Page 69 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JOLIE
I woke Monday morning with Noah’s face pressed into the crook of my neck and the space behind me still warm where Zach had slept.
The weekend had passed under a precarious sort of quiet. I’d been forced to throw myself into homework, since I couldn’t forget that I was still attending one of the most rigorous collegiate academies in the country while I was destroying the Families.
Zach and Noah had been doing the same, balancing the intense course load with the delicate dance they were doing with their parents, and they’d each collapsed into my bed in the late hours of the last two nights with a few sweet kisses for me before they’d passed out.
After I’d gotten frustrated during hour three of my Finance homework last night, I’d gone to the gym to blow off steam, so I was skipping my early workout to snuggle with Noah before class started.
I missed Zach, but he’d run off earlier to supervise Bennett’s morning gym time.
As much as Bennett frustrated me, seeing how the three of them still took care of each other after all these years made me feel warm and gooey inside.
“So, my team unearthed something last night,” Noah said as he lazed in my bed, his hot gaze following me eagerly as I moved around the room while getting dressed .
“What’s that?” I bent over to shimmy into my soft leather leggings, making sure he got a good look at my ass as I did it.
A pause. “What?”
“Your team found something?”
He bit his lip before he tore his eyes from my butt.
“Right. Now that we’re being a bit more…
aggressive about our digging around, we targeted the Knight servers for suspicious activity immediately after your parents were killed.
Like, the activity from the very next morning—we noticed something we’d missed before. ”
I pulled my loose burgundy sweater over the soft tank top I wore, then I paused to look at him. “They were looking for the encryption key.”
He nodded. “The access point appeared to be the Knight penthouse, and whoever was digging went deliberately to a file your dad had hidden on his private server—the one he and his small research team used. If we weren’t looking specifically for a possible encryption key for a KnightKey500, we might not have identified it, but the sequence that was pulled from your dad’s server doesn’t unlock his drive. ”
“You tried it?”
“I did.” He tossed the covers off his body, treating me to a nice view of his shapely, tanned legs in his boxer briefs, then he went hunting for his pants. “That’s why I was late coming down here last night. I was hoping for good news for you. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
I finished pulling on my new favorite boots before I stood and enveloped him in a hug.
“It’s better this way, Noah. I don’t think we’d have wanted whoever was sniffing around my dad’s stuff to have gotten their hands on the right key.
It was definitely James Spencer, or at least someone doing it at his behest.”
He kissed my neck. “You’re right. Maybe it’s for the best the key was lost.”
I reached for his discarded shirt at the foot of my bed and shoved it into his hands. “Get dressed, boyfriend. I want a full breakfast before class.”
Loud pounding sounded against my bedroom door before Mari’s muffled voice floated through. “Me too! Keep it in your pants, Hargraves, because I’m starving!”
Noah sighed. “I miss the time when she was scared of me like the rest of the school. ”
She cackled out in the hallway. “That was before my best friend started keeping your cojones in her purse!”
He groaned. I smacked a kiss to his lips before I said, “Cheer up, baby. Of all the awesome things I keep in my purse, your balls are my favorite.”
While Noah popped upstairs to the Heir suite to put his suit on and Mari shut herself in her room to call Carmen, I sat at our small kitchen table and checked in with my team.
“Boss lady, you are savage,” Zepp said as he joined the call. “And apparently so is the little Hargraves prince.”
“Whatever,” Max drawled. “He shot a guy laying on the floor who had another gun to his head. Big fucking whoop.”
“He put that bullet exactly between Kincaid’s eyes, Max,” Dom replied. “That’s some skill.”
“Can we focus, please?” I griped, giving the three of them my best stern boss voice. “It was great taking a huge bite out of Hargraves and escaping death and all, but we need to move quickly on our next target. They’re going to stop underestimating us eventually.”
“It’s in the works, my queen,” Zepp said with his usual snark. “The more hits the Families take, the more vulnerable they are in the public eye and to their investors. I think with just a few more pushes, we’ll be ready.”
“Great.”
Dom added, “You need to continue to watch your back, please. We’re keeping eyes on the perimeter of the Academy, as always, but I’d prefer if you had a capable escort if you leave campus.”
“That would be me,” Max said.
“You know, Zach and Noah are pretty capable too,” I replied, very casually.
