“We can’t let this stand,” Kyan growled, his thumb twisting Tatum’s wedding ring back and forth on her finger as he kept hold of her hand and it was as if he’d spoke my own thoughts aloud.
“I have made a full and detailed report of every incident up to date and will add tonight’s attack to the list at the earliest opportunity,” Saint said in a low voice. “I have contacts in the police who are just waiting for our word on who the culprit is and they will cart them away and make sure they rot in prison for the rest of their miserable lives.”
“What if it’s an underage student?” I asked.
“What if I want to gut them instead?” Kyan growled.
“We all want to see blood spill,” Saint replied, his jaw ticking. “And I’m sure I can buy us more than a little leeway for a healthy dose of corporal punishment. But I can only assume that it is one of the students here as it seems highly unlikely that it would be a member of staff. That being the case, we must assume they are the child of one of the richest and most influential families in the country. I can’t see a way for us to easily get away with murder without at least a little suspicion colouring our reputations after the fact. A miserable existence in some cell is the wise choice for them. A few years down the line, if we’re still feeling this level of hatred and anger towards them then maybe something can be arranged. As for their age, if they’re not eighteen yet, we can lock them up ourselves until they are. This motherfucker isn’t getting away with juvie.”
“That all depends on us actually finding them though,” I ground out.
“Then let’s go find them,” Saint announced, getting to his feet and carefully placing Tatum’s hand back down to rest on her stomach.
“Fuck yes. I won’t sleep tonight until I’ve spilled some blood anyway,” Kyan announced and he stood, lifting Tatum in his arms and releasing me from the couch. She hardly even stirred, the effects of whatever she’d been dosed with clearly keeping her out of it. Bile rose in my throat at the idea of how vulnerable she was right now, of how vulnerable she would have been in that monster’s arms if she hadn’t managed to run from them.
I got up and Saint moved to clip Blake around the ear to wake him.
“Wassgoinon?” he slurred, blinking up at us sleepily and I had to remind myself that he’d been forced to swim half way across the lake tonight before carrying Tatum all the way back to The Temple from the beach. He must have been feeling near dead from exhaustion.
“We’re going hunting,” Saint announced. “And we’re trusting you with our girl while we’re gone.”
Blake nodded seriously, rearranging himself to lay back on the couch more comfortably before gesturing to Kyan to place Tatum down with him. He did so, laying her head down on Blake’s chest as he wrapped his arm around her to hold her close and she murmured something sleepily.
All of us froze to hear her words and my heart leapt as she spoke them without so much as opening an eye. “I love you.”
All four of us looked between each other uncomfortably for a moment as we wondered who she was aiming that at or if it had even been intended for us at all. She could have just been dreaming about her family for all we knew. Though Kyan had been boasting about her saying it to him when he was dying at every opportunity he got too.
“I love you too, baby,” he purred, leaning close and kissing her cheek as he tucked a blanket over her and Blake.
“Asshole,” I muttered as he gave us a smug grin, but I refused to let it bother me. I’d come to the decision that if I wanted this thing with Tatum to keep going the way it was then I was only going to let myself focus on what she had with me. The other Night Keepers and their relationships with her weren’t going to fuck this up for us because I let myself get jealous.
Saint took a moment to lean over her, gathering her damp hair and tugging it away from her face to make her more comfortable. His fingers lingered against her cheek as he looked down at her and there was a softness to his features that I’d never seen in him before. He wiped his face to a blank mask again before he stood upright and I was guessing I hadn’t been meant to see that, but I had. And the most annoying thing was that it made me question some of the assumptions I’d been clinging to about him.
Because if he was capable of caring about her the way it was starting to look like he did, then I had to accept that there was more to him than I wanted to see.
He stepped away and I took my moment with her, leaning down and kissing her lips softly, the warmth of them banishing some of the worries in my heart. She was breathing deeply, no sign of her feeling unwell aside from the fact that she clearly needed to sleep it off and I took comfort from that. But the dark blue bruise which was growing on her jaw had my anger burning hot with the need to destroy whoever the fuck had hurt her.
