Page 47 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER TEN

JOLIE

“ Y es! I’m sorry to ambush you like this, but I just… I didn’t know how to get ahold of you.”

I nodded hesitantly, lowering my weapons but darting a glance at Max that said he should stay how he was.

I also tossed a quick look behind me at the doorway of Laura’s store. “It’s okay, Laura! It’s my uncle.”

Laura lowered her hunting rifle from her shoulder with a scowl. I agreed with the sentiment—this was a supremely dumb move by Anders, and he was lucky all three of them weren’t bleeding out in the street right now.

“Can I… can I come closer?” Anders called with a helpless little wave. “The guys will keep back. I’m just not supposed to go anywhere without them, you know?”

I did know, as all heads of Families and many of the richest Tier Ones never traveled anywhere without personal security. For Anders, it was probably how James Spencer or whoever had the direct line to his security team spied on him.

I nodded again, stepping closer to Max because it made me feel safer. I didn’t think my uncle was here to hurt me, but the adrenaline spike of being ambushed in the street in front of my home hadn’t receded.

“Oh, my God,” Anders murmured as he came to a stop in front of where I stood on the sidewalk. “It really is you. You look… you look so much like her.” He choked on a sob.

He meant my mother—his sister. I had no pictures of her when she was my age other than what I could find searching for public news stories online, but I was aware that with our unique hair and eye color, I was pretty much her spitting image.

Anders was blond, too, but he had more golden tones in his now graying hair. He was only thirty-six, more than a decade younger than my mom would have been, but he looked much older—the toll having the boot of the Four Families on his neck for seven and a half long years.

“It is me,” I replied, keeping a business tone. “I apologize I haven’t reached out, Uncle. As you know, I’m not currently aligned with the Families.”

“Right,” he said, shaking his head. “I wish you weren’t doing that.

I really do—I’m so worried about you! But I’ve…

made it known that I desired a meeting with my niece, so I came down here as soon as my team spotted you on the train.

We shouldn’t be hassled.” He motioned to the bookstore, where Laura still lingered in the doorway with a watchful eye on us and her phone in hand—no doubt linked up to Dom.

“Could we just… talk for a few minutes?”

I looked at Max, whose narrowed gaze hadn’t left the Enforcers still posted up next to the car across the street.

He nodded to me before he eyed Anders with suspicion. “Let’s use Mom’s office. I’m coming—where Jojo goes, I go.”

Anders nodded vigorously. “That’s fine. Lead the way.”

We walked down the short sidewalk to the bookstore’s front door, Max and me in the lead while Anders plodded along behind us.

“Laura, this is my uncle, Anders Nilsson,” I said as we stepped inside where she waited, still looking wary. “Uncle, this is my adoptive mom, Laura Miller.”

Anders’s eyes widened a bit, like he’d forgotten I had a new family. “Oh, yes, wow,” he stammered, grasping Laura’s hand. “Nice to meet you. Thank you for… taking care of my niece.”

“Your niece takes care of herself just fine,” Laura said with a tight smile. “You’d do well not to attempt an unscheduled meeting with her again.”

Damn, Laura was not going to give Anders even an ounce of her Midwestern politeness. Having to get her rifle out in the store did make her grouchy.

“This way.”

I led Anders behind the register and down the small hallway to Laura’s office while Max brought up the rear after giving his mom a reassuring squeeze.

I made myself comfortable behind Laura’s small messy desk, motioning for Anders to take a seat in the chair currently overflowing with binders and a few colorful magazines that was the only other place to sit in the cramped little room.

Max took up his sentry post by the door, and I watched as Anders awkwardly found the binders new homes on the floor and the small side table nearby before falling into the chair like his legs just wouldn’t hold him anymore.

His dull blue eyes darted around the office, taking it in with a look of distaste as he worried absently at the hem of his suit jacket.

I stared at him until he finally met my eyes.

He took a deep breath. “I am here first and foremost because I wanted to see you. I’m just so…

astounded you’re alive. I never did know for sure whether the plane crash story was real or not…

. I guess I’d always suspected. Kerstin hadn’t mentioned a vacation…

.” He frowned, shaking his head like he was disappointed in himself before he looked at me again.

“I’m sorry I never tried to… look harder. ”

I shrugged. “What could you have done? I know the Families haven’t given you any real power. You’d have ended up just as dead as my parents if you’d started sniffing around.”

He nodded, looking morose. “Spencer has been on the warpath, Jolie. I’m worried about you.”

“I don’t need you to worry about me.”

He huffed. “Well, I will anyway. Especially if Spencer’s right and you have… Jeff’s flash drive.”

My eyes flashed to Max, who shot me a quizzical eyebrow before returning his intense gaze to the back of Anders’s head, like he was trying to see inside of it.

“What about my dad’s flash drive?” I replied, feigning nonchalance.

It didn’t take a genius to work out that anything that might have disappeared from James Spencer’s safe was probably in my hands, but the fact that Anders was at all in the loop about its contents was unexpected.

Anders's defeated posture said he did not want to be having this conversation, and he looked at me with what appeared to be a mix of dread and hope. “You do have it, don’t you? You basically announced to the world that you’d broken into his personal safe, and I know that’s where he kept it.”

“Maybe” was all I said.

He sighed. “You have to understand, Jolie. There’s something there he’s desperate for.

He hounded me for five straight years after your parents died about finding the encryption key.

He thinks that because I worked on Jeff’s team that I would somehow have it or know how to find it.

I’ve torn his office and the whole penthouse apart, looking for anything that could possibly point me to the key, and I’ve come up empty every time. ”

My blood boiled. “I hope you weren’t trying that hard to hand over my dad’s most private work to the man that fucking killed him.”

