Page 103 of Snitches and Serpents

I stare at her, confusion still ringing inside my skull.

She stares right back, her expression determined. “Do you deny that?”

“I, uhm… Well, no.”

“Which means that, in taking away that scholarship for you, I stole money that you already had. So now, I’m just giving it back.”

My heart pounds in my chest as I stare at her with wide eyes.

She holds my gaze, her expression dead serious.

Hope and disbelief fight like wolves inside my soul.

I can barely breathe.

She’s offering to pay off my debt. This incredible and absolutely insane woman is offering to wipe my slate clean. To give me my future back. And she expects nothing in return.

I technically did steal that equipment two and a half years ago, and in truth, she did nothing wrong when she told the police that she had seen me. Regardless of my reasons, I committed a crime. And all she did was to simply tell the truth.

In reality, she owes me nothing.

And yet, she’s still willing to pay an extraordinary amount of money to give me, a man who has done nothing but make her life hell ever since she set foot on campus, my life back.

Fucking hell, she’s a better person than I will ever be. And far better than I deserve.

“Please,” she says, still holding my gaze with those serious brown eyes of hers. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then please at least do it for me. I want to move forward. I want to see what you and I can become. But I won’t be able to do that if I know that you’re still trapped because of something I did.”

My pride is telling me to refuse it. To refuse any help. From her or anyone else.

But the stubborn hope in my heart, the hope that now sees a bright future waiting on the horizon, refuses to die.

My heart cracks, and I release a shuddering exhale.

Swallowing back a sudden thickness in my throat, I manage to nod and whisper, “Thank you.”

She smiles. It’s so bright and genuine that pain stabs through my heart all over again.

Elle might say that I will owe her nothing.

But I will spend the rest of my life trying to repay her for this kindness.

35

ELLE

The nightclub that Tristan says is the headquarters for the White Serpents looms over me like a foreboding shadow. I glance up towards the roof of it while Tristan opens the metal side door. Faint sounds of music flow out into the dark night. I tilt my head back down to find a muscular man right inside the door that Tristan just opened.

The man, who must be some kind of guard, looks at Tristan for a second before his gaze slides to me. I wait for him to challenge us. To ask who I am and what business I could possibly have here. But he doesn’t. He simply nods to Tristan, who nods back.

I remain standing there silently next to him.

“Come on,” Tristan says, and starts across the threshold.

After one more glance at the guard, I follow him into the building.

Surprise flickers through me as I take in the space. I’m not sure if it’s the name the White Serpents that produced the mental image or if it’s something else, but I kind of expected their headquarters to be a dingy bar full of old beer bottles and unwashed old men smoking in the corners.

Instead, the hallway we walk through is neat and clean. And the quick glance I managed to steal through a doorway showed a vibrant nightclub downstairs. Strobing lights, trendy music, and well-dressed people in their twenties. Not at all the rundown and dirty place I thought it would be.

---