Page 33 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

BENNETT

“ I swear to God, these things get more painful every year,” Zach griped, taking a giant swig of his bourbon. “When can we leave, again?”

“Stop bitching,” I told him for the third time. “My father is here as the guest of honor, which means we don’t leave until he does. You know that.”

I glanced across the dining hall, which had been cleared of the usual long tables and decorated wall-to-wall with sparkling holiday frivolity, at where Father stood talking to Benedict Hendrickson and Edward Jansen.

My mother clutched his arm, dressed in a beautiful white gown, and the bland look on her face told me she’d medicated herself enough to get through yet another one of these events at his side.

“You’d think they’d occasionally attempt to honor someone outside our Families at this thing,” Noah added, absently adjusting his glasses as he cast his lazy stare around the room. “The Academy could try harder to pretend it exists for more than kissing our parents’ asses.”

Zach smirked. “We get our asses kissed plenty too, dude.”

I rolled my eyes. I was tired, and the last place I wanted to be right now was at the Holywell Academy Holiday Ball, dressed in a tux and taking pains to drink just enough to take the edge off without getting anywhere close to tipsy.

We were navigating not only our fellow students tonight, but many parents and other representatives from top Tier families, and even a few members of the press.

“You getting your ass kissed tonight, Ferrero?” Noah asked, tossing a knowing smile at Zach. “Lisa has sure been… aggressive.”

He snorted. “You can say that again. She slipped me her panties about five minutes after we got here.”

I was about to roll my eyes again, but he pulled a tiny scrap of red lace from the pocket of his tux pants, so I ended up choking a bit on my drink instead.

“Wow,” I said, waving away the roving waiter who’d stopped to offer me something from his tray of hors d'oeuvres. “I guess I’m not that surprised.” And I was lucky Harper wasn’t yet at that level of throwing herself at me—but she was betting on a binding contract that would take care of that for her.

I side-eyed Zach. “If you feel like indulging, just do it. We trust you to be careful enough.”

He sighed, darting a look over at a nearby cocktail table, where Lisa, Harper, Annie, and several of the other girls from top families hovered.

Each wore a couture ballgown and sipped champagne from the flutes they daintily clutched between their manicured fingers, every one of them acting like they felt something other than vicious contempt for the others.

“Nah, man,” Zach replied. “That’s a net I don’t have the energy to untangle myself from right now.”

“Maybe you should go for it,” Noah muttered, pasting a smile on his face as he waved at Annie’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Ling. “Maybe then you’ll stop moping about Joanna finally doing the right thing and leaving school.”

“I am not moping ,” he fired back. “We all agreed she needed to go. It’s just… slightly more boring around here without the Princess. I’m still a little shocked she finally caved.”

Honestly, I was too. She was so obstinate, so fucking infuriating , and had no regard for her safety whatsoever.

She lived to get under my skin.

“You didn’t see how fucked up she was after I pulled her out of the river,” I replied. “I told you she was borderline hypothermic and in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. I’d have thrown in the towel after that too.”

Noah sighed. He’d taken the news of Harper’s latest attempt to punish Joanna Miller for refusing to bow to her betters—and for inexplicably having our attention more than she should have—the hardest. He’d somehow weathered the storm of the last seven years right alongside Zach and me and was the only one who’d managed to cling to something resembling compassion.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hopefully she’s really gone. Not that she could come back next semester anyway, since you had her scholarship revoked.”

She hadn’t been seen on campus since I left her in that shower, still shaking from the hottest orgasm I’d ever witnessed—the result of what I could only describe as a complete loss of my self-control.

It was something she continued to bring out in me despite how hard I tried to resist it, and standing there with my hands on her trembling, dripping wet body had pushed me over the edge.

She didn’t show up for the Chase on Saturday, much to Harper’s delight, and she hadn’t been in any of her classes over this past final week of the semester.

Noah pulled her grades and informed us that she’d turned in all outstanding assignments, so hopefully she took her semester’s worth of credit and transferred to a school on the opposite side of the country where she would be forgotten by all of us.

Joanna Miller was a siren . Distracting, untrustworthy—we still didn’t know how she’d managed to neuter Chad Hendrickson, and that was unsettling.

“How pissed is your dad still, Bennett?” Zach asked, catching my father’s hard stare in our direction.

