Page 8 of The Vipers and Their Venom

He even scares me sometimes.

Good thing he has Lex to pull him back from the brink and remind him of the tiny bit of humanity stored somewhere deep inside.

Yeah, the twins will love this new girl.

From what I can gather, while I was away, they were trying it on with Camile, but they got nowhere. That girl’s family would gut them and hang them from the fence as a warning to others, so I’m glad they backed off.

A lot of the girls here guard their virginity the way the dogs guard the fence. Little Miss Curls here, though, looks like she’s an innocent girl, begging to be corrupted. Just the way we like them.

3

VANI

My father and the man in the suit have talked, and it’s all been agreed. I will study here. The nerves in my stomach reach a crescendo as I glance up again at the huge, gothic building.

It’s intimidating, beautiful, and dangerous all at once. It fits the image I had in my head perfectly.

It looks like the kind of place where anything could happen and the outside world would never know.

The dean, Mr. Rossi, seems pleasant enough, but he’s formal. It’s going to be weird for me here, if everyone is as preppy and stuck up as the faculty seem to be. I’m not used to that kind of world at all.

Then again, the cigarette guy who’s standing off to one side doesn’t seem to fit that narrative either. He wouldn’t look out of place straddling one of our Harleys. He’s dark and brooding and huge. He’s probably even bigger than my dad, and I don’t think I’ve seen many men who are.

His gaze is intense, and I can feel it brush over me without needing to look. When I do glance back, he’s looking at my father, not me. There’s a hostile arrogance simmering in his pretty eyes. And they are pretty, though I can’t tell the colorfrom this distance. They shine like jewels in amongst the craggy hardness of the rest of him. Then he winks at my father.

Winks.

At my dad!

He must have a death wish. No one does shit like that. Then my dad tells him to stay away from me, and all he does is smirk.

He casually saunters back inside the building, giving the dean a mock salute as he goes. Wow, who is he? I wonder if he’ll be in my year. In my classes. He looked older than I am, but I can’t always tell.

I experience a sudden, dizzying sense of freedom. All my life, I’ve been sheltered by my father. Everyone in the club knows the rules when it comes to me. It was fine when I was little—it had been fun having what had felt like lots of big brothers watching out for me—but then I’d started growing breasts, and I’d gotten my period, and everything had changed. Now the boys and men who used to tease and rough-house with me weren’t even allowed to look at me. When I’d become a teenager and had my first crushes, it had been a painful experience. They’d all blanked me, too scared of my father to risk getting on the wrong side of him. Eventually, I’d fallen for a boy from a rival MC club who hadn’t known the rules, but that hadn’t lasted. When he found out whose daughter I was, he'd run for the hills.

Here, though, no one is going to know who my father is or what his rules are, or, if they do know, they’re not going to care. They’ll be more like the cigarette guy, tossing my father a wink and sauntering off.

A little frisson of excitement runs down my spine at the thought, but I remind myself I’m here to find information, not to fall for the campus bad boy.

My father’s jaw is tense, and that tiny muscle that tells me he’s pissed is twitching. He flicks his gaze to Big Mike, and Mike nods. Oh, no, what the hell are they going to do? Big Mikesilently slips away from us and toward the side of the building. I want to say something, but I can’t risk not being allowed to attend the college so, like the coward I am, I keep my mouth shut.

No way is Dad going to have Mike kill a student in broad daylight, so I expect he’ll just give cigarette-guy a warning. It will suck if it scares him off because he was mouth-wateringly hot.

“Shall I show you around?” Nathaniele asks me and Dad.

My father nods, and he slips his arm around my shoulder, protective as always. Though I long for freedom, I’ll miss that while I’m here. I’ll miss the whole protectiveness of the club. Sure, it came with its negative points—like I could barely breathe in the wrong direction without news of it getting back to my dad—but I also knew there would always be people who’d have my back if I needed it.

I swallow hard and draw another shaky breath. This is the first time I’m going to be on my own. I remind myself that it’s normal—I’m nineteen now, and I should be going off to college. I need to create my own life and make my own friends outside of the MC community. Because Idowant something different for myself. I don’t want to become an Ol’ Lady and put up with my husband sleeping around with other women. When I meet the right man, I want him to be dedicated only to me. I also want to use my brain to earn a living, and not have to rely on crime and violence.

It occurs to me that I might be in the completely wrong place for that.

My heart beats with excitement as we take the wide stone steps up to the entrance and step through the huge wooden doors into a grand hall with a sweeping staircase that divides in two. On the walls, ornate frames surround oil paintings of serious-looking men, all of whom seem to be frowning down at me, like they know something I don’t.

It’s like walking into an old English castle.

What the hell am I doing here? I suddenly feel completely out of place. It’s not that we don’t have money, but we definitely don’t live like this. I find myself tugging on the collar of my jacket, trying to hide my tattoos. Will everyone else here be the wealthy elite and look down on the likes of me?

4

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