Page 27 of The Villain We Tempt

I jump when a hand raps heavily on the desk in front of me. I quickly slam my phone to my chest and jerk my gaze up, frowning when I lock eyes with a smug looking Lochlan.

“Professor McGrath will be here any second,” he says in a bored, authoritative tone. “How about we save playing on our phones forafterclass, Ms. Nikitin?”

My face turns crimson as he smirks at me.

He didn’t see.

No. There’s no way he saw anything.

“Sorry,” I mumble, my face throbbing.

“Sucha dickhead, Lochie,” Bella mutters, giving him the finger.

“Lochlan,” he grunts, leaving.

I swallow as I turn off my phone and slide it into my bag hanging off my chair.

It appears that my masked blackmailer has become mystalker. And I am deeply worried that I'm not nearly as terrified by that as I should be.

5

LOCHLAN

Goddammit.

I’ve got blood on my shoes.

Although, when you consider what just went down in that basement, the fact that it'sonlyon my shoes is a miracle.

“Sooo…” I bite back a grin as I glance across the center console of the Range Rover at my cousin Achilles. His face is dark, and unlike me, he's got blood on a fuck of a lot more than his shoes.

Flecks of it spatter the collar of his shirt. There’s a streak of it near his ear where he probably wiped at it with the back of his hand, because I notice it’s on those, too, as he grips the steering wheel like he’s trying to choke it to death.

“Sowhat, Loch,” Achilles mutters.

I resist the urge to bait him. I’m almost as close to my cousin as I am to my own brother. At times I’ve probably been evencloser. And it’s because of that love that it’sso funto push him a little when I see he’s teetering on the edge.

Okay, Bella might have been right earlier today. Icanbe a dickhead sometimes. But it comes from a place of love, I swear.

That said, it’s obvious that my cousin isn’t just “ticked off” right now. I think we’re getting into “murderous rage” territory.

Well, clearly. He just killed two guys in a basement with a fucking golf putter.

In fairness, they sort of had it coming. We caught them skulking around the party the other night taking covert photos, and the fact that they’re…sorry,were, past tense…in their late thirties was a dead giveaway that they weren't Knightsblood students.

Their tattoos tying them to the Volkov Bratva didn’t exactly help, especially since Adrik Volkov, heir to that empire, is the head of The Reckless this year.

Adrik and Achilles have a not-so-fun history involving a scrimmage hit between the two of them during football practice freshman year, the result of which was a broken collarbone and dislocated shoulder for Adrik which ended not just his season but his entire college football career.

It really wasn’t anyone’s fault, but the two of them have hardly been besties since it happened. And now that Adrik is running The Reckless and Achilles is helming Para Bellum, there’s definitely an ice wall between the two clubs.

That said, it wasn’t the two goons’ possible Volkov affiliation that sent my cousin off the deep end just now. It was when one of the guys finally gave up the passwords to the phones we caught them with, and one of those phones was filled with covert pictures of Yelena De Luca.

Yelena is a sophomore in The Order, and the daughter of notorious mafia don Nero De Luca. Achilles has no reason to have anything to do with her. And yet, when he found those sneak shots of her on that motherfucker’s phone, he went full ballistic, leaving twoverymessy bodies in the basement to clean up and yours truly withseveralquestions.

But I’m not suicidal, and it only takes one glance at the black, venomous look on my cousin’s face for me to realize that now isnotthe time to ask him why he hulked the fuck out over Yelena.

So instead I open my phone and tap a certain social media profile as we drive back to campus.