“Very.” I was lucky he hadn’t ordered Frankie to hang me from the ceiling in the Club’s basement.

“Whatever. He’ll get over it. We took care of it by getting Frankie up there to chase those criminals out before they could take anything, even if he wasn’t able to actually catch them. He can’t fault you for losing your keys while you were saving a life.”

I snorted. “He can and he will. And he still can’t get into his safe, so we don’t know for sure nothing was taken.”

Even I didn’t know what he had in there, but he was extremely agitated about it, whatever it was.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Noah spat suddenly, glaring at the hall’s entrance.

Zach and I turned to see who in the world had gotten on Noah’s bad side like that. Entering the hall was Mari Anzaldua, and she was clutching the arm of Max Miller. Instead of his usual shit-eating grin, Max’s face was grim, and Mari’s eyes were red and puffy, as if she’d been crying.

Zach turned back to Noah. “What’s your problem with Princess’s cousin, man?”

“He just pisses me off.”

“Runs in the family,” I remarked dryly.

The low melody of carols that had been playing over the hall’s speakers cut out, followed by the sharp feedback of a microphone switching on.

“Yes, hello. May I have your attention, please?”

Dean Jansen, clad as always in a professional skirt suit, stood at the mic stand that had been set up on the dais where the three of us normally ate our meals.

It was the stage for the evening, the sides draped with silky gold fabric and the edges lined with poinsettias, all for the sole purpose of giving my father yet another bullshit award.

The ambient noise of the large crowd quieted as we all turned our attention to the stage.

“Thank you all for yet another successful semester at Holywell and a wonderful Holiday Ball, none of which would be possible, of course, without the generosity of the Four Families of Saint Gabriel City.” The dean beamed an indulgent smile down at my father.

“This evening, it is my great pleasure to honor our special guest?—”

She was cut off as the doors to the hall flew open with a loud bang.

A woman strode confidently into the hall, the crowd parting for her like magic as she marched with purpose straight toward the stage. She wore a deep-red dress that billowed around her as she walked, the high slit teasing glimpses of her long leg and towering stiletto heels.

“Wait, is that…?” Noah murmured, his eyes glued to the girl.

“The Princess?” Zach finished, confused. “What did she do to her hair? ”

It certainly looked like Joanna. I knew that body—tall, lithely muscled, legs for days.

The confident set of her jaw, visible in her profile as she stalked past where we stood near the middle of the room, was something I’d spent a lot of time staring at over the semester.

But that dress was high fashion and much more expensive than she could ever afford, and her hair, expertly styled in cascading waves rather than thrown into her usual ponytail, was no longer dark brown.

Instead, it was a striking light blonde.

Almost white.

Painful memories assaulted me.

“Excuse me, Dean,” she called as she reached the front of the stage, craning her neck up to stare at Dean Jansen. “I need to say a few words, if you don’t mind.”

“What is the meaning of this?” Dean Jansen demanded. “Who….” She stared down at her in confusion, and whatever she saw had her suddenly backing away from the microphone, her eyes wide and her jaw agape, like she’d seen a ghost.

Joanna gracefully climbed the stage, and then she turned, head held high as she clutched the microphone stand, and her eyes snapped right to mine.

Noah gasped.

“Her eyes,” Zach hissed, his voice suddenly shaky. “Look at her fucking eyes .”

Eyes the unique shade of aquamarine I knew so well stared back at me. It was the color forever burned into my brain from both my most cherished memories and the worst night of my life—of our lives.

“It… it can’t be,” I sputtered.

“Good evening, Holywell Academy,” she said into the microphone, surveying the room like a regal queen.

“If you’ll just excuse the brief interruption, I’d like to just say a few words before we get to our guest of honor .

” She spat those last words, refusing to look my father’s way, as if he was beneath her.

He stood next to his table at the front of the room, and the horrified look that had broken through his stern mask said he’d come to the same realization we had.

“How could… how could this be?” Noah whispered. “She can’t be her. ”

“You all know me as Joanna Miller, freshman and scholarship student here at Holywell—a street kid trying to claw and scrape my way out of the Southside by rubbing elbows with the elite of the City. I’ve been reminded constantly during my time here that I don’t belong.”