11. Venetia
Venetia
“ W e’ve got a problem,” Blake says, walking into the room and then stopping to scrutinise the situation.
Seeing no reason to comment, he continues.
“Library. Now.” Viper groans, a sound of pure reluctance.
He kisses the top of my head and rolls out of bed, completely unselfconscious in his nudity as he pulls on his pants.
I sit up, ignoring the sting on my arse.
The queen has had a great fuck. Now it’s time to rule.
“What kind of problem?” I ask, sliding out of bed and moving to the wardrobe where Blake has organised my clothes by colour and by length.
“The kind that suggests we’ve been played,” Blake answers.
I pull out my black jeans and a tight black top before turning to Blake. “Underwear?”
“I threw them out. You don’t need them.”
I blink, trying to discern from his unreadable expression if he is being serious or not. “My fairly large tits have been swinging in the wind for hours now. They need some support,” I whine, cupping them and relieving some of the strain.
“Fine,” he says and crosses over to the top drawer of the dresser. “Here.” He pulls out a black lace bra and holds it up by the straps.
“Thank you.” I cross over to him and smile as he helps me on with it, clasping it snugly at my back.
I rearrange my tits to sit more comfortably and, not bothering with knickers, pull on my jeans and top.
My ankles are bruised from Viper’s grip, but I hide my smile when I see the red marks.
I sit down to pull on my flat-soled boots, having a feeling we are going to end up in some dank, underground something or other at some point today.
“Why the library?” Viper asks, pulling his tee on.
I catch Rafferty’s eye. He looks tired, but he shakes it off. I go to him and place my hand on his chest. “You okay?”
He covers my hand with his, his skin cool against mine. “Never better, trouble.” His voice is a low rasp, but his eyes don’t quite match his casual tone. He gives my hand a quick squeeze before letting go, a silent acknowledgement that he’s been seen, that he’s okay enough to carry on.
Blake clears his throat, cutting through the quiet moment.
“They sent someone to retrieve an asset, located on a sub-level of what we are assuming is the library. Educated guess,” he adds before Viper can ask and shoves a phone at him.
“We need to find out what it is before they send a more competent team.”
“And who was the incompetent one?” Viper asks, looking up from the phone and handing it back to Blake.
“Tate Corven,” Rafferty says with a dismissive snort. “He won’t be a problem anymore. I promised you I would get him, and I did.” He shoots me his old, easy smile.
“Okay, so this is related, separate, or we don’t know?”
“We don’t know for sure, but I think it’s separate,” Raff says. “Gut instinct.”
“What are we thinking?” I ask, looking at the message on the phone Blake hands me. “A heist? A hostage situation? What is the asset?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
“Let’s go then,” I say, moving to my toolbox and arming myself with whatever I can. We have locked down this academy, but quite frankly, we don’t know who to trust, and who we locked in here with us.
Leaving Blake’s room behind, I shove the vulnerability I shared with Viper to the bottom of the abyss. Now isn’t the time to reflect on what we shared. We need our heads in the game.
We move through the academy grounds, a four-person army ready for whatever comes next. The library looms ahead, a wounded giant against the grey sky. The smell of wet ash and burnt paper hangs in the air, a funeral pyre for centuries of knowledge.
Inside, the damage is worse up close. Charred beams sag overhead, and piles of sodden, blackened books litter the floor like fallen soldiers. The hole blown in the wall offers a grim view of the quad.
“Venetia, don’t move too far away from me,” Viper murmurs. “We don’t know how structurally sound this building is.”
I nod, giving him peace of mind as we pick through the remnants of history.
Blake walks the perimeter of the oldest section, his eyes scanning the floor, the walls, looking for a discrepancy only he would notice. “The blast was precise,” he murmurs. “Designed to expose, not destroy. They weren’t trying to level the building; they were trying to get into the basement.”
“Are you saying there is no access?” I enquire.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. As I said to Raff earlier, the building was an add-on in the 17th century. It was built on solid ground.”
“Well, that’s debatable and raises a question. How did this other team of morons know there is something below?”
Raff snickers. “That about sums Corven up, but it’s a damn good question.”
“So, we need to find a way down to a basement that doesn’t exist?” I ask, scanning the charred remains of the library floor.
