Chapter 41: Nobody Expected the Fist

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Nobody Expected the Fist

The event officer asked the stranger to step away from the table, then took the receipt without allowing Dante to reach for it. The man protested that he was collecting a debt, which sounded less threatening once somebody required him to explain whose debt it was.

Dante told the officer about Senn’s photograph and the woman named in Evan’s saved booking message. Rhea stayed beside Posey while the health volunteer brought the promised water, keeping the medical problem separate from the reason people stared at them.

The stranger gave his name as Lewis Brand and said he worked collections for a transport booking service. He had been sent a picture of the person who collected the afternoon envelope, not instructions to threaten a room full of students.

Anika asked him whether confronting someone beside a food counter was his employer’s preferred accounting method. The officer told both of them to save further questions for Senn, then guided Lewis toward the staffed reception desk.

Dante started after the officer, already preparing questions, until Posey caught his good wrist. He’d nearly abandoned the person beside him to chase an explanation. He asked the officer to pass Senn his number, then sat where Posey wouldn’t need to raise her voice.

Jett announced that Dante’s brakes worked. Posey released his wrist, blushing, and Dante asked whether she wanted him to stay until her appointment was settled. She nodded. Being wanted didn’t always require solving the room; sometimes he needed to remain in his chair.

He moved the untouched water within Posey’s reach and asked whether she wanted him to walk over with her. She said Rhea knew what to tell the nurse, then asked him to send a message when he finished here. He agreed and put a reminder beside Senn’s number, giving himself one simple thing he would not leave somebody else to remember.

Anika went to collect the bag she had left on the next chair while the officer finished at reception. A student passing behind her caught her waist and said she looked too serious for a Saturday night.

Anika removed the student’s hand and told him to stop. When he reached again, Dante stepped between them and called the officer. He imagined the man backing down before his expression, giving Anika the safety and everyone else the memorable warning.

The student shoved him, ruining the imagined ending. Dante swung for his jaw and hit a shoulder. Pain shot through his knuckles as Jett’s chair tipped beside him, and he grabbed its back. His grand defense had immediately become preventing his best friend from hitting the floor.

Dante steadied the chair while Anika pinned the student’s wrist against another without casting. Staff separated them, and a witness confirmed he’d touched her again after being told to stop.

The officer removed him and took Dante’s name too, since being partly justified didn’t excuse swinging beside Posey’s health check. Anika stayed when Dante asked if she wanted space, but told him she’d wanted her refusal heard, not a fight over ownership.

"I heard you," he said, looking at Anika instead of the man being led away. "I just stopped listening to anything else after he pushed me." She asked whether he thought she had enjoyed watching the chair fall toward Jett, and he could not hide behind the answer he wanted to give. His friend had already spent enough time getting hurt near his good intentions.

He apologized to Jett while his pulse still insisted he should feel impressive. The chair disagreed, his knuckles disagreed, and Anika had already told him what she needed. He made himself listen before his imagination supplied a more flattering account.

Jett checked the chair leg and said the next attempt at chivalry should include an estimate for furniture. Dante laughed once because he was grateful to be allowed, then stopped flexing his knuckles when the pain reached his wrist. He had hurt the hand that still worked. Helping Anika had lasted a second; now somebody needed to check him again.

The health volunteer checked Dante’s hand, finding bruised knuckles rather than a new serious injury. Posey waited beside him until Rhea returned with confirmation that student health could see her, then asked him to answer his phone if Senn called.

Rhea took Posey across the plaza with Jett and Lucan accompanying them. Anika remained with Dante because Senn wanted separate follow-up statements from both, and the event officer directed them to a quiet office near reception.

Dante expected questions about Lewis and the envelope. Instead, Senn explained that another officer was checking the collection service while he needed them to hear something from the practice-room emergency.

Anika asked for her adviser, and Senn arranged for the representative from her first interview to join them.

Ms. Lane, the broad, silver-haired adviser from Anika’s first interview, joined them in the quiet office. She explained that she could help Anika understand the meeting but wouldn’t supply her answers, then made sure Senn noted their request for the complete recording.

Before playback, Dante sent Posey the promised message and turned his phone facedown. Anika sat beside him. He wanted to become the man who already understood everything, but that man kept choosing answers before hearing the evidence. Dante stayed quiet and let Senn begin.

Senn played Martin’s saved support call from his desk, explaining how it had been preserved. Martin first described the failed release, while Professor Bell called instructions from beside the practice mat.

Dante recognized the three beeps. Yesterday he’d learned them, and today he’d panicked after the first. The recording explained where the fork belonged. He searched for another meaning, some small mistake that would let his order become insight instead of fear.

Martin’s recorded voice shook as he said he could reach it if Professor Bell kept Dante clear of the stand.

"He could have known what to say," Dante objected, hearing the excuse before fully believing it. "He handled the case at the cleaner’s too, before I knew what any of this was."

Senn asked whether Martin had hurt anyone at the cleaner’s. Dante remembered careful hands, apologies, and a pool invitation. He said he hadn’t understood enough then to be sure. It was true, but he knew he was using it to avoid another answer.

The recording continued with Martin asking support to stay because the student was scared. Dante wanted Anika to find a kinder explanation, but she stayed silent, and he asked Senn to keep his warning in the statement because he didn’t get to disappear from what followed.

Across the desk, Anika stopped watching Senn and looked directly at the phone. Martin’s anxious recorded words came through the small speaker, asking them to keep Dante talking until he reached him because he did not want the boy thinking they had left him to die.