Max’s scoff reverberated through my earbuds. “Sure, if you want to downgrade your security to pretty boys with questionable loyalties, Jojo.”
Someday the men in my life would all get along, but today was not that day.
“I’ll be fine. Zepp, keep me up to date on progress. Meeting adjourned. ”
We said our goodbyes, and I’d just shoved my phone into my back pocket when it started buzzing with another incoming call to my secure line.
“Uncle Anders?” I said as I swiped the screen to answer. “Are you in trouble?”
“Oh, no, no,” he said quickly. His rapid breathing and the ambient noise of traffic told me he was out walking somewhere in the City. “I really just wanted to make sure you weren’t in trouble. That was a dangerous thing you did to Peter Hargraves, Jolie.”
“It was a more dangerous thing he did to me , Uncle,” I replied, my words biting. “I’m just righting the wrongs done to our Family.”
“I… yes, I realize,” he huffed. A car horn blared in the background.
“And of course, it is nice to have two-thirds of Knight Tower back with… us. But Jolie, even with your vast inheritance at your disposal, I’m not sure you have the power to take on all three of the remaining Families. I know that’s what you’re planning.”
I took a calming breath. This was my uncle worried about my safety, not the elite assholes I had to interact with daily doubting me yet again.
“I have more power behind me than anyone realizes, Uncle. I appreciate your concern, but you should focus on keeping a low profile and off James Spencer’s radar. ”
“What do you mean, you have more power behind you than anyone realizes? What—” He cursed. “Sorry, tripped on the curb. Did you… did you find something on your dad’s drive?”
“What? No.”
“Help me out here, Jolie,” he said, almost whining. “Help me understand how this is not a suicide mission.”
Not today. “Maybe it is, Uncle. But it’s my decision. I’ve got to get to breakfast before class. Talk to you later.”
“Jolie—”
I hung up as a knock sounded at the door. I cracked it open to find both of my handsome boyfriends dressed in their suits—or in Zach’s case, half a suit—along with one tall, brooding plus-one lingering near the elevator.
I pushed the door open wide, beckoning them inside. “Hi, boys.”
“Hey, Princess.” Zach waltzed in and promptly pinned me to the wall by the door with his hard body. “You look delicious today.” He kissed me, swallowing my tiny moan.
“Ease up, Ferrero,” Noah said as he entered behind Zach. “Our girl wants breakfast before class, and I have a surprise for her. We gotta go.”
Before I could interrogate Noah about this surprise , Mari appeared from her room, click-clacking across the hardwood floor in some monster peep-toe heels.
“Oh, do my eyes deceive me? Are the Heirs of the Four Families standing in my dorm during daylight hours after being let inside instead of breaking in like common criminals?”
Bennett’s serious face appeared in the doorway. “You’ve both been breaking in here? How shitty is your security, Jolie?”
I glared at him over Zach’s shoulder. “Better than the security at fucking Spencer Tower, Bennett.”
“Nope,” Zach said, releasing me from my spot on the wall and grabbing my hand. He pointed between Bennett and me. “You two, behave. We’re all going to breakfast—no fighting.”
We continued our stare off until Bennett finally huffed out a frustrated breath and stepped back into the hallway.
Noah offered his arm to Mari with his charming smile, and she giggled as she wrapped her hand around his elbow. “How gallant. Max would be very jealous if he knew.”
Noah’s grin widened. “Zach, take a picture of us.”
I yanked Zach into the hallway before he could reach for his phone.
The intense interest of our fellow students in the Heirs’ change of location from the asshole table to my table in the dining hall hadn’t died down even a little bit since it’d first happened last week.
The student body had gathered that Zach and I were no longer ex-best friend/mortal enemies, and the fact that Noah and Bennett had come over to my side with him wasn’t a giant shock, but speculation was rampant as to what exactly was going on.
It was interesting how random people weren’t shouting the word “slut” at me in the hallways anymore, even though Zach usually made it a point to shove his tongue down my throat whenever he said goodbye to me in between classes .
I’d already tucked into my omelet and was happily sipping my coffee, Zach’s arm slung over the back of my chair as he talked across me to Bennett, who loomed like a king at the head of the table, when Noah finally made it over to us with his plate.
“Hey, hands off, you mooch,” I griped at Noah, turning to glare at him over my shoulder as he stole a particularly ripe strawberry off my plate, popping it into his mouth as he stood behind my chair.