Blake had already closed his eyes again and I glanced between Kyan and Saint as the three of us moved away to let them rest.
“Where are we going to start?” Kyan asked hungrily, his eyes alight with the promise of violence on the air.
“Did you let Toby out of the closet when you checked on him?” Saint asked, turning away from us and heading up to his room while we waited at the foot of the stairs.
“No,” Kyan replied with a shrug. “I had more pressing shit to deal with and I didn’t much feel like offering out explanations.”
We waited while Saint disappeared at the top of the stairs and he soon reappeared wearing a shirt and carrying one for me. I took it with a muttered thanks, pulling it on as we all headed for the door and grabbed our coats.
“We’d better go and let him out. Maybe if we give him the chance to speak up, he will have some insight into who might have set him up. There is of course a chance that he was just a convenient patsy, but someone as emotional as the Justice Ninja would have most likely targeted him because he was an enemy of theirs whether he knew it or not.” Saint pulled the door open and we all headed out into the cool evening air.
It was gone eleven so there weren’t many people about, but it wasn’t so late that we’d be waking up the entire campus either. Kyan swung his baseball bat happily as we walked, a dark smile tugging at the corner of his lips which promised someone would end the night screaming at his hand.
We made it to the Redwood Dining Hall where they’d left Toby earlier on and Saint used a key to unlock the dark building. He really shouldn’t have had that key and as the headmaster I was pretty sure it was my duty to take it from him alongside the rest of them, but it was really the least of the crimes I was letting him get away with around here so it didn’t seem like it was worth mentioning.
We strode down the corridor outside the dining hall until we came to the closet in question and Kyan unbolted the door while whistling the Kill Bill tune, Twisted Nerve by Bernard Herrmann.
“I thought we were meant to be here to say sorry, not scare the shit out of him,” I muttered.
“He’s covered in flour and olive oil,” Saint said flatly. “I think this conversation needs to be had after he’s cleaned up. No need to jump the gun.”
Kyan swung the door open, illuminating the flashlight on his cell phone and shining it down on the shivering, shirtless, flour and olive oil covered boy inside it.
“It’s your lucky day, Stalker,” Kyan announced, swinging his baseball bat up to rest over his shoulder. “But King Saint can’t bear to look at you while you’re in such a god awful state, let alone have a conversation with you in your current condition.” He waved a vague hand at Toby’s entire being in explanation and the guy just cowered, clearly having no fucking idea what was happening.
“He’s saying you need to get your ass up,” I supplied. “We’re all going to go back to your dorm and have a nice little chat. Saint will lose his shit if he has to look at you in that state for long though, so you’re gonna need a shower and some clean clothes before he will lower himself to talk to you.”
Saint’s lips twitched with amusement as I looked at him and goddammit, I grinned back. Fuck, n
ow we were joking around together. What was next? Was I going to start actually trusting him to do all of that shit to his dad like he’d promised? Why didn’t that even seem as crazy as it had when he’d first said it to me? I’d been so relieved that he wasn’t going to throw me at the mercy of the law over my relationship with Tatum that I think I’d been in too much shock to fully grasp the rest of what he’d been offering at the time. But it had been a week now and he’d been nothing but…well, not nice because this was Saint Memphis, but he’d encouraged Tatum to sit next to me on the couch the other night and when she’d kissed me in front of all of them, he’d smirked like he was pleased about it. He’d also looked half inclined to murder me over his jealousy, but still.
Toby scrambled upright, blinking against the light of the cell phone and Kyan was nice enough to lower it so it wasn’t shining right in his face.
“After you,” Kyan said, indicating the way out with his bat and Toby nodded as he scurried ahead of us and we fell into line as we followed like a pack of wolves stalking a deer.
