33. Blake
Blake
T he moment Cravenmoor’s transmission cuts off, I’m already diving deeper into Leonard’s phone. That conversation wasn’t just a threat—it was a data-gathering opportunity. While Venetia and Cravenmoor were posturing, I was running trace protocols in the background.
“Did you get it?” Viper asks, moving to peer over my shoulder.
“Got enough,” I mutter, following digital breadcrumbs. “The call was routed through seven proxy servers, but one of them had a vulnerability. I can narrow down his physical location to within a few miles.”
Venetia approaches, still radiating the controlled fury that’s been building all night. “Where is he?”
“About thirty miles north of here, which explains how he’s been coordinating tonight’s attacks,” I mutter, diving deeper into Leonard’s encrypted messages. The more I decrypt, the more we learn. “This goes back months. Look at this.”
“January fifteenth,” I read aloud. “Recruitment of PMC units proceeding ahead of schedule. Target families identified through trafficking network participation rates.”
“February twenty-third: Graduate placement programme showing ninety-three per cent success rate. Key positions infiltrated in Chester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and Newcastle operations.”
“March eighth: Academy crisis deployment approved. Death protocols to be implemented with selective antidote distribution.”
Sophia whistles low. “He’s been planning this for at least six months. Maybe longer.”
“It gets worse. Look at this from last week: ‘Continental partners confirmed for October consolidation. Berlin, Amsterdam, and Marseille operations standing by for coordinated expansion.’”
The assembled students fall silent. We all knew we were dealing with something big, but the scope of Cravenmoor’s ambition is staggering.
“He’s not just trying to take over British organised crime,” Venetia says. “He’s building a European criminal empire.”
“With himself as emperor,” Viper growls. “And everyone else as subjects.”
I dive deeper into the communication logs, cross-referencing names and locations with Knights intel. “The mercenary units hitting territories tonight? They’re just the opening move. According to this, similar operations are planned for Dublin, Glasgow, and Cardiff over the next week.”
“What about the families whose heirs actually died?” asks Peter Hutchinson. “Fairfax, Halliday, McPherson. Where do they fit into this?”
“He’s wiping them out,” Viper says. He looks like he’s itching to say more but doesn’t want to right now.
“He’s erasing entire bloodlines,” Venetia states. “Families that have existed for generations but now have no living heirs.”
“Not just erasing them,” I correct, reading further. “He’s absorbing their operations, their resources, their people. Anyone useful gets folded into his organisation. Everyone else...”
I don’t need to finish that sentence. The implications are clear.
“So, we’re a little bit closer to knowing what’s what. Cravenmoor is trying to build a cross-European empire and is taking out any families he can to do it, starting with the three tonight, plus my dad and Viper’s territory. I need to call him.”
I nod and watch her as she pulls out her phone.
I go back to Leonard’s phone, but the entire thing goes blank. Access denied. “Figures,” I mutter. “I’m surprised it took that long.”
“Maybe he wanted us to know,” Venetia says, her thumb tapping the screen as she dials her dad. “But this is only the beginning.”
The phone rings twice before Anton picks up.
“Dad?” Venetia’s voice carries a tension I haven’t heard before. Even through everything we’ve been through, she’s maintained her composure. But talking to her father about this... that’s different.
“I’m here,” comes Anton’s voice through the speaker. He sounds tired, strained. “Still breathing, which is more than I can say for a lot of people tonight.”
“How bad is it?”
“Bad for them. They picked the wrong fucking family to mess with.”
“Damn straight.”
“You okay?”
“Alive. Which is more than I can say for the resurrected heirs.”
“Do I want to know?”
“No,” Viper states.
“What about the others? Fairfax, Halliday, and McPherson?”
The silence stretches too long. When Anton speaks again, his voice is grim. “Helena Fairfax is dead. Shot while trying to defend her estate. The Halliday compound in Leeds is gone—they used explosives. As for McPherson, never take on a Scotsman unless you’re prepared to die.”
“So he’s okay.”
“More than.”
“That’s something,” she mutters.
“What about mine?” Viper asks.
“South Side’s holding,” Anton replies, and I can hear the respect in his voice. “Your boys know how to fight dirty. Lost some people, but the core operations are intact. Landon’s coordinating the defence.”
Relief floods through Viper’s features, though he tries to hide it. “They came at us hard.”
“Professional hit squads. Military-trained, well-equipped. But they underestimated street fighters who’ve got nothing to lose.” Anton pauses. “The question is what happens next.”
“Cravenmoor’s not going to stop because his first wave failed.” I lean closer to Venetia’s phone. “Anton, this is Blake. We’ve got intelligence suggesting this is just the opening move of something much larger. Continental operations, coordinated expansion across Europe.”
“Cravenmoor?”
“Jonathon. The heir.”
“I see,” he mutters. I can almost hear the wheels turning.
