Page 40 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER FOUR

ZACH

O n Monday morning, we entered the dining hall to the usual fanfare.

Bennett threw the doors open with a little more force than was really necessary, his “don’t fuck with me” face firmly in place, and the crowd parted like the Red Sea as Noah and I followed in his wake down the center aisle to our usual table.

As we sat, the noise of the room increased again, the nervous energy of the student body palpable.

“The usual this morning, sirs?” the dining manager said as he appeared next to our table, dressed in his chef’s apron emblazoned with the Holywell crest, and he gave each of us a sniveling smile.

“Please,” Bennett replied without glancing in his direction.

None of us were fans of this particular setup—the raised private table, being waited on when everyone else stood in a buffet line—but when we’d resisted it on our first day at the Academy, the dining manager had tattled to the dean, who’d tattled to Bennett’s father, and that was that.

We were the Heirs , above all others, and we were to act like it.

I flopped back in my chair, loosening my already loose tie and rolling my shirtsleeves to my elbows. “The sheep are restless,” I said with a chuckle, nodding down to the front two tables where the highest-tier students sat. “They’ll be hoping we protect them from our Princess’s wrath.”

Noah forced a smile at Annie Ling, who had a huge lady boner for him—as many girls did. She waved and smiled at him from the table below, the desperation even clearer on her face than usual.

Maybe she was a tad worried what Noah thought of her after she’d been involved in a plot to throw his old best friend and fellow Heir to a sexual predator? Time would tell.

“They’ll be looking to us to determine how to act about all of this,” Noah replied, sighing. “I hate how blindsided I still feel.”

Bennett sat at the head of the small table today, giving the room a solid view of his profile and the hard set of his jaw.

Harper had just swanned into the room, conspicuously waving around the giant rock that now adorned her ring finger, and I watched as her peers shrieked with pretend delight and fawned over her.

Bennett ignored it all, choosing instead to sit and brood. “Whatever we do,” he told us, “we need to be thinking with our heads. Not our hearts.” He glanced at Noah. “Or our dicks.” Now a disapproving look at me.

He received my middle finger in return. All of my body parts were in fine working order, thank you, and they were in agreement.

Jojo was our missing piece and would be ours— in every way imaginable.

We’d figure out the rest of this mess after that.

The sound of the doors flying open again pulled our attention to the hall’s entrance, and the room fell silent as Jolie appeared in the doorway.

The three of us watched as wordlessly as the rest of the crowd as our girl marched down the aisle, headed straight for us. My heart thumped in my chest, anticipation and excitement thrumming in my body at her approach.

She still looked like the Princess the three of us had grown to know and begrudgingly obsess over last semester, but she was now also so much our Jojo that it was almost physically painful to look at her.

Her white-blonde hair was pulled into a high ponytail, and she wore a loose sweater and tight black pants.

But it wasn’t lost on me, nor would it be on Noah and Bennett, that her clothes were now expensive, high-quality pieces.

Her pants were real leather, fitting her tight body like a glove, and her white sweater looked like cashmere.

And to top it all off, instead of her old, ratty shoes, she wore shiny black high-heeled boots, making her legs look miles longer than they already were.

Our Jojo had grown up to be so fucking sexy. The hard-on I’d had for Joanna Miller last semester had only increased tenfold now that I knew who she really was, and my dick stirred under the table as she neared.

“She’s coming up here,” Noah murmured, sounding just as enraptured as I was.

Bennett said nothing, but he watched her approach our table with the same intensity that he always had back when he thought no one noticed how consumed he’d become by the Southside Princess.

I couldn’t smother my wide grin as she climbed the short steps up to our table, looking each of us in the face with those gorgeous aquamarine eyes.

It made my chest ache to see them again after all these years.

She dropped into the chair at the other end of the table with all the grace and poise of royalty, putting her directly across from Bennett—who was smoldering at her—with Noah and me in the middle, facing the crowd.

If we’d had any lingering doubts about her being exactly who she said she was, the cherry blossom charm on the necklace that hung between her perky tits would have assuaged them.

I distinctly remembered when her dad had given it to her as a late birthday gift not long before she “died.” She’d hardly ever taken it off.

“Gentlemen,” she said lightly as she gave Bennett a big, taunting smile. “Thanks for saving my seat for me.”

