Chapter 30
Amy
The door swings open, and I’m not surprised to see Valen walking in. He’s been blowing up my phone since last night after I finally headed to my room to think.
“Why aren’t you answering?” he asks, closing the door.
I place the joint I just rolled on the nightstand. I’m not in the mood for him to tell me I can’t smoke in my room.
“It must be important if you left your wife and made it all this way. What do you want?”
He looks at my room with mild, unhurried distaste of a man whose standards were formed early and never had to personally experience dorm room furniture. The desk with a closed book on the surface. The single bed.
For me, this is a step up. Like a room upgrade at a hotel with club access.
He drops a black key fob, a manila envelope filled with cash on the mattress, and what looks like two keys.
I look at him.
I look at it.
I lean slightly forward in my chair. “What the fuck is that?”
He points at the envelope. “Your inheritance.”
I laugh. “I’ve been locked in a cell because of my existence since my stepfather killed our mother. I don’t have an inheritance.”
I hate to acknowledge that it’s the same man who fathered my brothers. The discipline I learned while being housed in Unit 9, where the management of response was the only form of sovereignty available to me. When you cannot control what happens to your body for hours.
As soon as I finish two hours of daily exercise, my schedule is someone else’s, my sleep is interrupted by someone else’s idea, my medication is someone else’s decision.
My idea of monitoring means I learn to control what goes on inside my head.
I learned to be slower than the feeling of rage building inside.
I learned the feeling would still be there when I was ready for it.
Even when the nurse’s assistant with the perky ass walked in late at night and begged me to fuck her hard in the ass.
The rage was still festering beneath my release, and arriving at it on my own terms was the only form of dignity the room allowed.
“Our mother left it for you, and since you’re out, her attorney thought it was best I give it to you.”
I pick up the envelope, keys, and fob. A sharp pain slices my chest, wishing she was still alive. She left me something—the only woman in my life who gave a shit.
“How kind,” I say with sarcasm. “What is it?”
“Well, the green paper in the envelope is called money––”
“Stop being sarcastic, asshole.” I interrupt. “I know it’s money. The fob and the keys?”
“The fob is to the car I bought.”
“You bought me a car?” I ask, surprised.
“Don’t get too excited. I bought it with your money.”
I snort. “I can’t even choose my own car. What are you, my father?”
“No, but it’s not like I can drag you out to the dealer without anyone noticing. The Order doesn’t know.”
I nod. Azriel mentioned Valen manages the accounts for us in ways that keep the operational side of things funded, and there is always what is needed, but this is different. He isn’t wrong. Silas and Dr. Wick would call a meeting.
This has my name on it from a solicitor following instructions left by the woman who chose me. She prepared for a version of the future for me without her in it.
I stare at my name on the deed of a house I’ve never set foot in. It’s not the grief of loss but something more difficult. The grief of being important to someone in advance by someone who is no longer here to receive the acknowledgment and respect of love.
“So what did you get me?”
Not that I give a shit. I’ll ride an electric bike for all I care. With the money in the envelope, an Uber would suffice.
He turns to leave, but opens the door before he says, “It’s parked in the back, and the keys are for the house next to Dravin’s near campus. The address is on the deed. It’s all yours as she intended.” He pauses, clears his throat and continues, “And only the Consortium knows about this.”
“Why give me all this now?” I ask.
Valen pauses at the door.
“Because hidden men are easier to bury.”
I look at him.
He glances at the keys in my hand. “The Order kept you invisible because invisibility made containment simple. A man in a white room can disappear. A man with a house, a car, a paper trail, and half the campus posting his face online becomes harder to erase.”
“So the car is bait.”
“The car is visibility,” Valen corrects. “The house is leverage. The money is yours. And the public version of you walking around campus is a problem the Order can’t quietly drag back underground without people asking why.”
I stare down at the keys again. For the first time, they look less like freedom and more like strategy.
Valen opens the door. “Do not mistake this for generosity. I’m giving them something else to manage.”
I snort. “But I thought I couldn’t leave?”
“You can’t.” And with that, he leaves, closing the door.
There’s fifty thousand in cash, and a bank statement letting me know I have more money than I know what to do with. The deed has my name on it. Saint Vitale. Below the signature line, pressed faintly into the corner of the solicitor’s seal, is a mark I almost miss.
A wolf.
A crown.
My fingers still over the paper.
For one second, I’m small again, standing in a kitchen while my mother burns napkins in the sink. Black ink curling into ash. Her hand closing over mine when I ask what the symbol means.
“Some names are safer forgotten,” she told me.
I stare at the mark until the shape blurs. Then I fold the paper and put it back in the envelope. Whatever my mother tried to bury, it is still breathing somewhere under my name.
It’s a good thing I don’t give a shit about any of it except making the man pay for what he did and the people responsible. The added bonus is Amy. The only problem is, she makes me more dangerous when I think of the possibility of someone trying to hurt her.
The SVJ Lamborghini spends its first forty-eight hours becoming a campus event.
The student body campus’s social media account has been flooded by seventeen photographs posted within the first twenty-four hours.
An osmosis of people who know other people who know solicitors who know estate managers who know who to ask when the asset landscape changes of a family they have been tracking for generational reasons.
Two hundred and forty-three responses on a thread increasing every hour. Referencing the car. The estimated value. My name associated to the sons of Kenyan University, like I’m royalty. Women romanticizing the lost son of Kenyan.
One reply mentioned the size of my dick.
The last name Vitale and how I’m associated and wealthy. Mysterious. Unattainable. And surprisingly, hot.
Kenyan University’s alumni are people whose money predates its buildings. The few who know what and who is connected to whom is not a simple thing, and Valen knew this when he decided on the car. It was calculated.
I’m walking from the east academic building to the library. All eyes swing in my direction like I’m famous. If only they knew that here my blood is tainted. That I’m not considered normal or accepted by societal rules.
If only they knew that I’m a killer.
Not that I want to be, it just happened. Circumstances of my upbringing. At least that is what I told Dr. Wick when she asked. It’s incredible what people with all the money in the world get away with. The power of making things go away.
As I make my way in the building, I subconsciously look for her. I think I always will despite what happens.
In my mind, she will always be something unfinished. Unsolved. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t consider how she felt when I touched her. All I could think about was marking her. It’s only a matter of time until one of these assholes does. The way I see it, it’s better me than them.