than Dad, who simply stepped over people on his way.
She wanted to chop them into pieces. I didn’t want to think of it after she died, but it’s here now, right in front of my eyes.
She was part of this, whatever the hell.
She helped plan it. She just never got to see it through.
“Fuck’s sake,” I mutter, checking my knife sheaths. The familiar weight of the blades against my thighs is reassuring. “But we’re going now. I need to see those graves.”
Blake grabs his tablet and a torch. “If we’re doing this, we need to be smart about it. The families we let back in could be compromised, even though my dad said they’re safe. We don’t know who we can trust.”
Rafferty’s already armed himself with enough weapons to outfit a small army. “Trust no one except us,” he says grimly. “That’s been the rule from the beginning, nothing’s changed.”
I pause at the door, my hand on the handle. The weight of everything settles on my shoulders like a lead blanket. My father’s potential betrayal. The fake deaths. The missing students who might be lurking somewhere in these corridors, waiting to finish whatever game they started.
Something isn’t adding up, but I can’t figure out what yet.
I need to see those graves, need to understand what the hell is really happening here. The not knowing is eating at me more than any potential threat lurking in the shadows.
“Let’s go,” I say, opening the door.
The corridor feels different now, charged with menace. Every shadow could hide one of the supposedly dead students. Every sound could be footsteps approaching. But I push forward anyway, the three of them flanking me like a protective wall.
We make our way through the academy in tense silence, weapons ready, senses on high alert. The new students we let back in are nowhere to be seen—either tucked away in their rooms or already compromised. The thought makes my skin crawl.
Once outside, the chapel grounds come into view, and my heart stops. Blake wasn’t exaggerating. The graves we spent hours digging, the ones we filled with bodies wrapped in tablecloths, are torn open like wounds in the earth. Soil is scattered everywhere, and white fabric is discarded and muddy.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe, staring at the destruction. The careful burial we gave them, the respect we tried to show, has all been desecrated by whatever sick game is being played.
But something catches my eye. Not all the graves are empty. I move closer, the beam of Blake’s torch sweeping over the makeshift graveyard. “Three. Three are undisturbed.”
“Fuck. What is going on?” Viper asks.
I wish I had answers, but right now, we are flying blind and…
“Venetia.”
I turn and stifle the scream that rips at my throat.