Page 50 of Hidden Empire

“Today, we’ll touch on safety, and next class, we’ll get into actual knives, knife types, and blade handling.” He passes out a small stack of booklets and continues to speak while he does. “And yes, I’m aware this is the dreadfully dull part of the class. Safety is boring, but it’s also what keeps your fingers attached to your hands, so don’t gloss over it if you’ve never so much as seen a knife.”

The whole remainder of class time is spent analyzing the rules, as well as consequences for breaking the more extreme ones.

“If you attempt to harm anyone with any of these knives, I have full permission to deal with you as I see fit. Attempt to kill another student, or me, in my room, and you’ll be dead before your body hits the ground.”

It’s safe to say I won’t be touching anything in here unless I’m explicitly told to. I am not tempting fate now that it’s finally being kind to me.

Like with cooking, we end early, only Javier doesn’t storm out of the room like Lorna did. He waits for all of us to leave, likely as a safety measure. I almost say goodbye to him, but I don’t want it to be interpreted in the wrong way.

“Is someone walking you to your next class?” Ivan asks, walking side by side with me out of the room.

“Remo is going to meet me downstairs,” I tell him. “Thank you for asking though.”

He puts his hands in his pockets and bobs his head in a nod. “Of course.”

“Hey, Ivan?” I ask.

“Yeah?”

“Do you know where Dmitri typically goes before lunch?”

Chapter 16

Jade

Idon’t have any more time to mess around. I’m getting this cooking bullshit done and settled today. It’s officially been a week since I started classes, and I can’t handle even a minute more of sharing a classroom with Lorna.

Thankfully, the rest of my first day went unimaginably smooth, and I’m still on a high from it. Remo picked me up from weapons, grabbed a quick snack with me at the student pantry, and took me to my fight training class. He stayed with me the whole time, even though it wasn’t his class. My instructor comes in a pair this time, with one man and one woman to teach the large class. Ana is in this one as well, along with most of the first-year girls. There are eight of us in total, but fifteen boys.

There was a choice between watching and participating on the first day, and Remo picked for me. Watching is a good way to learn what to expect in the future and that way, I didn’t need to change into gym clothes.

Nothing was too shocking or uncomfortable, so I definitely felt fine about it by the time we were ready to leave. I’ve done some basic self-defense back home with the boys, but I still think it’ll be a challenging class.

After that, Nico hung out with me in my room while everyone else was busy, and we walked to dinner together. Nico and I got there before the rest of our family, but we didn’t wait to eat. While he got some sushi rolls, I tried a chicken and bacon pizza. Nico isn’t as talkative as Matteo, but it was still nice to just spend time with him.

The last class on my schedule was a deception course. It’s essentially Lying 101, and I immediately had hopes that it’d be the easiest part of my class days. So far, that’s been proven correct.

Knives is better than cooking, but not as easy as I’d hoped. Fight training has been mostly conditioning, so it feels like a glorified gym class, but at least no one has punched me yet. Deception has been fun though, it’s a lot of roleplay and acting exercises that make the end of the day something to look forward to.

Cooking, though? It’s past time to level up and get the fuck out of Lorna’s sight.

I needed a few days to get comfortable here, learn how to get around campus on my own, and put my brave face on before truly tackling this challenge. Now that I’ve warmed up, I won’t lie and pretend I’m not nervous as fuck, but I can practically taste my victory. And in this case, victory tastes like Martha’s homemade carbonara.

Having ditched my brothers for this, I’m making sure to be extra careful looking out for them when I step out of the kitchen building and head for the ruins courtyard. I had to memorize the directions on how to get there before I felt confident enough about my ability to find my chosen food taster while he’s there.

The ruins courtyard is what’s left of an old building that collapsed here in the eighties. It’s littered with Greek-style columns, half destroyed archways, and decorated with stone tables and chairs to make it more of a usable area. Apparently, the collapse of the building has a bit of a mysterious lore because none of my brothers are one hundred percent certain what happened to it.

The pretty, moody ruins are not what I’m looking for when I slip into the courtyard though. I’m looking for him.

The courtyard is casually filled with students. It’s quiet, but nowhere near empty. Luckily, the man I’m here to see is sitting by himself, silently reading an old book. I take a deep breath, quickly scanning the tables for any sign of my brothers. When I’m sure the coast is clear, I make my first move toward him.

He hears me approach, pausing his reading to meet my gaze.

“Um, hi again.” I bite my lip, feeling my face heat up as I stop in front of him. Um, hi again, that’s the best I’ve got? “You’re Dmitri, aren’t you?”

The Adonis of a man looks at me from head to toe, blinking without response. It’s silly to ask his name when I heard people say it at the party and have talked about him with Ivan. I’m nervous, alright? His face makes me feel like I’m physically falling.

“Right, anyway, I made you this.” I hold out the dish with a fork sitting on top of it to him, utterly stunned when he reaches out and takes it. “My instructor said I’m supposed to give it to someone my family isn’t allied with to see if it’s really any good.”

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