Page 18 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER TWELVE

B y the time Max had picked the lock on the office door and burst inside with Mari rushing in behind him in a panic, they’d missed most of the fun.

They found me on the floor, straddling the would-be-rapist asshole and pinning his arms down with my knees while I pounded on his barely conscious face.

Had I cheated a bit by pulling my knife from my shoe as I baseball slid underneath him and slashed at his Achilles tendon right off the bat? Maybe, but I hadn’t really been in the mood to fuck around.

He’d screamed like he was dying, I’d tackled him to the ground, and here we were.

I rammed my fist into his nose, feeling the satisfying crunch of it breaking as he groaned and gurgled, then I looked up. “Hey,” I said to Max, panting. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“ Hey ,” he repeated, crossing his arms and giving me an incredulous look. “That’s what you have to say to me right now? Hey? ”

“What?”

“Chica, why don’t you just… take a little break,” Mari said gently, walking over to me and offering her hand. “Max can finish this up.”

I stared at her, frowning at her worried face. “I’m fine, girl. He didn’t touch me.” I grabbed her hand to pull myself up to standing but abandoned that plan when the room spun.

“Uh-huh,” she cooed at me like I was a petulant child. “Let’s just sit down over here. I think you have a concussion.”

“Mmm, probably,” I muttered. I rolled off the bleeding creep and set about finding a comfy spot on the floor with my back resting against the desk.

“Is he dead?” Mari whispered to Max who was poking at the guy with his boot.

“Nah, but he’s gonna wish he was.”

Max bent over and threw two more hard punches right into the guy’s head before he stood up, raised his heavy combat boot, and stomped down hard right on the guy’s dick. The asshole moaned before his eyes rolled back in his head, and he finally passed out.

“Sorry we weren’t here earlier,” Mari said as she eyed the carnage with a clinical detachment that impressed me. “I only caught the whispering that Donavan here had purchased the opportunity to ‘have some fun with the Southside girl’ after he’d already disappeared.”

“You should’ve seen the look on the kitchen staff’s faces when she barged in there, swearing up a storm, demanding they hand me over,” Max added.

I smiled ruefully at them. “Sorry to worry you both. I’m pretty sure Lisa beamed me in the head with the heavy crystal potpourri bowl from the bathroom. How embarrassing.”

“Max assured me you’ve had some….” Mari paused, shooting me a pointed look. “ Self-defense training.”

I shrugged. “It can be rough in our neighborhood.”

Max, who had been fucking with the broken laptop, turned to look down at me. “Let’s get you home to Dad to get cleaned up?—”

“What the fuck happened in here?”

Damn it . That voice had interrupted my activities already once this evening. Quickly, I shoved my torn-up, bloody knuckles into the pocket of my romper.

Zach stormed into the office with Noah and Bennett right on his heels. They all pulled up short as they crossed the threshold, staring at the pile of bloody flesh that was Donavan with looks of surprise, or in Bennett’s case, disgust .

“Oh, you didn’t hear?” I asked, tonelessly. “Your girlfriend sold my slum pussy to this guy.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Zach replied, distracted as he took in the situation on the floor.

“Somebody better tell her that,” Mari muttered.

“Are you hurt?” Noah asked me, taking a few strides in my direction before Max stepped right into his path, blocking him from getting any closer to me.

“Do I look hurt, Noah?” I asked wryly.

“Yes,” he bit out, now glaring at Max. “Call off your guard dog so I can check you for a concussion.”

I definitely had a concussion. “No, thank you.”

“Joanna—”

“She said no, dude,” Max said with a dangerous smile. “Back off.”

I watched with mild interest as the two of them began a testosterone-fueled stare off while Zach circled Donavan’s body and Bennett, still bored as ever, was typing rapidly on his phone.

“You do this?” Zach asked Max, a hint of respect in his tone. “Pretty fucking brutal.”

Max gave Noah one last shitty smile before glancing at Zach with a shrug. “That’s how we treat sexual predators on the Southside. Were you guys coming in here to give him some high-fives and bro-hugs for a job well done?”

Bennett glanced up from his phone, irritation breaking through his stony facade.

“It is not our job to police what the lower tiers do unless it is a direct issue for the Four Families. But now that you all have made a giant mess of things, we’ll have to deal with it.

This is an Academy event, which means it is a Family event. ”

“Oh, gosh, we do apologize for the mess, Your Highness,” I grumbled. “Take it up with Ferrero—his little display on the dance floor hurt his girlfriend’s feelings and caused all of this.”

Zach scoffed, he and Noah having returned to Bennett’s side where all three of them were now staring down their noses at us. “Not even Lisa is dumb enough to think my dancing with you meant anything.”

For a moment, I was glad for the pain in my head distracting me from feeling literally anything else because that was dangerously close to a direct hit .

“Maybe it’s time for you to reconsider your position on remaining at Holywell,” Bennett added. “Your presence is causing more trouble than it's worth, and we are not going to continue to clean up after you.”