“Somewhere along the line, your family were involved in this,” I state and ignore Venetia’s glare.
“Of course they were. They stopped the operation in their tracks.”
“No, I mean, they were part of the blackmailing to the Cravenmoors. Those items we found underground, the crown, the necklace, they were once part of the Corbyn assets. Someone paid Cravenmoor off to keep their secrets.”
The silence on the line is a physical thing, a vacuum that sucks the air from the hall. Anton doesn’t deny it. A lesser man would have blustered, but he just lets my accusation hang there, a testament to its own truth.
“History has a price, Mr Locke,” he finally says, his voice devoid of any emotion. “Sometimes it’s paid in gold, sometimes in blood. My ancestors made their choice. Now my daughter must make hers.”
I look at Venetia. Her face is a perfect, neutral mask, but her knuckles are white where she’s gripping her phone. Her legacy isn’t just a throne, it’s a ledger filled with debts she never incurred, written in the ink of her own family’s compromises.
“You’ve underestimated your opponent, Anton,” Viper cuts in, his voice a low growl. “Cravenmoor isn’t just playing for territory. He’s playing for keeps. He wants Venetia dead because of her claim to his family’s legacy.”
“Then I suggest you play harder,” Anton replies, and the line goes dead.
Venetia slowly lowers the phone. The loyalist students are watching her, their faces unreadable. She has their allegiance for now, but it’s an allegiance built on the assumption of her strength, her unimpeachable bloodline.
“So,” she says, her voice dangerously soft as she turns to face the room. “Cravenmoor thinks he can use my history against me. He’s about to find out what a Corbyn-Hale does when you corner her.”
I smile, knowing I will help her level this place to the ground if I have to. One kind of hopes that won’t happen. This is her legacy, everyone with eyes can see it. This is her seat of power. This place is hers as much as it is Cravenmoor’s. Blood is blood, after all.
“So what’s the next move?” Cole asks. “My dad will kick my fucking arse if we lose this place.”
“Same,” Sean pipes up. “This is a test for us as well. We can’t fail.”
“We hear that loud and clear,” I say. “The plan is not to abandon St. Seb’s.
We aren’t going anywhere. As stated previously, this place used to be a castle.
It sits on high ground. It has defences we don’t even know about yet, but soon will.
We have resources. We have power. We have time. We can wait.”
Viper shoots me a look. He is anxious about his own territory.
“Go and make your call. Report back.”
He looks like he wants to argue with my order, but his need to know wins out. He places his hand on Venetia’s waist and kisses her forehead before he moves out.
“So, what do we know?” she asks. “We know that I’m a Hale descended from William Cravenmoor.
We know that the Hales were baddies and that Edmund Corbyn married into them and then used that against them by burning their operation to the ground.
However, now we have the Cravenmoors back in the game.
The Graduates rose from the ashes after Cravenmoor made this into the Cravenmoor Academy.
It has obviously expanded to include the separate colleges.
We here at St. Seb’s are the original. This is the ancestral seat of the Cravenmoors. ”
“And you.”
She smiles at me. “Right. So, we are still fighting on two fronts. Two factions in the same organisation. The ones who worship the Hales and want me as their pure blood leader, and Jonathon Cravenmoor, who is the head of this operation. What I’m still stuck on is the mass poisoning.”
“I think I might have a theory to throw in with the others,” I say.
“We know that Lloyd poisoned the students who remained here. The ones that were explicitly told by their parents to stay to sort out their financial situations. We know that Lloyd was working for the faction that worships the Hales. That doesn’t include Cravenmoor.
Lloyd meant to kill them all, not taking into account that some of the parents used preventative measures so that wouldn’t happen.
This was an opportunity for Cravenmoor to seize the territories of the families whose only legacy died here.
There was no one left to contest the territories once the family heads were killed. ”
“You’re saying this was opportunistic on Cravenmoor’s behalf?” Raff says, with a nod. “That makes more sense than anything we’ve come up with to date.”
I grin. “I know. Not just a pretty face.”
Venetia chuckles. “That you aren’t. You are a fucking genius. But it also begs the question of how did Cravenmoor know who would live and who would die.”
“He has eyes,” Raff says. “That also makes sense. This is his land, his buildings. He has been watching us from the start, more than likely through the CCTV. It’s right fucking there for him to pull up.”
It’s a stunningly simple oversight in a complex game. Of course he has eyes. We’ve been so consumed by external threats and internal betrayals that we never stopped to consider the most basic form of surveillance. We’re rats in his maze, and he’s been watching us run.
“The security office. The entire CCTV network is routed through there. He will have easy access to that system.”
“He’s seen everything,” Venetia says, her expression hardening into something sharp and dangerous.
“Then let’s cut him off,” I state and stand up, leading the way to the security lodge, cursing myself for not thinking about this before.