Page 20 of Beautiful Dark Temptation

Ouch. That hurt a little bit too much. But Ipushed it back. “This will work. I feel it in my soul.”

Dasher shook his head. “They’ll stab you inthe back if this goes wrong.”

“Why do you care? I’m not your BFF,” I shotback and winked at him.

He smirked, then realized he was smirkingand shook his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Nope. But I didn’t tell him that.

The next day, the Underdog team registeredfor the games. Since we were the last team to register, we were thelast to face off with The Ark Boys.

The plan was so simple it seemed wrong. AllI had to do was come up with a strategy to eliminate Kieran fromthe game and survive the aftermath.

Chapter Ten

Kieran

If Wren bounced that fucking ball off thewall one more time, I was going to put my foot up his ass. I caughtthe ball and glared at him. “We still don’t know who he is.” Ourconversation turned to Tomás. “Has anyone even found his obol?”

We all got coins upon arrival with our DNAimprint on it. If we turned up dead outside campus grounds, theobol would serve as warning to the cops to stay out of it. It alsoserved as identification to the underworld. I had used my obol togain entry into exclusive clubs, weapons cache, and even access tointel throughout the world I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The obolcarried our family’s sigil. I looked for Tomás’s but so far came upempty.

“He probably lost it,” Wren said.

“We know he’s not one of the four. All ofthe DNA samples against ours came back negative,” Henryconfirmed.

Thank fuck. Whoever he was, he wasn’t bloodfamily. “So why did Casera put him here?”

“This close to the takeover, I don’t likeit,” Fox said. He’d been edgy since he found Tomás and Dashertogether—the reason I couldn’t trust his judgement on this. Justbeing Dasher’s friend had earned Tomás a bullet to the head inFox’s eyes.

“What do we know about him?” I asked. Iworked better with facts, not feelings.

“Facial recognition turned up nothing.Either he’s clean, never had a social profile in his life, or it’sbeen wiped.”

“If it’s been wiped, then he has to be anA-Lister,” River added.

“What else do we know?”

“Other than he’s an idiot?” Fox said, givingme the look he reserved for when he wanted to force a rise out ofme. The fucker didn’t know how close he was to a fist against hisperfect face.

“He came during the summer and did prep workwith Burns,” Henry said. “I got his academic record. He scored justbelow average in language skills which explains his tutoring withDasher, but he’s a little above average in math. Met high schoolgraduation requirements and was accepted into the university forthe fall. First year.”

I clenched my fists.

“He sounds like a thug,” Wren chimed in.“Yo’ whatchu mean?” he added with a horrible Tony Montanaaccent.

“You’re an idiot,” I deadpanned.

“He hangs around with that pothead dealer,Jack. There’s nothing interesting on him, except he’s sponsoredhere by Eagle Corp, a youth foundation led by none other thanMaddox Brennan. Jack’s one of the normies here on ascholarship.”

Normies were students with no blood ties todons. They were either children of lower ranks, often orphaned, whowere sponsored by one of the four or students that needed asylumand came from powerful, corrupt families. Dasher fell into thiscategory. And if Jack was sponsored by Eagle Corp, then it was safeto assume he fell into the former category.

“Tomás is too old to have been claimed inthe first place,” Fox said. “We were all still in elementary schoolwhen they came for us.”

True.

“Wecouldask Dasher,” Henrysuggested. That earned him a glare from Fox. Henry shrugged. “Heknows him better than anyone else.”

Fox got to his feet and walked out.

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