Page 24 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I jumped into the pool, excited to be wearing my new purple swimsuit for our sleepover at Zach’s house.

“Cannonball!” I screamed as I aimed right for where Bennett was bobbing in the deep end.

“Argh!” he shouted, ducking out of the way right as I hit the water.

“You’re a weenie, Bennett!” I shouted at him as he surfaced a few feet away from me.

“You’re ridiculous,” he shouted back, splashing me in the face.

“Incoming!”

Zach landed with a big splash in the water right next to me, and I screamed. He swam up underneath me as I tried to kick away to the shallow end, but he grabbed my legs and pulled me the other way.

“Got you,” he said with a big grin when his head popped up to the surface.

“Yep, you’re the prisoner now,” Bennett said, appearing on my other side and grabbing my wrist.

“Cut it out, you jerks!” I shrieked, but I was laughing. “Noah! Help me!”

Noah kicked over to us, his top half folded over the side of an inflatable tube. “Grab onto my tube, Jojo!” He splashed Zach in the face, smiling and giggling.

Bennett and Zach let me go, and I floated with Noah over to the shallow end .

“Come on, Frankie!” Zach yelled at his uncle who was really more like his cousin. “The water feels awesome!”

Frankie was older than us, thirteen, and he usually didn’t have time for our kid stuff. He was lying on a lounger by the side of the pool under an umbrella, reading something on his tablet. Probably a comic book.

“No, thanks,” he called back to Zach, not taking his eyes off of his tablet. “It’d be cool if you four would stop screaming so much.”

“You suck!” Zach yelled back. He liked Frankie, and even though Frankie pretended not to like Zach, I knew he really did.

I decided it was time to dry off for a little bit, mostly because I wanted some lemonade, so I ran up the steps of the pool to get my towel off of the lounger next to Frankie.

“Watch it, Little Knight,” he grumbled. “You’re dripping on me.”

“Sorry, Frankie!” I took the end of my towel and dried off the few drops of water I’d gotten on his tablet.

Suddenly, clouds moved over the afternoon sun, casting a dark shadow over Zach’s pool deck. I shivered—I was really cold now.

I looked up to see Zach, Bennett, and Noah standing at the edge of the pool, looking at something in the water. Their faces were blank.

Zach’s mom stood on the other side of the pool, wearing a tight red dress and tall red high heels. She smiled at me in a way that made me feel very nervous.

“Look, sweet girl,” she called to me. “Look what happens to traitors in our Families.”

I turned back to Frankie, confused. “What does she mean?”

Frankie looked at me curiously, twirling a big, scary knife with a curved blade in his hand. Where did his tablet go?

“You don’t know?” he asked, cocking his head.

I walked toward the pool. The water wasn’t blue anymore. It was red.

“No!” I screamed. “Mom! Dad!”

My parents just floated there in their pajamas, their eyes open, but they weren’t moving.

“Help!” I cried. “Help them!”

“We can’t,” the boys said in unison.

And then someone pushed me into the pool.

“Jojo, wake up. Jojo!”

I gasped, my eyes flying open to find Max, his long hair hanging in disheveled strands around his face as he looked down at me with a worried brow. He grasped my sweaty hand, and I sucked in a few calming breaths.

“You didn’t tell me you were having nightmares again,” he said, his stern voice sounding just like Dom’s. “After all this time?”

I sat up with a groan. “Yeah, I mean, not every night or anything. But there’s a lot of reminders of my old life here. It’s… a little triggering.”

“I’ll bet.”

I gave him my most serious side-eye. “Don’t tell Dom or Laura. They’ll worry.”

“I hate to break it to you,” he said with a soft smile, “but they’re always worried about you. No matter what.”

I sighed. Having a family again was the best thing that could have ever happened to me, but it also meant that I had people who would be hurt if the worst happened.

If by avenging my parents, I went down with the ship.

And I knew that if it came to it, I would do just that.

“I know that look,” Max said with a frown as he hopped out of bed to hunt for his clothes from last night.

“They knew what they were signing up for when they adopted you. As much as they might wish you’d be content to remain Joanna Miller forever and just fuck off to Europe to live your life, safe and free, they’ve spent all of this time preparing you to take back what was stolen from you.

They’re proud of you. I’m proud of you.”

A sense of calm washed over me. I didn’t know what I’d do without them. “Love you, brother.”

“Love you too.”

Finding my own sweater and jeans on the floor, I began pulling them on, definitely running late already. Max was going to miss his first-period class at Southside High, and I’d be lucky to get anything to eat before I had to be in my Leadership Seminar.

As I sat on the end of my bed, lacing my boots, a knock sounded at my door.

Max was fully dressed, so he ambled over and pulled it open.

Noah stood there, looking dapper in his dark gray suit and sky-blue dress shirt, and the friendly smile he’d had on when the door was opened dropped right off of his face when he realized it was Max standing there.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in a low voice .

“Hey, bro,” Max replied with his lazy smile, leaning against the door frame. “Neil, right?”

I bit back a cackle.

“It’s Noah,” he replied through the world’s most forced smile. “Noah Hargraves .”

“Oh, that’s right. My bad, dude. All you rich kids look alike to me.” Max took a step back from the door and crossed his arms, blocking Noah’s view of where I was still sitting on the end of my bed. “You need something?”

“I’d like to speak to Joanna, if you don’t mind.”

“I do mind, actually.”

“You’re not her keeper.”

“You don’t know anything about me, man.”

“Max!” I said, worried we were going to draw attention if this dick-measuring continued while Noah was standing in the hallway. “Let him in.”

Noah smirked at Max like he’d won something before he stepped into the room and closed the door.

