Page 75 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

JOLIE

I t only took twenty-four hours for me to have to face down another bitch I hated.

I’d finished that afternoon’s workout early, so I was already showered and mostly dressed when a large group of my crew teammates trudged into the locker room.

I was looking forward to grabbing dinner, finishing my homework, and then snuggling up with my boyfriends to get yet another night of blissful, dreamless sleep.

But it was not to be.

“Did you fuck him, you dirty whore?”

I knew that grating shriek well. I blew out a long-suffering sigh before I turned away from my locker to face a sweaty, red-faced Harper, her minions scurrying away from her like they were ducking out of the blast zone.

I arched a casual brow. “Did I fuck who, Jansen? I have two boyfriends, so you’ll need to be more specific.”

She barked out a humorless laugh. “Exactly. You’ll spread your legs for fucking anyone, especially an Heir.

My fiancé disappeared from our party after he threw your skanky ass out, and he never came to stay in my room like we’d planned .

So, I can only assume you lured him into some disgusting orgy . ”

Well, she wasn’t totally wrong there. “Don’t blame me for the fact that your fiancé would rather fuck his hand in the shower than stick it in your vile hole, Harper.”

She screeched in rage, and this time there was no Bennett to hold her back. She flew at me, her long nails extended and ready to claw my eyes out in a good old-fashioned bitch fight.

Too bad I didn’t do those.

I ducked her easily, but she managed to get one pink-tipped talon hooked into the long chain of my necklace, and it snapped like a twig as she swiped at me, her momentum sending her sailing past me and into the lockers.

My stomach lurched as my cherry blossom charm flew from the chain and hit the unforgiving metal of the lockers. It cracked before dropping onto the bench below with a sad little clink.

Well, now I was really fucking pissed.

Harper bounced off the lockers with a firm shove—untrained as a fighter but athletic enough—and she charged at me again.

No one attempted to intervene—not even those spineless cunts who’d teamed up with her to throw me into the river last semester—because everyone else in this locker room had seen me go toe to toe with Zach Ferrero and knew better.

Harper’s obsession with Bennett had made her lose all sense, so I was going to have to knock it back into her.

“Stay away from him, slut!” She wound up for an open-handed slap.

I caught her wrist, deliberated controlling myself and immediately dismissed the idea before I twisted it with a brutal snap.

Gasps rang out around the room.

She screamed, any dreams of glory she had for this crew season snuffed out in an instant. “You broke my fucking wrist!”

“You tried to kill me,” I replied, reveling in the crunch of her shattered bones in my hand as I squeezed. “And you just broke the only thing I had left from my parents. You’re getting off light, all things considered.”

She began sobbing, sucking in panicked breaths as the pain and reality undoubtedly hit her.

I shoved her away, and she fell into the waiting arms of her sycophants, who gaped at me with pure terror in their eyes.

I gave them all my back, slinging my backpack over my shoulder and grabbing my gym bag. I carefully picked up the shards of my charm, gripping them tightly in my hand as I stomped angrily out of the locker room, down the gym hallway, and out onto the sprawling lawn of the Academy grounds.

I felt my lip wobble as I stalked across campus. I will not cry for the first time in seven years over something Harper did. I will not fucking do it .

Reaching the soft light of a sidewalk lamp, I paused to unfurl my clenched fist. I peeked down to study the two pieces of my rose-gold charm, hoping that maybe I could figure out a way to glue them back together. I’d get a shorter chain this time.

When the light hit the metal in my hand, I sucked in a breath.

What the hell?

I dropped my gym bag, then I fished in the pocket of my joggers for my phone.

Me: Where are you

Noah: My office. You ok?

Me: Need you to look at something. Meet you there in ten.

I gathered my shit, then I hurried toward Holywell Hall.

What were you up to, Dad?

Noah stared at the two pieces of my charm that I’d set carefully on his desk.

“That’s a microKnight,” he said, lifting one half of the cherry blossom between his long fingers and bringing it closer to his face.

I could just make out the little rectangular edge of the disk under the harsh overhead lights of Noah’s office.

“These are old—they don’t hold much data and went out of favor for Knight’s bigger, flashier tech a long time ago. ”

“What the hell is it doing in my necklace?”

He looked at me, blue eyes serious behind his dark frames. “Hiding, sweetheart.”

I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. Noah turned his laptop so that we both could see the screen, then he slid the little drive attached to one half of my charm into one of its ports. A single file popped up on the screen, labeled simply, “JMKbackup.”

