Page 6 of Venom (St. Sebastian’s at Cravenmoor Academy #1)

Blake

T he air in St. Sebastian’s library hangs thick with the scent of old leather and even older money.

From my preferred armchair in the corner, I have a perfect view of the pretenders and the peacocks, the heirs and heiresses playing at being students while they sharpen their knives on one another.

It’s all so dreadfully predictable. Boring.

I trace the rim of my crystal tumbler, the fine Scotch within it a smooth, familiar warmth against the chill of the Northumberland morning.

A discreet vibration from the pocket of my Tom Ford jacket pulls my attention from the lesser sharks circling the room, their posturing as transparent as glass.

A message from Dad.

VCH incoming. Make the most of it.

VCH. Venetia Corbyn-Hale.

A slow smile touches my lips. So, the Corbyn-Hale princess has finally been sent to the academy for monsters.

Anton Corbyn-Hale must be truly desperate.

Chaos is a ladder, and someone has just kicked the rungs out from under this dreary, ordered place.

I’ve heard the stories. A woman with more balls than some of the so-called men here.

Now she’s being tossed into this snake pit. I take a slow sip of my Scotch, the twenty-five-year-old liquid a smooth fire in my throat.

Her presence here shifts the entire balance of power. She is the most valuable, untapped asset to walk through these ancient gates in years. The other factions will be circling within the hour, sniffing for weakness, ready to pounce. They will see a prize to be claimed.

I see an alliance. The Corbyn-Hale empire tethered to the Locke syndicate through its most precious commodity. The heiress. Yes, this term has just become infinitely more interesting. I set my glass down on the polished mahogany table with a soft click, the sound precise in the hushed room.

“Did you hear?”

I don’t look up at Rafferty Warrick as he stops next to me and holds out an iPad.

“Of course. Several minutes ago.” I take the iPad from him and stare at the video playing.

A gorgeous blonde woman with big green eyes and tits a man would kill for, fucking a heavily tattooed guy in a club. “Venetia,” I murmur. “Good to know.”

“She’s giving him a lap dance,” Raff snorts. “But we all know your fetish for public displays of affection.”

I smile and hand the iPad back. “What of it?”

“Keep watching,” he says as he sits down and rudely picks up my Scotch, downing it in one gulp. Barbarian.

I focus on the screen again and then see the red dot before the tattooed guy slams her to the floor and draws a weapon. A Glock, if I’m not mistaken. “Someone tried to take her out?”

“Yep.”

“How do you have this?”

He smiles enigmatically. “I have my ways.”

“So, ACH has decided to cut his losses and send his wayward heir our way? Or is there more to this?”

“I think he has sent her here to keep her from getting her head blown off. Word is, she’s been digging into some pretty nasty stuff.”

“Nasty stuff tends to attract nasty consequences,” I observe, my gaze still fixed on the screen where the chaos in the club unfolds.

“It makes her a liability, and a target, which makes her arrival here all the more intriguing.” A woman with a death wish and the power of the Corbyn-Hale name is a volatile cocktail. Delicious.

“Her enemies will follow her here,” Rafferty says, a grin stretching across his face. “This place is about to get a lot more fun.”

“Fun is a byproduct, Rafferty. Opportunity is the main event.” My eyes narrow on the man in the video. The way he moved, the possessive way he shielded her before drawing his weapon. That wasn’t a random punter. “And him. The tattooed brute who played hero. Who is he?”

Rafferty snorts. “Viper Stone. South Side Manchester. A fucking animal. Rumour is, he’s her new shadow. ACH hired him as her bodyguard.”

A bodyguard. How delightfully crude. Anton Corbyn-Hale has not just thrown his daughter to the wolves; he’s chained her to one of them.

There’s more to the story than meets the eye.

The game has been elevated to a whole new level.

I take back my glass from Rafferty, a genuine smile touching my lips for the first time all day.

“A professional wouldn’t have missed at that range. This was either a warning, or a very clumsy amateur.”

“My money is on clumsy,” Rafferty grunts, and he would know. “The point is, she has enemies bold enough to try something in Viper Stone’s club. Now Daddy’s sending her here. To us.”

“Not to us,” I correct him softly, my eyes lifting from the iPad to meet his. “To me.”

Rafferty’s jaw tightens. He knows I’m right.

The Warrick Consortium is an assassin’s guild, providing useful tools.

The Locke syndicate builds empires. An alliance with Corbyn-Hale is a generational move, not a simple contract kill.

Venetia is a queen, not a pawn. “We’ll see.

I hear she’s a spitfire. She’ll make her own choices. ”

I ignore his attempt at throwing his hat in the ring. “I suppose our first order of business will be to separate the princess from her pet.”

“Pet snake ,” Rafferty says. “I knew a guy who watched Stone poison someone with snake venom to get information out of him. It was… effective, by all accounts.”

“Snake venom,” I murmur. “I like him already. Too bad he’s standing in the way of what I want.

” A ghost of a smile plays on my lips. “Every king needs a loyal attack dog, Rafferty. Perhaps Viper Stone can be tamed. Or, perhaps, he simply needs to be put down.” I rise from the armchair, my movements fluid and unhurried, and walk to the tall arched window overlooking the main quad.

“But violence is so uninspired. It’s the last resort of a man with no other options. ”

Rafferty scoffs. “What’s your plan then, Locke? Bore them to death with financial reports?”

“The beauty of St. Sebastian’s,” I say, gazing down at the manicured lawns where the future leaders of our world scheme and posture, “is that it has rules. An ecosystem. A viper can’t survive long outside of its habitat.

Stone is out of his element here. He has no status, no power.

He is nothing.” I turn back to face him, my expression placid.

“You, on the other hand, can be useful. Find out who sent the sniper. An enemy of my enemy, as the saying goes.”

Raff’s eyes gleam with the promise of violence. “And what will you be doing?”

“I will be introducing myself to the lady. After all, a princess deserves a welcome from a prince, not a beast on a leash.” This game, I decide, will be won with finesse, not force, unless absolutely necessary. Viper Stone either moves out of the way, or I will make him move.