He looked at his feet. “He was threatening me, Jolie. What was I supposed to do?”

“How about grow a pair of fucking balls?” Max muttered from the doorway.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Anders flushed, sputtering, “I know you have it in your head you can take on Spencer and the other Families, but you can’t, Jolie. Right now they seem to think you’re just an annoyance, but I’m worried about what they might do to get that drive back.”

“And you have no idea what’s on it?” I asked. We didn’t either because we knew better than to try to break the encryption on a KnightKey500. Our team had taken one look at it and said it was impossible.

He looked at his feet as he shook his head. “It’s clearly something that Spencer really, really wants.”

I kept my face neutral even though this was definitely interesting information. We’d assumed James Spencer had a reason for keeping my dad’s flash drive in his personal safe, but we didn’t know whether he had the encryption key or if he’d ever accessed it.

A sick feeling hit me right in the stomach. That shiny little drive that was currently tucked in the safe under my bunk had something on it that James Spencer wanted, and I wondered if he’d wanted it enough to murder my entire Family for it.

I met Max’s knowing eyes. He knew exactly where my mind had gone, and I gave him a sharp nod.

We would get to the bottom of this.

“I’m not saying you should just hand it over to him,” Anders went on. “But I worry for your safety if you don’t.”

That made me laugh. “Sure, Uncle. Let me just schedule a meeting with Mr. Spencer to give him back the very thing I risked my life to take from him. A thing that does not, under any circumstances, belong to him. It’s mine .”

He looked uneasy. “Okay. I get it. I do. I’ll… try to be helpful to you. As much as I can.”

That was more like it.

“Thank you. I don’t suppose you have any clue at all as to what the Families’ claim my dad did that justified what they did to us?”

He was quiet for a long moment. “No. Obviously your, uh, speech last month was the first I’d heard about… all of that. I wasn’t exactly privy to Family business back then.”

“Okay, well, if something comes to you, let me know,” I replied. “I’ll get you set up with our encrypted messaging software so we can communicate without prying eyes.”

He blew out a relieved breath. “Really? Wow, yes, that would be amazing.”

“And,” I added because I had some sense of loyalty to my only living blood relative, “you can let us know if you’re ever in real trouble.

I don’t think you should try to bail out of Knight right now because it will look very suspicious and make you a target, but if something happens… we can try to help you.”

He nodded, more perked up now than he’d been since he arrived. “I…. You can do that? Gosh, I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I appreciate it more than I can say. It’s been… rough since you all died.”

I didn’t correct him because the little girl I’d been up until that night had definitely died. I’d emerged from the Obsidian as something else entirely.

“Okay, well, I don’t mean to keep you,” he said, standing and smoothing his pressed pants. “It was… really good to see you, Jolie. I’m sorry about… everything.”

I stood up. “Me too, Uncle.”

Max opened the door and stepped aside, leaving Anders to find his own way out.

He stopped in the doorway to look at me over his shoulder with hopeful eyes. “You’ll be in touch?”

“I will.”

He nodded again, then disappeared down the hall, presumably headed outside to his babysitters to be driven back to Knight Tower.

I dropped back into Laura’s chair, releasing the tension I’d been holding. I was done playing the Knight Heir for now.

Max took over the chair Anders had vacated. “Let me call Zepp,” he said, scrolling on his phone before putting it on speaker and tossing it on the desk.

“Goody,” I snarked. Zepp was such a little shit, but he was a genius and ran the Shadows’ entire tech team with a powdered-sugar-covered fist.

He also taught Max everything he knows.

He answered after two rings.

“Maxy, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Hello, Zepp,” I drawled.

“Well, if it isn’t our fearless leader,” he cooed at me, like a dick. “What can I do for you, boss lady?”

“You can wipe the donut dust off your fingers and tell us if you’ve had any epiphanies regarding getting into my dad’s flash drive without the encryption key.”

He snorted. “It’s never happening, boss. Your dad was a titan of data security, and that is his premier product. You have to have the key, and if we try to break it, the drive will self-destruct.”

We’d been over this. I knew it was futile.

“We’ve learned that James Spencer never accessed it either,” Max added. “And that whatever is on there is something he wanted enough to harass Anders about for years.”

Zepp hummed. “It’s not surprising, given where you guys found that thing. ”

“And there’s no clues in what we’ve been able to access at Knight itself?”

Rapid typing sounded before he replied, “No, not really. We’ve been snooping around inside the various companies and incubators within the old Knight empire, but there hasn’t been anything that seems to have caught the particular interest of James Spencer or any of the other Families.

” More typing. “Nothing all that revolutionary in all their locked-up IP, either. Shit’s gone soft over there without your dad. ”

That was what happened when your legacy was stolen, stripped for parts, and operated solely to squeeze as much money out of it as possible to line the pockets of the thieves that ran it.

“I guess I’ll just have to find my dad’s key, then.”

“That’s the spirit,” Zepp chirped, now munching noisily on something. “In the meantime, we’re working on our next project . Should be ready to push out in the next few weeks.”

“Awesome, thanks, Zepp.”

“Anything to take out the trash and return the queen to her rightful place.”

My rightful place was a cabana on a private island with a livestream of the City in flames on my phone, but the Shadows were ready to build something better on top of the ashes.

They didn’t need me.

Zepp signed off, and Max shot me an encouraging smile.

“We’ll get it figured out, Jojo. The important thing is, your dad’s work is out of Spencer’s hands, whatever it is.” He drummed his knuckles on the desk before he hopped to his feet. “Let’s eat something and then go work your frustrations out on someone’s face at the gym.”

Now that sounded like a plan.