“My initials,” I said, throat dry.

“Yes.” Noah clicked the file .

I watched, breathless, as a simple text box appeared, containing a long string of nonsense numbers and letters.

“Noah,” I said, my heart rate ratcheting up to thundering. “Where is my dad’s drive?”

He was pale as he pulled open his bottom desk drawer, and I could hear the creak of him sliding away the false bottom.

A tiny beep signaled the scan of his fingerprint onto the little safe contained there—now also keyed to my finger—and within seconds Noah had my dad’s silver KnightKey500 plugged into an additional port on his laptop.

As expected, the dialogue box popped up, demanding the encryption key. With a few quick keystrokes, Noah had pasted the string of letters and numbers from my charm into the box, and with a happy little chirp, the box disappeared to reveal?—

“That’s… a shit ton of files,” I said because I didn’t have anything else to say.

I couldn’t believe this was happening. “What was my dad thinking, hiding the encryption key to whatever this is in an eleven-year-old’s jewelry?

He’s lucky it didn’t get lost down the drain of Zach’s fucking swimming pool! ”

“It’s the backup, Jojo,” Noah replied, distracted as he started rapidly clicking through files. “My guess is, he had the original on him at all times. It probably was… lost with him—oh, holy shit.”

“What?”

Noah’s jaw dropped progressively further open as he clicked.

“Noah!”

“Fuck, okay. Have you ever heard of miraculene?”

I gave him a blank stare. “I’m a business major.”

“Right. It’s basically a miracle substance—hence the name—that was discovered a decade ago by some physicists in Prague.

It’s a nanomaterial, and it was supposed to be like, the next huge innovation in tech…

but no one’s been able to figure out how to mass produce it in all these years.

But, shit, I think your dad might have?”

“And that’s a big deal?”

“Fucking huge. Um, okay.” He sat back in his chair, blowing out a big breath. “Do you mind if I loop in my tech team lead? She’ll be able to make better sense of this than I can.”

I nodded. If Noah trusted her, I would do the same. “Can we conference in my guy too? ”

He quirked a perfect blond brow at me. “I finally get to meet your guy ?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I shoved my phone at him, a link to Zepp on the screen.

He set up the secure line on his phone and dialed.

A no-nonsense female voice answered the phone after a single ring. “Yes, sir?”

“Hey, Silver,” Noah responded, narrowing his eyes dangerously at me as I took a moment to mouth, “Yes, sir” at him with a roll of my eyes. “I’ve got Jolie, and we’re conferencing in her guy. This is urgent.”

“Boss lady.” Zepp’s drawl floated from Noah’s phone speaker. “What can I do you for?”

A scandalized gasp sounded. “Zepp! Holy shit , I’d wondered where you’d slithered off to.”

Zepp chuckled. “Hey there, Tina. Still toiling away for The Man, I see.”

“It’s Silver ,” she spat.

“Sure, sure.”

“Ugh, of course you joined a resistance movement. How cliche .”

I cleared my throat. “Can we focus, please?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Silver replied, snapping back into professional mode.

“Um, you don’t have to call me ma’am, Silver.”

“I sure do, ma’am,” she replied. “You’re my boss’s boss.”

I shot a questioning look at Noah, who grinned at me. “I moved my team to the former Hargraves Tech. They’re on Knight payroll now, and you are, in fact, the boss.”

“Oh, look at that, Tina,” Zepp said, snickering. “You’re also part of the resistance movement .”

“At least our new offices are gorgeous and not whatever hole you’re currently hiding in.”

Noah cut in. “I’m going to be sending you a link to access my laptop, and I need you both to ensure you’re alone before you remote in.”

“I’m in the bunker, so I’m solid,” Zepp said around a mouthful of something crunchy.

“I knew it, you little rat,” Silver muttered, then she shouted into the background, “Listen up! Clear out of here and don’t come back until you hear from me!” Faint shuffling and grumbling sounded in the background, and a door slammed. “Okay. Ready. ”

With a few quick keystrokes, Noah sent the two of them the secure link to view his screen. “I’m giving control to Silver, but you can both see the screen now.”

We watched as Silver began to click through the myriad of files stored on my dad’s drive.

“Holy fuck,” Zepp said, more serious than I’d ever heard him. “You unlocked your dad’s drive?”

“Yes.”

Silver gasped again. “Oh my God. He cracked the code on miraculene, Zepp.”

“I can see that, Tina.”

“Can one of you explain what this means?” I asked, my hands starting to shake.