Page 3 of Splitting Secrets
“So you won’t have any issue coming along with us to retrieve her.”
That has my ears perking up. “Retrieveher? Where is she?”
The edges of my vision blur as rage bleeds into my chest. If they put a hand on her, I’ll end all of this right now. There won’t be any trace of them or the Syndicate once I’m through with them.
“James has her location locked down. It’ll just take a small hike through the woods,” Ashton explains.
Triple fucks.
Infinite fucking fucks.
Of course, James does. The man can hardly be bothered to use his gifts for anything useful, yet he can waste time on something as trivial as this.
“Students aren’t permitted in the woods. She can’t be there,” I dismiss with the shake of my head. And if she is, she’s got to be onto something with those journals, which complicates things for me.
These two men can never know they exist.
“As you can imagine, this young woman has no trouble breaking our rules.”
No, she doesn’t.
When Ashton notices my hesitation, he takes a step further into the office and lowers his voice. “I don’t think we need to remind you that you’re already on thin ice, thanks to her. We caught quite the shitstorm for defending you against the Ashbluff kid.”
James nods once. “Don’t mistake this as a request,” he warns.
I consider them for a moment, debating if this is worth compromising everything I’ve been working toward for the past decade. There’s no doubt I could kill them right now. I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to do it and they would never know it was coming. I’d probably have enough time to pack up and get out of here before the news broke.
Power swirls around in my veins like a coiled snake, ready to strike.
They don’t get to corner me in my own office and threaten my life as if I haven’t given them everything. They don’t get to target a woman I considermineand use me as a weapon against her.
But I consider all the people who would pay for my mistake. The lives that would be lost to my lack of control. It would be too great a cost.
It’s with them in mind that I snuff out the angry shadows wanting to strike. The reason I slide my chair out and climb to my feet. James and Ashton share a smug look with one another, gesturing for me to walk down the spiral staircase before them. They’ve got my hands tied behind my back, and they know it.
My little nightmare is in for one hell of a surprise. She’s gotten us into quite the predicament, and I’m not sure if I can save her when it’s all over.
2
Sonny
I’m led off the beach and through the woods, then back onto campus in tense silence. Divina and the other two men walk ahead of me while Raze trudges at my back. They’ve deemed that I won’t be a flight risk, but still kept their attack dog on high alert, just in case.
It’s freezing. I’m not sure if the trees blocked the wind before, or if I was so out of it from Matilda’s tonic that I hardly noticed the low temperature. The thin jacket and sweatpants that I wandered out here in aren’t providing much cover. My fingers feel so frozen I can hardly move them, and my breath is blowing out before me in erratic plumes.
Reality tried to settle in, a lead weight against my stomach as we hiked through the woods in silence, but I refused to acknowledge it.
Each time my thoughts wandered to Poppy, I forced myself to focus on something else. Like the subtle way the two men kept their distance from Divina, even though they were trying to keep up a united front.
Or the sobs that shook Divina’s shoulders. She kept them silent so no one else would notice, though I don’t think anyone would have cared if they had.
I certainly don’t.
The only thing I didn’t use to distract my racing thoughts was the man at my back. In fact, he was another thought pattern I marked as unsafe and avoided at all costs.
Not that he made any attempt to gain my attention, anyway.
The campus is eerily silent when we break through the edge of the woods at the same spot I entered less than twenty-four hours prior.