Mari, seated next to me on the floor, squeezed my hand but remained silent. I understood it.

Max, however, did not have the same sense of self-preservation.

“The next one of you that opens your mouth to insult my cousin is going to get the same treatment as the sack of shit on the floor.”

“Max!” Mari hissed. “ ?Cállate la boca! ”

I groaned and began the arduous process of standing up. I was not in the mood for another fight, but I’d be damned if I let any of them touch a hair on Max’s head.

Zach had stepped forward, a feral smile on his face, but Bennett stuck an arm out, halting his advance.

“Out. All of you.” He looked at Mari, presumably because she was the only one of us that would take orders from him.

“See that she gets medical care. Cover it if necessary, and we’ll make sure you’re reimbursed. ”

Mari nodded, hopping to her feet and moving to steady me.

“I don’t need your charity,” I hissed at Bennett because I was now in a terrible mood.

Max rushed to hold my other side, and the three of us made our way toward the door. At the threshold, I cast one last glance behind us into the room. Bennett and Zach were now conferring, heads together and whispering as they looked over the mess, but Noah had turned to watch us leave.

His blue eyes met mine, and it was disappointment that lurked there behind his dark frames. I shook my head and turned away before he could see how disappointed I was in them too.

For the next week, I recovered at home. I was up to speed with all of my classwork, and my professors (including my Tech Skills TA, Noah Hargraves) and my coach, Janet, were sympathetic to my plight of needing to nurse a concussion I received when falling down the stairs at my family’s apartment.

Dom enlisted the same medic who’d seen to my injuries the night I floated into his life on a piece of driftwood—a friend and fellow Shadow—to patch me up a second time.

I wasn’t exactly happy to have had my skull cracked in yet again, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying the time off, doing nothing but lying around and being doted on by Laura.

Mari called Max’s phone midway through the week to inform me that rumors had been flying around the Academy regarding both mine and Donavan’s absence.

Everyone had definitely heard what he’d supposedly paid money to do that night at The Revelry, but as he was currently laid up in the hospital after sustaining injuries in a “car accident,” the going theory was that “Southside’s hot cousin” had ridden in to save the day.

Mari encouraged that story, though she was not exactly enjoying her moment in the sun as the person with inside knowledge on the whole affair.

“ Joder , people will not stop talking to me,” she griped through the speaker of Max’s phone. “I need you back here to scare them away with your resting bitch face.”

“I’ll be back in time for class on Monday,” I replied, currently curled up on the couch under an old crocheted blanket and sipping the smoothie Laura had just handed to me. “I only just stopped feeling like someone was stabbing a knife through my skull.”

“Fine,” she huffed, and I could hear her heels click-clacking along the corridor of Holywell Hall as she spoke. “At least get your new phone soon. Not that I don’t love talking to Max to get to you.”

“Back at you, baby,” Max purred into the phone.

“Max,” she chided playfully. “Behave, mi amor.”

“Seriously,” I said, kicking at him with my bare foot where he sat on the coffee table with his Cheshire cat grin. “Keep it in your pants for five seconds.”

We said goodbye to Mari, and then Max relocated to the couch, gently pulling my head into his lap so that he could rub at my aching temples like the saintly brother he was.

“So,” he said casually after a few minutes of silence. “Are we going to talk about how those three dickheads you used to be best friends with are all obsessed with you?”

“What?” I tried to sit up, but he held me still. “You’re out of your mind. You heard the things they said to me.”

“I did, and I didn’t say they’re not total and complete assholes,” he replied. “But Ferrero didn’t dance with anyone else that night. Hargraves wanted to beat my face in for touching you. Spencer is constantly watching you. They all look at you like that. It’s intense.”

Well, yeah. Intense dislike. Intense annoyance. Intense condescension . “You’re on crack.”

He chuckled. “I’m not saying they don’t want you gone from that school.

You’re a wild card. You’re upsetting the order—fucking with their equilibrium.

But you’re also the girl they were best friends with for eleven years.

It’s probably mind-fucking them just as much as it is you, only they don’t have a clue as to why. ”

I blew out a breath. “I’m not the same at all, though, Max. I used to be happy. Sweet. Naive . There’s no way they suspect anything.”

“I know. But there’s probably something deep inside them that just has some sort of instinctual connection to you.

” He tapped my forehead lightly with his finger.

“And while they put up a hell of a front, they did rush down to that office, probably after they opened the link to the livestream. If they really didn’t give a shit, they wouldn’t have bothered. ”

It was true, and it irked me. It would make my life so much easier if I could just hate them outright—if there was not a shred of anything decent left in any of them.

If there was nothing at all I recognized as the boys I knew.

They were assholes, and I didn’t trust them, but after all these weeks, I still couldn’t find it in me to truly hate them.

“It doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on them,” I said quietly. “I’m going to take it all away.”

“You are,” he replied decisively. “And I can’t wait to see those fuckers bow down to their queen.”