The entire room watched us, the gasps and whispers just audible from where we sat.

“Jojo,” I said in greeting, since the other two could only manage to stare at her. “Welcome back, baby girl. We… we missed you.”

My voice hitched on my last words, and I smothered it with a cough. I was going to bring her back into the fold, regardless of all the bullshit, but it didn’t erase the seven years we’d had to spend without her.

It’d hurt like a bitch.

“Did you?” she asked, looking around the table. “Seems to me like you all have flourished since your Families stole the Knight empire.”

“Yes, we fucking missed you,” Noah spat in a harsh whisper.

“We have mourned you, cried for you, felt your absence so keenly it was fucking unbearable , but it seems you did not feel the same for us. You have been not only alive but in the City this entire time, and you didn’t once try to let us know you were okay. Not. Fucking. Once.”

Okay, so we were just going to get it all out there right away.

Her shrewd gaze snapped to Noah, his usual affable smile nowhere to be seen as his sad, dark-blue eyes bored into her from behind his glasses. My buddy was hurting—we all were—but he was taking her years of silence the hardest.

“Oh, my bad, Noah,” she hissed. “My bad for not just hopping onto Instagram to shoot you a DM to check in after your parents tried to have me murdered . I spent the entire first year I was hiding on the Southside looking over my shoulder, jumping at every fucking shadow, having no goddamn idea whether the Families even believed I was dead. There was no way I could risk contacting you.”

“Even if it were true that you had no safe way to contact us over the past seven years,” Noah went on, “which I doubt, given the capabilities you’ve clearly shown you have, you did not have to show up to this Academy and lie to our faces about who you are.

” He banged his fist on the table in anger, and heads jerked in our direction again.

“Why, Jolie? Did our years of friendship mean nothing to you? Did you really think we’d have endangered you by running off to tell our parents you were alive? ”

She glared at him. “How would I fucking know, Noah? You’re the Heirs, and you’ve spent the seven years since that night being indoctrinated into the Families.

And your behavior last semester wasn’t particularly inspiring , was it?

” She arched a blonde brow as she swept those eyes across the three of us who were now paying for our callous asshole act.

“You need to understand—I would not risk my plans to avenge my parents for anything .”

“We get it, Princess,” I said smoothly, trying to dial the tension down a notch.

“Obviously we’re all still… processing this.

But you need to know that none of us would ever wish you harm.

We didn’t when we thought you were Joanna, as much as I know you won’t believe that, and we certainly don’t now that we know you’re our Jojo. ”

She turned those skeptical eyes on me. I realized as I studied her face that she’d worn makeup last semester to hide the freckles that danced across her nose and cheeks.

I never could’ve forgotten those.

“Yeah, Zach? I can’t imagine my mother’s murderer wants me walking this earth much longer. When Mommy says jump, you don’t say, ‘how high?’”

Low blow. “Why don’t you try getting to know me before you judge me, Princess?” I growled.

Bennett cleared his throat. I doubted his green-eyed stare had left Jolie’s face even once since she sat down. He rumbled, “You not only came here and lied to us, Jolie, you also stole from us.”

She looked at him, not rattled by his intensity in the slightest, and she gave him a smug smile. “I did.”

“That was why you came to Holywell? To get closer to us so you could steal from us?”

“Yes.”

While we were on the subject….

“How’d you get my key to the Club’s basement?” I asked her. “It never went missing.”

She glanced at me, still amused. “Max took a mold of your key while we were dancing at The Revelry.”

That fucker. He and I were going to have some words .

Noah had relaxed—marginally—and he now studied her intently. “You had to have taken the codes to Hargraves straight from my laptop. Was it when we met in my office?”

“It was.”

Noah frowned. “Did you set off the alarm on our dorm condo?”

She just smiled at him.

“Shit.”

Bennett had leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his suited chest as he glared at her. “And you stole my key fob when?—”

“You pulled me out of a panic attack by making me come all over your fingers? Yeah, I did.”

My eyebrows hit my hairline, as did Noah’s, and we both shifted in our chairs to swing our accusing stares over to Bennett, inviting him to explain that little detail he’d omitted from his story of saving Jojo from the river.

I couldn’t believe he’d had a taste of the Princess and didn’t even fucking tell us.

That hypocritical dick .