We walked behind him all the way back to Hazel House, Saint on one side of me and Kyan on the other, our shoulders brushing companionably and me actually feeling comfortable between them, like I fucking belonged there.
Kyan kept whistling his psycho tune and Toby looked like he was one good scare away from adding shit smears to the flour and oil combo that was already coating him. It seemed a bit cruel of us to be letting him believe we were going to do something else to him when we’d actually come to apologise and set him free, but without a full explanation he wouldn’t accept us being nice anyway.
We followed him to his dorm then waited while he scurried away for a shower and Saint sneered at the cleanliness of his room which apparently didn’t meet his standards even though it seemed fine to me.
When Toby reappeared, he was washed, dressed and looking utterly fucking terrified. Points to him for walking his ass back here if he was that convinced that we’d been planning something horrible, but then again I guessed he knew it was always worse for those who tried to run.
“Take a seat,” Saint commanded, gesturing to the bed and I moved to lean against his dresser while Kyan threw himself down on the other bed in the room which clearly belonged to another student, but they weren’t here to complain so I guessed he didn’t care.
“Look, I’ve been doing everything you say,” Toby began and the fear in his eyes as they darted between the three of us made me feel kinda shitty. I wasn’t about to feel bad for trying to protect my girl from a predator, but he’d never been the one who should have borne the brunt of our anger and for that I really was sorry.
“Forget all of that,” Saint commanded. “We are here to inform you that we have evidence that proves you are not in fact, Tatum’s stalker.”
Toby’s eyes widened with hope and he twisted his hands in his lap. “You do?” he breathed.
“We do,” Saint agreed. “So. This is a formal apology on behalf of myself and all of the Night Keepers. We were wrong and you have been punished unjustly. You are no longer an Unspeakable and your name is once again Toby Rosner.”
“That’s it?” Toby asked, looking so fucking happy that I couldn’t help but smile for him too. “It’s all over?”
“No,” Saint said and Toby looked terrified for a moment before he continued. “You have suffered terribly at our hands. Of course it would not be enough for us to merely make an apology and return your name to you. So, I have come up with what I think is a fair offer for reparations, but if you don’t agree then you may of course tell us what it is you think you deserve.”
“Reparations?” Toby asked, staring between the three of us like this was some kind of crazy joke and he couldn’t actually believe a word of it.
Kyan chuckled like this was funny as fuck and I just shrugged. I hadn’t realised that Saint intended to make amends for the shit we’d done to this kid, but I had to say I was impressed by his morals even letting him know that that was the right thing to do. And by the fact that he actually had morals. Fuck, was he just about to prove to me once and for all that he wasn’t a total son of a bitch? Because if he stood up like a man and owned his shit and tried to make amends for it then that told me all I needed to know about his similarities to his father, the man who had lied and cheated and destroyed my family to cover up his own wrongdoing.
“We got it wrong,” I said. “And we’ve been total cocks to you, so that sounds fair to me.”
Toby nodded though I could tell he would be happy if we just left it at giving him his name back and promising not to torture him anymore.
“I think that the mental and physical anguish we caused you was severe enough to equal a financial sum of one hundred thousand dollars,” Saint said calmly and I had to fight not to gape at that ridiculous sum of money, but he wasn’t done there. “Per week that you were subjected to it.”
“A hundred thousand a week?” I asked, because surely I hadn’t heard him right. We’d been hounding Toby for months, that was a fucking fortune.
Saint cut me a scathing look and went on. “Please ignore the pauper in the room. Does that sum seem fair to you? I will round the final six days up to the full weekly sum too as a show of good faith.”
“Err, yeah,” Toby agreed and I could see that he was calculating that amount too. That was a fuck ton of money, why didn’t I just volunteer to be their punching bag for a few months? I’d be set for fucking life.
