Page 53 of Dark Little Game

The halls are empty.

I cradle the phone against my ear as my shoes click along the marble floor, and I push open the carved wooden door to one of the classrooms.

The chalkboard still has leftover notes scrawled all over it, and the air smells like old books and coffee. Some sort of literature class was held here earlier today.

The rows of wooden desks in the classroom look better without all the students in them.

I shut the classroom door behind me.

The room is dark.

I’m alone, and it feels incredible.

I put my phone audio on speaker, the sound of my dad’s latest lecture filling the room.

“If you apply yourself, Hunter, you’ll be well in line for a position at the Knox Corporation in two years,” he’s saying.

I reach in my backpack and take out my little set of throwing knives.

Three matte black blades that can fit in the palm of my hand.

I grip one firmly, aim it at the wooden wall in the back, and I throw.

It hits the wood with a littlethwack.

It’ll leave a mark so thin that no one will ever notice it. The walls of this classroom are so old and covered in scrapes and scratches already, anyway.

“In fact, Hunter, for a while I thought that Weston would go further in the company than you, but now that you’re a Crimson…”

“Now I’ll be perfect for the job?” I ask.

And then I throw another knife into the wall, as hard as I fucking can.

“Perhaps,” my father says. “Ah. I’m getting a call from HQ. I’ll need to take this, Hunter?—”

“Bye, Dad.”

I hang up the phone before he can finish his sentence.

And I throw the next knife even harder.

I stay in that empty, dark classroom for at least thirty more minutes. Throwing the knives, retrieving them, and throwing them again.

I put music on in my headphones, lost in my own world.

I want to shove the idea of my father out of my mind.

But the problem is, when I stop thinking about him, I think about someone else instead.

Rayne Colson.

FuckingRoyal.

I toss a knife forward and it hits the edge of one of the others, clattering onto the ground.

I pull in a breath and go pick them back up again, putting them back into their case.

I’m not sure what’s more appealing. Hurting Rayne myself, or hurting the person who is trying to attack him.