He just continued to glower at her, ignoring us while also not denying it. “You are going to get yourself killed if you keep on with this vendetta.”

“I’ll be fine. Thank you for your concern, though, Bennett,” she sniped back.

“Really, Jolie, you have to stop this—” Noah began, but he snapped his mouth shut when it was clear we were about to be interrupted.

Harper had flounced up to our table, her short tartan skirt swishing against her legs as she approached Bennett, who of course still had not torn his eyes away from Jojo.

“Hey, baby,” she purred, flashing her engagement ring in Jolie’s direction and not even attempting to fake subtlety. “I just wanted to tell you I was so thrilled to receive your proposal . And this ring is gorgeous!”

Bennett finally peeled his eyes off of Jolie, giving Harper a cool look before he said, “You’re welcome. As you’re aware, my father has decided it would be best to accelerate the timeline.”

“You can thank me for that, Jansen,” Jojo added, her tone flippant, but I hadn’t missed her narrowing those dangerous eyes at Harper’s ring before she wiped her face free of emotion.

“I may have inconveniently exposed James Spencer for the murderer he is, so Spencer’s just trying to make sure Daddy’s dollars don’t stray from the Family empire.

You sure you want to hitch your wagon to that? ”

I snickered. “You’re vicious, Princess.”

Harper had bent over the table to make eyes at Bennett, but now she stood up to glare at Jojo. “No one believes your crazy lies. Just because you have a Family name doesn’t make you an Heir—not with all the time you spent in the slums. You shouldn’t even be at this table.”

“Oh?” Jojo put on a puzzled face, and it was fucking cute. “Where should I be then? If you want to check the details, Harper, I’ve got more money to my name now than anyone sitting at this table, or in this room, actually.”

Harper’s jaw dropped a minuscule amount before she popped it shut and stuck her nose in the air. “That doesn’t make you a real Heir . Keep running your mouth about the Families and see what happens.”

Jojo grinned. “I plan to.”

“Ugh,” Harper spat, rolling her eyes and turning back to Bennett to give him a sympathetic little pout. “I don’t know how you tolerate her, baby. Come see me whenever you need a break. ”

She shot him a seductive grin before she trotted off.

“Congratulations, Bennett,” Jolie said, forcing a smile. “I suppose your choosing a murderous bitch for a bride makes some kind of sense—that does tend to run in your Family.”

“Jolie…,” Noah cautioned her at the same time that I rumbled, “Princess…,” but it was no use because Bennett decided he’d just fuck things up right out of the gate.

“Your anger at the Families is misplaced,” he said, his voice low and threaded with warning.

“Stop this war you think you’re waging against us.

Whatever your father did to break the oath of loyalty between the Four Families is what killed your parents.

The three of us are really, really fucking glad you’re alive, but you won’t stay that way if you keep this up.

Take your money and go live your fucking life, Jolie. ”

Her face flushed, and she jerked to her feet. She slammed her palms on the table, leaning in to look Bennett right in his eyes.

“Don’t tell me you believe the bullshit your dad has peddled as an excuse to murder my family?” she seethed. “I bet he’s never given you a goddamn sliver of a detail about what my dad supposedly did to make him and his entire family deserving of being pulled from their beds and executed .”

She was right. He hadn’t. But we’d had to hold onto something all these years—some valid reason, however tenuous, that she wasn’t with us anymore.

Something to cling to that would mean our parents weren’t as big of monsters as they seemed.

Something that said the institution of the Four Families wasn’t a total crock of shit.

She looked around the table, her hard stare running across each of us, and she shook her head.

“I guess it was too much to hope that maybe you three hadn’t been brainwashed after all.

” She scoffed, returning her angry glare to Bennett.

“And fuck you , Bennett. I’ll never stop until I know the truth. ”

Then she shoved her chair away, throwing her simple black backpack—the same one she’d had last semester—over her shoulder and storming out of the dining hall, her breakfast left untouched on the plate that had been delivered along with ours sometime during all of our bickering .

“Fuck,” I muttered, leaning back in my chair and scrubbing a hand across my face. “I’m not sure that went very well.”

Noah sagged in his own chair. “She’s lumped us in with our parents and will never trust us again.”

“And we shouldn’t trust her either,” Bennett added, like an asshole.

We really had a long way to go.