Chapter 316. A Wretched Deal I

Chapter 316: 316. A Wretched Deal I

Maisie

I swallowed, not breathing at all until I felt his aura brush up my spine. My breath hitched. It felt like being at the receiving end of a roulette. Deadly. Like if I blinked wrong, I’d be dead.

His fingers dropped on my shoulders. "Braxton," he said pleasantly, in a manner of greeting, running a cursory glance over the table and he added, "Park. Jules. Mind if I borrow Maisie here for a bit?"

Regina was twirling her red locks around her finger and she giggled, oblivious to the danger brewing his deceptively, lovely voice. "You can take her for a year if you like."

"Uh..." I stammered as he took my bag from the bench and hung it over his shoulder. It looked silly, like a miniature version of a kids bag on him.

But his fingers circled my wrist and I was pulled off the bench. Very gently.

"What is going on?" I whispered as he ushered me out of the cafeteria, the entire school watching closely. I caught a flash of camera and turned to find Kirby looking.

Unsurprisingly, she was sitting pretty close to Cole, whose green eyes never seemed to stop tracking me, even after all this time. Tessa was on the table not too far from them, her eyes snagging on Soren, a deep longing written all over her, mingled with hatred.

She straightened her hair and her dress as we approached the door, right by their table. She stood suddenly, but Soren didn’t glance in her direction before placing his hand on the small of my back, guiding me out the door.

I looked over my shoulder and her face was red with anger, her fingers toying with the pendant on her neck. When our gazes collided, her facial expression shifted to soft contemplation. And then her lips curved upwards slowly, like she knew something I didn’t.

Soren’s hand trembled on my waist, but he kept his stoic expressions in place, leading through hallway after hallway until we were out in the open.

I recognized the black Jaguar parked off the lot and close to the school’s entrance. Usually, no one was allowed to pull up so close to the entrance, but being a Black came with its perks.

Soren let go to pull the front door open.

"What’s happening?" I asked again as he ducked the edge of the car as I got in, so I wouldn’t bump my head.

He shut the door and opened the back seat to put in my bag, before turning around to slip into the driver’s seat.

The car’s low purr ran up my body smoothly and Soren held the steering wheel with white-knuckled strength as he pulled out of the driveway.

"New evidence was turned in today," Soren said, his composure splitting to reveal a deep annoyance, and my heart dropped.

"That bad?" I asked, afraid of what his answer would be.

His fingers tightened on the wheel, causing it to creek as he sped through the iron gates of the Academy, taking the long winding drive downward. "Not quite. It’s... in your favour."

The nerves knotting my stomach unclenched. "Isn’t that good news?"

He ran his tongue along his fang. "Considering its source, I wouldn’t be too sure." He peered over me finally, eyes lingering on my bare thighs sticking out from under my plaid skirt. His eyes lingered on my legs for a moment, and I felt the heat in them drag lower to my knee high boots. He blinked, dragging his eyes back to the road, and the corner of his ears reddened. "You look nice. Is that a new skirt?"

"Yeah," I said, crossing my knee over the other. "The source," I added, adjusting the racks from aircon directly in front of me. "You mentioned the source. Who is it?"

"It was an anonymous tip," he said, glancing over at my legs again. His fingers tapped against the wheel twice. "Wear that for Jericho?" he asked casually, but Jericho’s name was punctuated around a hiss.

I turned left to find him glaring now at the skirt. If looks could cause any damage, I’d say the skirt would’ve been burned to ashes already. "Problem?"

He sniffed. Licked a fang. "No."

Uh. Somehow, I didn’t think that was true, but he reached up to tug at his tie and release a button. "Alden is waiting at the facility. You need to verify its credibility." He paused. "It’s a video. The angle suggests it was pulled off the videos from the street cams. You fell out the trunk of a car bound and gagged--"

I inhaled sharply, my body freezing up as I was tossed back by months. I was in the back of the trunk again, waking up to being moved. A phantom pain that wasn’t truly there resonated through my body as I fell out the trunk. I heard the car shriek to a halt. Relieved the helplessness, fear and hatred I felt as I was dragged back to Tessa, and forced to kneel before her.

In tune with my emotions, Soren slowed the car. The tension eased out of him slowly. "We can do this another time if--"

"No," I breathed, fingers shaking. "It’s fine. I just... I was just caught off guard is all." Wiping the sweat off my brow at the sudden flash back, I asked, "Why is this a problem?"

"All of the evidence was destroyed by the Queen and Tessa. Anything linking the murder or abduction back to them was erased and manipulated, leaving not a single trace of the truth behind," Soren said, his face deeply troubled. "We searched in preparation for your trial and found nothing. Your framing was a meticulously done task with no room for mistakes. If this got turned in now, then it surely wasn’t as a result of luck."

Perhaps, it was Gruer’s doing? "Have you gotten any strange invoices lately?"

Soren shot me a side glance. "No, but I’ll have Brynn run a check just to be sure." His brows arched. "You think your demon could be behind this?"

"He’s not my demon," I growled. "And I need to reach him first before I can be sure."

"By dying from blood loss?" he said dryly. "You do not speak to him alone again."

My head swung to him. "Excuse me? I don’t take orders from insane men who put chips into unconscious women and then try to bribe them with a well paying job to make them less mad!"

The corners of his ears reddened again, but his expression stayed the same. "You owe him an awful lot of money," he deflected. "Do you kiss every time you make deals with him? Or does he ask for other things?"

There it was again. That deceptively light tone. "It only happened once! And that is not what this is about!"

"Your lace panties were tucked in between the pages of the invoice."

I opened my mouth and snapped it shut. Well, I didn’t know what to say to that. It looked pretty bad. Pretty, pretty bad. What the hell was Gruer trying to go? Get himself killed? Or was this his own form of entertainment? Being a pain in all of our asses and pissing them off?

"I didn’t--we didn’t--"

"I know," he answered.

Silence fell as the buildings shifted from residences to tall, shiny towers.

"About the chip," he said after moment, shifting uncomfortably. "If I’d asked you, you would’ve broken my nose."

"That is no excuse, Soren," I said. "How am I supposed to trust you if you keep doing things like that?"

"I’m sorry--"

"No, you’re not." I turned my gaze to him. "If you were, you would get your damned tag out of my body."

His lips quirked into a stupid, sexy smile and his elegant fingers drummed over the wheel as he pulled into the parking lot of the correctional facility. "Not even if hell froze over." He killed the engine. "You either move back in or you keep the chip. It’s your choice, Adams."