Page 72 of They Break Beauty

Offering him time had just been my way to test the waters with him at that juncture.

And he’d failed spectacularly.

I sure as fuck wasn’t going to sit back and allow him to become unhinged again. We’d all suffered for it five years ago and I was still paying for it more than most.

I watched from the shadows as two of my soldiers slammed into the girl in the corridor, knocking her fluffy messenger bag from her shoulder and her along with it. They walked away as had been instructed and she scrambled there on her knees to retrieve her bag and a couple of things that had fallen from it in the scuffle. She hadn’t noticed what one of my guys had slipped in there during the stereotypical bullying move I’d had staged. As if I’d settle for such a pedestrian tactic—at least not without following it up with something much more glorious.

She rose to her feet and squared her shoulders as if nothing had happened, then continued on her merry way.

Hmm. She certainly wasn’t as meek and as pliant as I’d taken her for.

She’d shrugged off all the minor acts I’d had visited upon her over the last few days.

It was clearly time to step it up a notch.

And, although, they had been minor—messing with her food, having her cornered on campus with my soldiers uttering threatening words about her being marked by Hex, spilling an ice-cold coffee on her, having her tripped up the steps, taking one of her beloved jackets while she’d been immersed in a coding lab and having it trampled then half buried in the dirt—it served to pile on the pressure and to inundate her.

I’d kept it to small infractions so far to keep it off Levi’s radar.

With my eyes on him, I’d managed to inflict the minor but continued damage upon her when he was out of range and none the wiser. From my observations of him, it had become apparent that he hadn’t made contact with her since the morning after their finger-fuck session outside Nirvana. Knowing Lev as well as I did, it was clearly him gearing up to something big.

The girl had to be on the verge of breaking now, so stepping it up should finally push her to give it up and actually transfer out of Stonewell.

I wanted that to happen before Levi’s something big came about.

She’d scheduled her time with Colt today to work on their duet, so once that was out of the way, I’d move to more damaging tactics. Let him have his time with her to get that done. It would assuage his worries about Mythic Cry. The fact that he hadn’t understood my contracts class at all had meant I’d taken on his case myself and determined the other two couldn’t touch most of his catalogue. I’d found proof that he had written ninety percent of the band’s songs himself, and I was in the process of working with Professor Litman to draw up something official. If they proved resistant to it, my next move was to use the soldiers I’d acquired via Hex to remove them forcibly from Colt’s vicinity and ensure they remained that way—fucking exiled. He’d worked too hard with Mythic Cry to suffer for their jealousy and ineptitude. I wouldn’t allow it.

I made my way around the other side of the music building where Colt spent most of his time, meaning I knew it so well that I was able to approach the recording studio from a side entrance that most didn’t know about without being bothered.

I opened the door a little so I could hear inside as I also peered through the small window in the door. Fortunately, it was at an angle where I could see them there in the heart of the recording studio, while they couldn’t see me clearly.

I wanted to see how the girl reacted when she wasn’t under fire from my assault.

And, yeah, I also wanted to see how she was with Colt—and how he was with her.

Lev had mentioned that Colt had taken a liking to her. I needed to understand how much my plan to remove her from our vicinity would impact him so I could manage the fallout. I was hoping that it was just fleeting for him like his interests in his many other conquests over the years had been. This was hopefully just lasting longer than usual for him because it was intertwined with his music—his ultimate passion. It was likely why he’d managed to maintain his focus on her for longer than I’d ever witnessed from him before.

Settling against the door, I looked on as Colt walked to her while frowning at her bag.

“What happened?”

“What?” she asked, following his line of sight.

“All the dust and dirt, even a scuff mark. Did somebody step on it?”

“Slammed into me, knocked my bag to the ground, and stepped on it in the process, sure.”

“What? Who? When?” Colt asked.

She eased the bag away. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll clean it off when we’re done here.” She moved away then and headed for the microphones.

Colt grasped her arm in a much more careful manner than he was known for. “Hold up. Talk to me, cutie.”

Cutie?

She stared—or glared—at his hand on her arm. “I’m here because we have a deal and I don’t want to make things worse than they already are.”

“What things? With Lev?”

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