by Sofia Daniel
Cruel Games
Knights of Templar Academy Book One
Sofia Daniel
Copyright © 2019 by Sofia Daniel.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
From Sofia Daniel
Chapter 1
Prison was a bitch on the hair, especially bleached blonde locks in need of regular conditioning. I squeezed two brittle strands between my fingertips and grimaced.
I shook my head. A girl plunges a paring knife into her cheating, drug-dealing soon-to-be-ex, then she’s locked away in a juvenile detention center where no one gives a damn about her split ends. And don’t get me started about how many nails I had to break trying to teach a bitch not to mess with my stuff.
Stretching my legs, I leaned back in the plastic seat of the interview room and stared at the two police officers. Detective Sergeant Spears, a thirty-something-year-old with the kind of ruddy complexion some people got from drinking too much beer. Next to him sat Detective Constable Barnes, a twitchy little weasel with a wispy, Fu Manchu mustache.
The sergeant leaned forward. “Sammy Kettering just woke up from intensive care to give a statement saying you stabbed him in the arm and pushed him down the stairs.”
“No comment,” I replied.
“And your fingerprints are all over the weapon.”
“No comment.”
“Lilah, I’m so glad the black eye has faded,” said DC Barnes, trying to play good cop. He pulled his whiskers between thin fingers. “Where did you get it?”
Suppressing the urge to roll my eyes, I said, “No comment.”
Sergeant Spears grunted. “What do you know about the cannabis farm in his basement—”
“My client already gave a statement after her arrest,” said the duty solicitor. “She has nothing else to add.”
I gave my legal advocate the side-eye. She could have saved us all the effort and spoken up earlier. Sammy knew from day one that I would fight back if someone hit me first. How many times had he seen me scrap against bitches in pubs and clubs who tried to start shit?
My lips tightened at the memory of that night. He must have been high on his own weed if he thought I would catch him stark bollock naked with my supposed best friend and believe he’d been practicing for a threesome.
Nichelle had dived behind the sofa as soon as I’d stepped into the living room, but Sammy had brazened it out. I shook my head. If the twat hadn’t punched me in the face and threatened to do more, I wouldn’t have reached for the knife.
Sergeant Spears folded his arms over his rounded stomach. “Fortunately for you, the Crown Prosecution Service has decided not to pursue the case.”
My heart made a quadruple full-back somersault with four twists, sending sparks of excitement across my chest. Tamping down my emotions, I raised my brows and kept my features neutral.
He continued, “Apparently, prosecuting a seventeen-year-old girl for an assault that led to the arrest of one of Richley’s biggest cannabis dealers is not in the public interest.”
Sergeant Spears officially ended the interview and turned off the recording device.
As soon as the officers rose from their seats and strode to the door of the windowless room, the muscles around my neck and shoulders relaxed. The longest breath in the history of police interviews whooshed out of my lungs. Finally!
Constable Barnes paused at the door. “It’s amazing how Sammy fell down the basement stairs and knocked open the door leading to his underground weed farm. It nearly mirrors what happened to your stepfather.”
“What are you trying to say?” I snapped.
“People talk.” He opened the door for his superior officer. “And they come to conclusions. You might want to leave Richley’s underworld and associate with a better class of person.”
“Leave her alone.” Sergeant Spears ushered the constable out of the room. “She’s better than any sniffer dog on the force.”
I suppressed a shudder at the thought of the German Shepherds that had plagued my childhood.
Constable Barnes stepped out of the door and let it click shut. All traces of elation shriveled in my chest and died, leaving behind a trail of festering dread. If Sammy ever got hold of me…
I stared down at the table and let my shoulders slump.
The duty solicitor placed a hand on my back. “Congratulations, Miss Hancock.”
“Thanks.” I stood and smoothed down my bottle-green, juvenile detention tracksuit. “What happens next?”
We returned to Richley Juvenile Detention Center, a shit hole at the edges of one of the six boroughs of London that didn’t have its own tube station. The September midday sun shone down on a concrete building surrounded by steel fencing topped with barbed wire.
One of the sour-faced guards returned my clothes and led me to a changing room, where I finally shucked the tracksuit and Herman Munster shoes in favor of skinny jeans, a tank top, and a leather jacket. By the time I’d gone through security and reached a waiting area lit by a flickering strobe light, the duty solicitor had gone.
An Indian woman stood and looked me straight in the eye. She was about five-five, the same height as me, with a similar, slender build. But unlike me, she wore huge, gold earrings and siren-red lipstick that seemed to compensate for her cropped hair.
“Lilah Hancock?”
My brows drew together. “Yes?”
She shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled out a business card. “Sameera Reddy.” Her face split into a grin of professionally whitened teeth. “I’m from Richley Social services. Can we—”
“I’m not going to one of your shitty foster homes.” I held out my palm to stave her off. After two years of freedom with Sammy, I wasn’t about to put myself under someone’s grubby thumb.
Her face fell. “Actually, I have another offer for you.”
“An apartment?” I asked.
“No.”
“Have you spoken to my mother?”
“I did.” Ms. Reddy lowered her mascaraed lashes and thinned her lips.
My stomach tightened, and I braced myself for a verbal punch in the gut. Mother was a black belt in hurtful blows.
It didn’t take a genius in body language to translate what the social worker didn’t want to say. Mother still hadn’t forgiven me for getting Billy Hancock arrested. I refused to call him dad or father or even uncle. The man was a brute who deserved every second of his seven-year-sentence.
“What did she say?�
� I asked.
“Mrs. Hancock wants you out of Richley. The Parole Board has fixed your stepfather’s release date, and she says it’s not safe for you here.”
“Right.” The maternal concern was unexpected. She’d always made a big show of not wanting me anywhere within a mile of her coke-head self. “Am I going somewhere else to study, then?”
“A headmaster up in Templar has offered you a place at his prestigious academy.”
“Where?” I drew my brows together. It almost sounded like Temple, one of the underground stations in central London.
“Scotland.”
Disappointment, as heavy as a bag of rocks, pulled my heart down to my stomach. Except for the occasional school trip to the south coast, I’d never left Greater London, let alone England. And how would a headmaster from a posh school even know about me?
Ms. Reddy’s bright lips spread into what she probably thought was an encouraging smile. To me, it looked like the kind of expression dealers of ‘class A’ made when they offered the final free sample guaranteed to get their victim hooked.
“No, way.” I pulled my gaze away from the woman and reached into my bag.
My phone lay beneath a sea of foil and paper chewing gum wrappers. I pulled it out and pressed the ‘on’ button. The battery indicator said thirty-one percent. Just enough to call an Uber to Sammy’s place, pick up my things, and leave.
“Miss Hancock?”
Ignoring the woman, I walked through the waiting room, past a loud family of red-heads trying to soothe a wailing baby, and out of the heavy, wooden door.
An overcast sky hung over the detention center’s tarmac courtyard, and a strong breeze hit the side of my face, blowing platinum strands into my eyes. Squinting, I scrolled through pages of apps to find the familiar black-and-white Uber logo.
As Ms. Reddy followed at my heels, yapping at me like a shorn poodle, I tapped the shortcut to estimate the fare from the detention center to Sammy’s place and winced at the price.
“Will you at least speak to Mr. Burgh?” asked Ms. Reddy.
“Why?” I muttered. “Is he going to pay me to join his academy?”
“There’s a small bursary—”
“How much?”
“You can discuss that with the headmaster when you see him.”
My hand containing the smartphone dropped to the side. “And I suppose you’re about to hand me a one-way ticket to Scotland.”
She frowned. “There’s no need for an attitude.”
I clenched my teeth and glanced away, my gaze settling on a lorry trundling past the industrial estate going in the opposite direction.
If my conversation with Ms. Reddy was my very first encounter with social services, she’d be right. On the surface, it looked like the woman was trying to help me. But ever since Mother turfed me out of Billy’s house at the age of thirteen, I’d encountered one social worker after another, each as disappointing as the last.
Social workers were great at first, often starting meetings full of promises and eager to listen, leaving their ‘clients’ on a high. Then weeks after, when none of the discussed improvements materialized, they became curt and defensive on the phone as though struck by selective amnesia.
If my life was a fairytale and I was Cinderella, then a social worker would be the fairy godmother who handed out the Emperor’s new clothes in place of ball gowns. Totally unfit for purpose and a complete let-down.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
My thumb hovered over the UberX option. “Getting a cab.”
“I can give you a lift into Richley town center,” she said.
It was safe to assume that Sammy and I were finished. A knifing and an arrest for the production of a controlled drug would do that to a bloke. And with no steady income, I needed to keep my eye on the pennies. Clicking the home button, I slipped the smartphone back into my bag.
“Alright, then.” I looked over her shoulder at the vehicles parked on the road beyond the steel fence. “Where’s your car?”
Chapter 2
Ms. Reddy stopped her car outside Sammy’s place on Beddington Road. It was a detached, four-bedroom house with the usual Victorian architecture such as huge bay windows, a stained-glass front door, and a basement with adequate space to install enough hydroponics and grow lamps to produce a fortune in weed.
