Page 19 of Villain

“So, Songbird hacked into the app but had nothing to do with the break-in at the club?” Yejun held up his hands when this time Lake was the one narrowing his eyes at him. “Sorry, Nix. Damn.”

“Break-ins?” Nix asked. When all three of them looked his way, he said, “I had nothing to do with that.”

“He’s got skills,” West said then. “According to this, he managed to hack my programming in four days and seventeen hours.” He sent Nix an impressed glance. “What’s your major?”

“Um, computer science.”

“And you clocked Yejun pretty good just now with that elbow.”

“Dude, really?” Yejun said, affronted.

“You’re a senior, yeah?” West nodded to himself before Nix could answer. “We’ll have classes together for sure. You’re skilled enough to have tested into Professor Adair’s Advanced Algorithms Thursday slot.”

“I…did.” Nix cleared his throat. “This is very weird, and also,” he motioned down at himself, not bothering to hide his junk since he’d been standing there naked all this while already anyway, “what the fuck?”

“Oh, don’t mind him,” Yejun clapped West on the shoulder. “He just wants to have sex with your brain right now, that’s all.”

“It’s hot,” West agreed, as though that sentence made any kind of sense. Which it did not.

Nix turned to Lake. “Please, what is going on?”

“There’ve been a few security breaches at the Club House the past few months,” Lake surprisingly explained. “We’ve been tasked by the people in charge to find the hacker responsible.”

The Club House? They must be referring to that big building on the side of the mountain where Club Essential had its home base.

“And you thought that could be me?” He blinked. “I only just got here yesterday.”

“Whoever tried to break in is virtually untraceable, but we determined they’d used the Enigma app. You were clearly new to it and uncomfortable being sexual in front of someone else—not a trait of someone who’d been a user long enough to climb up to the Bishop tier. You also said things that led me to believe you could be trying to get closer to me.”

“Yeah,” Nix snapped. “Because I needed your Favors in order to rise higher.”

“And,” Yejun crossed his arms, “why exactly is that? No offense, but you’re kind of a prude, Firebird.”

“He’s right.” West stopped whatever he was doing on the computer. “Why’d you want in so badly? It’s definitely not to fuck.”

Nix winced at how blunt that was.

“You’re going to want to answer,” Lake suggested. “Otherwise you won’t like what happens next.”

“I get the feeling,” he stupidly said, “I’ll feel that way no matter what.”

“Told you he was smart,” West grinned.

Yeah, Nix had totally been right about Foxglove Grove being a hellhole better left alone.

Chapter 6:

If at any point in his life, someone had told him there’d come a time when he’d be naked in the middle of a massive living room, being leered at by three of the richest men on the planet, he would have laughed in their face.

Honestly, it was tempting to laugh still over how absolutely ridiculous this all was, but the fear and that never-ending swirl of curiosity that always haunted him kept him from doing so.

Nix needed to come up with a plan, but his brain was struggling and he was starting to get chilly. He quickly sorted through the information he had, though it wasn’t much. They were looking for someone who’d gone against the super-elite club they were all a part of and had mistaken him for that person.

Okay.

Now they knew Nix was not in fact who they were looking for.

Good.

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