“Good.” Saint pulled an honest to shit cheque book from his back pocket and wrote out so many zeros that I just stared at the thing before he signed it with a flourish and handed it to Toby. “I will of course make sure your parents understand that those rumours about your drug use and dealing were false as well as reassure them about any other unfortunate rumours which may have reached their notice. Additionally, I happen to know the Dean of admissions at Brown so I can make sure you get that placement you want. I can also arrange several favourable business deals for your father’s company, and I am willing to offer you the hand of friendship for life. This means that, assuming you never try to fuck me over, I will gladly offer you my support in any business dealings that we may have in our futures. Is this acceptable to you? Does it make us even?”
“Yeah,” Toby breathed. “More than even. I’ve already forgotten about all of it.”
Saint quirked a smile then shot me a look that said it was my turn to speak, but I had no idea what I was meant to be saying so I just raised an eyebrow in question.
Saint sighed like I was testing his patience and inclined his head to Toby but I still wasn’t getting it, so he was forced to explain. “Nash has something to offer you in reparations too,” he said firmly.
“I do?” I glanced between him and Toby, but I didn’t have a small fortune to hand over. Hell, I doubted I owned a single thing he wanted. He might have been at the bottom of the pecking order recently, but he was still a trust fund kid with more money than I’d ever be able to lay claim to. But he was looking at me all expectantly and shit, so I had to think of something. Not least because if I allowed Saint to be the better man in this situation, I was going to have to seriously revaluate the way I looked at the world. “Err, yeah, how about I…put you back on the football team?”
“Really?” he asked hopefully, looking like the idea of that appealed to him more than the megabucks Saint was dropping. Fuck yes.
“Yeah. And Blake said he wants you to be captain,” I added, hoping that Blake would be okay with that. He would probably be pissed though, because his whole thing was about being the best but we had made this kid’s life hell, so it seemed like a minor sacrifice in comparison.
“Wow, yeah, my dad would be so proud, that would be amazing,” Toby gushed and I grinned, turning to Kyan and passing the buck to him.
“I will offer you one free shot at me.” He rolled upright and moved to stand before Toby so that he could deliver the hit.
“How many times exactly have you punched him durin
g his time served as Stalker?” Saint drawled like he was less than impressed by this offer.
Kyan thought about that for a moment then smirked triumphantly. “I lost count. So to make it fair, he can use the bat.” He hooked the baseball bat off of the floor and spun it around to offer Toby the handle before standing there with his arms wide, waiting for the blow to fall.
Toby stared at the bat in his hands for a long moment and I couldn’t help but take a step forward in protest.
“He could break bones,” I said, shaking my head. “Or cave your damn skull in.”
“Is that what you want, Toby?” Kyan taunted. “Are you hungering for my death in payment for my crimes? Come on, I bet you’ve been aching to make one of us bleed. You’ll never get a shot like this again.”
Toby got to his feet, his brow furrowed as he hefted the bat in his hand like he was weighing it and Saint placed a hand on my shoulder to hold me back as we waited to see what he’d do.
He gripped it in two hands, swinging it back as he looked at Kyan and my gut knotted in concern at the insanity of this, but Kyan didn’t even fucking blink.
“No,” Toby said suddenly, dropping the bat so that it clattered to the floor. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want you to find the motherfucker who set me up and make them pay. Make them pay for Tatum and make them pay for me too.”
Kyan laughed darkly and slapped his hand into Toby’s. “You have yourself a deal, brother.”
“I’m guessing you’ve had plenty of time to think about who might have been the one to set you up,” I said. “So have you got any ideas for us on where to look?”
Toby sighed and dropped back down onto his bed with a shake of his head. “I wish I fucking did, man. I’ve thought about it over and over and I just can’t think of a single person who hates me enough to inflict all the shit I’ve been through on me. All I keep thinking is that the night you all turned up here to search our rooms, you took them by surprise and they had to get rid of the evidence that linked them to the stalking fast. So maybe it’s someone who lives on this floor and I was just the dumb fucker who left my door unlocked or maybe it’s someone more calculating than that who knew me and Tatum were friends and thought you’d believe it was me easily.”
Kings of Anarchy Page 52