Our cars stood in the off-street parking outside the house. Someone had smashed the headlights of his black BMW and spray painted over his 5AMMY 99 license plate. Likely an upper-middle-class neighbor outraged to be living on the same street as a drug dealer.
Thanking the social worker for the ride, I opened the door and stepped into the paved courtyard.
The opening of a car window hummed from behind. “Will it be safe to return to Mr. Kettering’s house?”
I turned and frowned at the worry lines marring her forehead. “He’s still at the University Hospital, right?”
“I believe so,” Ms. Reddy shouted over the sound of a supermarket delivery van starting its engine.
“It’s not like I’ll be staying long.” I rushed past the BMWs to the house’s front entrance and pulled out my keys.
The door swung open, and I could immediately tell the difference. Gone were the spicy scents of the incense we burned to disguise the sweet, musky smell of cannabis growing beneath us. Instead, the combined scents of strangers filled my nostrils. I locked the door behind me and sighed. The police had probably removed the farm and confiscated it as evidence.
I shook my head and walked down the hallway. Sammy and I had a good thing going until he’d ruined things with his fists, and I’d lashed out. The living room was untouched save for remnants of fingerprint dust on one of the door handles.
My phone rang. I reached into my pocket and glanced at the screen. It was Mother.
“You’re out, then?” she said in a deadpan voice.
“The CPS dropped all charges against me.”
“Where are you?”
“Why?”
“Sammy’s awake.” She paused, waiting for a response. When I didn’t answer, she added, “His associates know you stabbed—”
“It was a slash,” I snapped. “He’s in hospital with a head injury.”
“They also know who pushed him down the stairs and called the paramedics, who then called the police.”
With a groan, I dashed up the stairs, waiting for her to call me a snitch. Or one of the other insults she had hurled at me when Billy got sentenced.
I sped past our bedroom into the sewing room Sammy and I had set up a few months after I had moved in. It was the smallest room, slightly bigger than a box, with a sewing table in the middle and a dressmaker’s dummy by the sash window.
Streams of afternoon sun filled the room, making me squint to find my cutting shears.
Beneath the tiled hearth of the cast iron Victorian fireplace lay a stash of money we’d saved for a rainy day. Clutching my shears like a dagger, I hacked at the grouting, creating tiny clouds of dust.
“Lilah, are you still there?” asked Mother.
I hunched a shoulder and brought the phone closer to my ear. “Yes?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Um…” I wedged the blades of the sewing scissors under the tile and loosened it from the hearth. Six dust-covered rolls of fifty-pound notes lay in the secret stash. I pulled one out and slipped it into my bag. Sammy could consider it my severance pay for all those hours I’d spent mixing nutrients and maintaining grow lights as his underground horticulturist.
“No?” I said.
“Someone’s probably watching the house right now.” Her voice rose to a squeak.
A spike of adrenaline lanced through my heart, making it pump harder. Every limb trembled with readiness as I pushed the tile back into place and cleaned off the dust with a square of fabric. “Shit!”
“There’s a social worker,” said Mother. “Ummm… Sameera Shetty, I think.”
“Ms. Reddy?”
>
“The dykey-looking Indian girl with the bright red lipstick,” she replied.
I would have rolled my eyes if I wasn’t in so much trouble. Married to the largest dealer of cocaine in Richley, but she didn’t have an ounce of tolerance for alternative lifestyles.
“What about her?” I asked.
“She’ll introduce you to the headmaster of Templar Academy.”
“I’m not going to Scot—”
“Where are you going to hide?” she hissed. “Billy’s leaving prison in a few weeks, and he’s convinced you were the one who told CID to follow him to his warehouse.”
The lie slipped from my lips. “But I would never—”
“Shut up for a minute and listen! People might have given you the benefit of the doubt when Billy got arrested, but Sammy…”
My shoulders slumped. Telling anyone from this lifestyle that he hit me first wasn’t going to fly. “Where can I find this headmaster—”
The bell rang.
Every ounce of blood drained from my face.
“Is there someone at the door?” asked Mother.
“Yes,” I whispered into the phone.
“Find somewhere to hide,” she whispered back. “And stay away from the windows.”
“Right.” I bent into a low crouch, glad to be upstairs.
The sound of a motorcycle engine so close to the back of the house turned my stomach into knots.
“And call the bloody police.” She hung up.
The bell rang again, its shrill sound making my eardrums vibrate.
“Hello?” shouted a female voice. “Miss Hancock? It’s Sameera from Social Services. The headmaster, Mr. Burgh, wanted to see you rather urgently. He’s with me right now.”