Viper moves closer to me, his body heat a comforting presence at my back. “If someone’s trying to retrieve something from down there, there has to be access. They wouldn’t go to all this trouble if they weren’t a hundred per cent sure.”
I nod, moving carefully across the debris-strewn floor. My boots crunch over broken glass and soggy book pages. The smell of smoke and wet paper fills my nostrils, making me wrinkle my nose in disgust.
“They blasted off this portion of the library. It was a deliberate act to target this particular area,” Blake murmurs, crouching down. “Wherever this access is, it’s on the floor.”
“So we look for something that looks like it might be an access point.”
“Start at the epicentre and move outwards,” he says, turning on his heel to stare at the crater in the ancient stone floor.
“Would it make sense that it’s directly under the epicentre?”
I cast my eyes over the ruins of the library floor, my mind working through the logic. “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? If they knew exactly what they were targeting, they’d blow a hole right over it.”
I step carefully toward the epicentre of the blast, where the floor has been reduced to broken stone and charred wood. Viper stays close behind me, but he doesn’t touch me. We both need a bit of physical space, I think, after what we shared.
“Look for anything out of place,” Blake says, already scanning the debris with methodical precision. “A seam in the stonework, a different pattern in the flooring, anything that doesn’t match the rest.”
I kneel down, ignoring the soot that immediately stains my jeans, and shift chunks of debris. The stone beneath is blackened but seems solid. “Nothing obvious here.”
Rafferty moves to my right, kicking aside a pile of wet, burnt pages with a huff. I glance up at him, but I don’t comment on his frustration. I’ll find out what’s bugging him later. Right now, we need to focus.
I brush my fingers over the stone, feeling for any irregularities. Something catches my attention. There’s a slight difference in texture between the two stones. They look almost identical. I would never have noticed if not for touching it. “Feel this,” I say to Blake.
He moves closer and frowns. Running his fingers over the stone and the ones next to it. He raises an eyebrow. “Did you just find something, my queen?”
“You tell me. You’re the expert here.”
He chuckles. “This stone,” he taps the one that feels rougher, “is older. The other stones that were laid for the floor of this building are newer. Copies, made to look identical, but erosion is a real thing and something you can’t recreate after the fact.”
“It’s an original stone, dating back to when the castle was built and the library was built around it.”
“Why would there be a single stone in the middle of the grassy castle grounds?” Raff asks.
“Because there is something underneath it. Something Lord whoever-the-fuck in the 17th century, found and decided he didn’t want anyone else to know about,” Viper states.
“Lord William Cravenmoor,” Blake says dryly.
I snicker. “Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so what was Lord Cravenmoor trying to hide?”
“Only one way to find out,” Viper says. “We need to get that stone up. Shovels?”
“Groundskeeper’s shed,” Blake says.
Viper rises and gestures to Raff. He walks two steps and then looks back at me. “You’re not staying here, wildcat. Move.”
I roll my eyes. With a sigh, I push myself to my feet, brushing the soot from my jeans. “Fine, fine. I’ll come with you to find shovels like a good little queen.”
Viper gives me a look that promises retribution for my sass later, and my pussy clenches in anticipation. I follow the boys out of the library, leaving behind the mysterious stone that’s apparently worth starting a war over.
The walk to the groundskeeper’s shed is quick and tense. It’s a small, squat building with a thatched roof that looks like it belongs in a fairy tale rather than on the grounds of a criminal training academy. Blake tries the door. It’s locked.
“Allow me,” Rafferty says with a grin, pulling out a small set of picks from his pocket. The lock gives way in seconds.
“Show off,” I mutter with a smile. “Bet I could’ve done it faster.”
Rafferty winks at me. “You can get the next one.”
“You bet I will,” I mutter, following him into the shed. The air inside is heavy with the smell of fertiliser and grass clippings.
Viper immediately heads to the far wall where various tools hang on hooks. He grabs two shovels and a pickaxe, handing one shovel to Rafferty. “Let’s get this shit done.”
We leave the groundskeeper’s shed behind and make our way back to the library. Despite the danger all around us, I feel a pang of excitement to uncover what this academy has been hiding.