Page 432 of Knox Academy Omnibus
Actually, Sawyer makes a good point. I’ve been around enough blood today. I don’t know what will happen, how I’ll react, if I’m exposed to more directly.
“Thank you. I guess the smell won’t disturb me in here,” I reply. “Will I be able to hear everything?”
“Yes. And we’ll be filming the whole thing in case he does say anything we miss or need to corroborate later.”
“Okay. Let’s do this.”
“One last thing.” He hesitates. “We might have to lie to him. Say some things to provoke a response. You trust us, right?”
“One hundred percent.”
“Good.”
One by one they kiss me as they leave the room. I close the door behind them and take my seat. It feels macabre to reach for the snacks, but my stomach is screaming at me, so I reach for a KitKat anyway.
Have a break, have a KitKat.
Well, now this feels even more inappropriate.
I don’t have time to ponder it as the lights flicker to life next door and the door opens and my four men walk in. Even more inappropriate than my choice of snack is the way my body instantly reacts to seeing them. Sawyer has removed his suit jacket and tie, even going as far as to undo his top button. Slate and Kalen have both rolled up their shirt sleeves to reveal their powerful forearms, and Onyx has stripped from the waist up, his muscles rippling in the fluorescent light as he paces in the background.
In the centre of the room, Harold grins at his grandsons from where he’s tied to a chair, as I suspected he would be. I wasn’t expecting the grin though, or the state of him. I thought the medical team was patching him up. He looks awful; like an information extraction team has already spent several hours trying to convince him to talk. His face is bruised and swollen, his nose bloody, his clothes torn and stained. He looks old, but not frail.
There’s still a blazing fire of defiance in his eyes.
“Hello, Harold,” Sawyer says resignedly.
“What? No ‘grandfather?’” Harold sneers. “I see the ‘sir’ didn’t last long. Where’s the damn respect.”
“Respect is earned and lost, not given freely. You deserve none,” Sawyer calmly replies. “I didn’t think you would be this easy to secure.”
“What makes you think I didn’t want to be captured?” he retorts.
“Why would you? You’ve been here at HQ for hours and you’ve not managed to escape.”
“Why would I want to escape?”
“Is there something here that you need or want?” Sawyer has an excellent poker face. You almost wouldn’t know that Haroldis getting under his skin, but there’s a slight tension to his jaw that I recognise from winding him up in my first term here.
Harold’s eyes flick to the mirror. He must know I’m here, watching. The others catch it too because Kalen swears softly and Onyx resumes pacing.
“You’ll never get near her again.”
Harold smirks, obviously pleased at having got a rise out of them. A second later his face falls though when Kalen adds darkly, “You’ll never get near either of them again.”
My heart freezes right alongside Harold’s face. I shove an entire KitKat finger into my mouth whole. What the fuck is going on?Eitherof us?
“Either of them?”
“Amelie…or the baby.”
What fucking baby?!? I almost choke on my KitKat. I’m on my feet and staring intently at the window, leaning forward as if it’ll somehow allow me to hear the answer sooner.
“She’s pregnant? Is she really pregnant?” He laughs, a horrifying sound of pure joy that turns my stomach. “Which one of you did it? Was it you, Kalen? My boy, was it you?”
“Yes grandfather. I told you to wait. I told you I’d get her knocked up so that I could take control of The Order. You should have trusted me. But you just couldn’t wait, could you?”
I amnotpregnant. I’m not. There’s no way. I’m on fricking birth control and have regular periods!