“What did you need that you couldn’t ask me in ten minutes when we have class together, Noah?” I asked, standing up from the bed and going to my desk to pack up my backpack. “And I thought Bennett and I came to an understanding that you three were going to be leaving me alone from now on?”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Max added, and Noah glared at him before looking at me.

“We absolutely intend to leave you alone,” he said. “Completely. But I needed to ask you a question first. You weren’t at breakfast, so I thought I’d just stop by instead of pulling you aside in front of the others.”

“You embarrassed to be seen talking to my cousin, Nate?” Max asked, his smile failing to mask the threat in his voice. “What the fuck are you doing in her room, then?”

Noah huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Will you leash your guard dog, please?” he asked me. “The hostility is unnecessary.”

This was really the most entertainment I’d had in a while, but I was also going to be late if it kept up, so I moved to stand next to Max, rubbing a calming hand over his back. “Let’s just hear what he needs, then you can toss him out on his privileged ass, Maxy. ”

Noah ran a hand through his wavy blond hair, clearly over our shit, before he pinned me with a scrutinizing look.

“How’d you get the video from The Revelry?

I know it may not seem like it, but Annie actually is pretty adept with tech, and she set that livestream to be accessible by a link sent to my phone only, and it should have wiped itself off of the laptop in the office as soon as you cut it off. And yet….”

“I have a copy and used it to blackmail the dean into not expelling me,” I finished for him.

“Correct. I’ve checked my phone repeatedly for any sign it was compromised and found none—so I presume you somehow pulled it from the laptop before you left…

.” He looked at me, a tiny, barely there apology on his face.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but your skills in my class are middling at best.”

I snorted. “Thanks, Noah. That’s on you as my teacher, isn’t it?”

He ignored that. “Answer my question.”

I smiled. “No.”

“Joanna—”

“Is that all you wanted? We’ll both be late if we don’t wrap up this little chat pronto.”

“You heard her, Norman.”

“Knock, knock! Chica, I brought you a bagel—” Mari came waltzing into the room, coffee and doggie bag in hand, and she pulled up short with a startled gasp when she encountered Max and me in a standoff with Noah.

“Um,” she said slowly, closing the door behind her. “What’s going on in here?”

“Nothing, girl,” I replied. “Noah was just leaving.”

“Hey, babe,” Max purred at her. “Missed you.”

That perked her up. “Max, mi amor, just who I wanted to see.”

She trotted over to him, shoving the coffee and white paper bag into my hands before the two of them did the double-cheek-kiss thing because that was the level they were at in their friendship, apparently.

Then she gave him her biggest puppy dog eyes.

“Carmen won’t be able to fly to the States until after Christmas, so I need a date to the Holiday Ball.

Since my best friend is done with Academy events and all”—she darted a glance over at Noah, holding her chin high—“for good reason.”

Wow, even Mari was feeling a little feisty in the face of an Heir this morning. Noah was getting it from all sides, and the look of exasperation on his face said he’d had enough.

“Mari, you really can’t find a date among the students who actually attend school here?” he griped at her. “The Holiday Ball is the Academy’s biggest event all year.”

That was Max’s cue. “I’d love to be your date, babe. You have to take me shopping, though.” He tossed a smirk at Noah. “Us Southsiders don’t really come with the proper attire for rich-kid parties.”

“Deal.”

Noah’s face had flushed, and seeing him all ragey and flustered when he was usually so friendly and charming made my morning.

“Joanna,” he snapped. “I’m not leaving without an answer.”

“That’s fine, Noah,” I replied, throwing my bag over my shoulder. “I’m headed to class, though. Lock up when you leave?”

Max chuckled, kissing me on the hair before giving me a sly look. He offered an arm to Mari. “Allow me to escort you to Holywell Hall before I head back to Southside.”

She giggled, grasping him around the crook of his elbow. “Gracias, mi amor. Bye Joanna!”

Traitors.

Noah watched them leave, scowling at the door, before turning back to me.

He took a few purposeful strides forward, stopping right in front of me to give me a stern glare, his arms crossed like he meant business.

My boots gave me a few extra inches of height, so I was almost eye level with his over-six-foot frame.

A small smile crossed his face, his mood apparently improved now that the others were gone. “I’ll get my answers, Joanna,” he said, his voice low and full of promises.

“And I’ll get mine, Noah,” I said, returning his smile.

His brows crunched together in confusion, his pretty face suddenly boyish and so much like my Noah once had been that, right then, I decided to let myself have just one last hit of my boys before we would be back to business.

Back to being strangers.

On opposite sides of a war they didn’t know they were fighting.

“If that’s all you came here for, I guess this is goodbye,” I whispered, closing the remaining inches of distance between us, holding his deep blue eyes with mine.

“I guess it is,” he whispered back, wrapping his hands around my hips and pulling me into his body. “I hope you put some serious thought into transferring at the end of the semester. It would be best for everyone—especially you.”

“Hmm,” I hummed, pretending to think it over while I ran my hands up his firm arms and clasped them around his neck. I leaned in, ghosting my lips over his as I whispered, “Fuck you, Noah.”

He smiled against my mouth before taking my lower lip between his teeth. He gave it a gentle tug, and a little moan escaped me.

“If only, Joanna,” he murmured, his lips still pressed against mine.

This risky little dance I’d started was about to go further than I’d intended. With great effort, I released him and stepped back. His hands fell away from my hips without resistance.

I pointed at the door. “Get out.”

He did as I said without argument, pausing at the threshold to throw one last look at me over his shoulder, his smile vanishing and his eyes downcast. “Goodbye, Miss Miller.”

As the door slammed behind him, I hardened my resolve. I still had work to do, and continuing to allow the Heirs so close to me was a dangerous game I could not afford to keep playing.