Page 7 of Twisted Legacy

He gets to his feet, holding his hands out in front of him. “Are you seriously standing here bitching to me about your fuck buddy getting a few bumps and bruises? She went after Eloise in Zeta house, so it sounds to me like Eloise got even. She’s well within her rights to do so. And an ambulance? Really? I hear another con coming on.”

“Are you even listening to me, Pax, or are you already working out excuses in your head to come out of this untouched? They carted Thea off in an ambulance, and Eloise was there with a very convenient story about the whole thing.”

Holden’s frowning at his screen. “Zeus was taken to medical this morning with a severe laceration to his penis. He’s in the infirmary, but Thea’s been taken to the hospital.”

That gets Pax’s attention. Most injuries are treated at our fully functioning medical center. Only the worst injuries are transported off campus.

“Guys.” Holden looks up, a worried look in his eyes. “Her records are sealed and the only thing I can see in the school transport log is that she was found unresponsive at the scene.”

“She was more than that. Her face was bashed in. There was blood everywhere. It didn’t even look like she was breathing.” I pace back and forth. “We haven’t been at the dorms this week. She might’ve been here hurt. Has anyone seen her since we took possession of her accounts again?”

Pax says, “It’s not on us to keep tabs on her.”

Holden’s more quiet than usual. He’s got this look in his eye. The one he gets when he’s keeping information from us because he’s not sure how reliable it is. “Holden, do you have something to add to this?”

“Why would you ask me that?”

His left eye twitches, ever so subtly. Whatever he’s thinking about isn’t making sense in his complicated brain. “Come on, man, what is it? Maybe we can help you work through the problem.”

“The dining hall isn’t the last place I saw Thea. She was out last night.”

“Say, what?” I ask at the same time Pax says, “Are you sure?”

“She was the person getting chased at Tao Epsilon’s crypt. ”

Oh shit. I croak out, “Did you?”

He shakes his head, knowing where my thoughts are leading. “I scared her. That’s it. I gave her the opportunity to run, and I let her get away. She was fine and heading towards campus.”

I hurl my knife at the wall. The thud of it embedding in the plaster calms me a little. “Okay, so we know whatever happened was between last night and this morning and it was more than Eloise getting even for some bitch fight at the sorority. We empowered her. Encouraged her. We let Eloise run things, but she took this too far. You…” My voice breaks. As much as I want to lay all this at Pax’s feet, I didn’t speak up when we decided to make an example out of Thea. So this is on me too. “We’re The Trium. We removed our protection from Thea, and we didn’t stop to think just how many people she’s pissed off on campus or how many people would be looking for a way to win favor with us. We didn’t think about what that would mean so close to Mayhem Night.” I look at Pax. “I asked how we’d know if things went too far. This is it.”

I can’t be around here. Around them. Pax calls out to me as I open the door. “Finn, we may have called open season on Thea, but you know this isn’t what we meant.”

My head drops as the weight of what we did lands on my shoulders. “Maybe not, but it happened.”

* * *

Holden

Pax stares at the door, long after Finn walks through it. He may not show it, but I know he’s taking Finn’s words to heart, and is worried about what he’ll do. I try to reassure him. “He’ll be fine.”

“I know, I just.” He turns my way. “How did this happen? How did this happen and we not have any idea?”

It doesn’t matter how it happened. Itshouldn’thave happened without us knowing. Finn says Eloise admitted to having a hand in it, but that might not be the truth. She’s always looking for ways to make Finn pay more attention to her. If she thinks saying she handled a problem for us will get that attention, that’s what she’ll do. I share my thoughts with Pax. “The only thing we know for certain is that Thea was injured. We don’t know when, where, or how. Finn didn’t make it seem like Eloise had any bruises on her, did he?”

“Nah. Sounds like she was fine.”

“Okay, then. The first thing we need to do is find out exactly what happened. Then we can find out who was involved.” I’m speaking with a calmness I’ve perfected even when I feel anything but calm inside -just like now, I’m furious- because Thea’s been hurt by someone who isn’t me.

Pax gets to his feet. “We need names. Somebody saw something. Somebody heard something, and they kept this from us. It’s too late to get ahead of it since the dean already knows, but I don’t want any council members asking questions we don’t have the answers to.”

He doesn’t need to explain why that would be a bad thing. Last night we took an assignment after being told Thea’s from a legacy bloodline. We should have immediately gone to her and started the process of explaining what that means. We didn’t, because we were too focused on fraternity rankings and winning the most points for Mayhem Night.

I head out, leaving Pax alone with his thoughts. The first step in unraveling the truth, is finding out exactly when and where she was hurt. Somewhere between the time I let her get away and now, someone got their hands on her. I settle into my chair in front of my computers and pull up the camera feed for this floor. Thea never came back to the dorm last night. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s stayed out all night. Sometimes she crashes in Layla-Jean’s room. Eloise destroyed Thea’s stuff, and she’s been slow to replace it. Us stealing her money didn’t help. I guess that should have been our clue that Eloise was getting out of hand. She came up to our floor and destroyed a Legacy Four room. It doesn’t matter that a fourth doesn’t actually live there. Eloise crossed a line, and we didn’t say anything about it.

I don’t know how the guys will react, but from now on, I’m putting Eloise in her place. I don’t care if she’s engaged to Finn. Until they’re actually married, she’s just like any other daughter walking around here. No power outside of what we give her. It’s time someone reminded her of that.

I get lost in the process of searching camera footage on campus and through people’s phones, trying to come up with an idea of what happened. It’s slow going. We have our phones with us all the time and the students love taking and uploading videos, but there’s an electronics ban in effect on Mayhem Night. It looks like most of the students adhered to it. I keep looking, because I know there has to be at least one person who wanted some footage to relive the experience.

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