Released: Highgate Preparatory Academy, Book 3
Released: Chapter 8

We enter the library as a group, Mai heading off after the guys told her that she needed to leave and there was someone from The Shadows waiting to escort her home. She was pissed and didn’t want to leave me, but once the boys assured her that I would be looked after and no harm would come to me, she reluctantly left saying that I’d hear from her tomorrow.

The soft glow of the lit wall sconces is the only light in the vast space, the heavy curtains drawn over the huge windows so the rest of the room is in shadow, and there’s a solitary, high-backed wooden chair in the centre of the room. In the chair is my uncle, bound with cable ties cutting into his wrists and ankles, tying him to the arms and legs of the piece of furniture. It’s a beautiful piece, all carved wood and looks antique, the triangular back reaching above his head and making it look more like a throne than an ordinary seat. A throne of death perhaps.

His eyes widen when he sees our group, and he thrashes around, his cries muffled by the piece of gaffer tape that covers his mouth. Two shadows push off from the wall, making my heart thrash a little in my chest until the Kent twins’ faces are revealed, dressed in their usual black and with matching, maniacal grins across their faces. A third shadow disentangles itself from the corner, the hulking figure making his way towards us.

He, too, is dressed fully in black, tactical gear, his body stacked, giving even Jax a run for his money in terms of bulk. His dark blond hair is cut short to his head, his jaw square like a Disney prince. But the darkness that swirls in his green eyes leaves me sinking further into Loki’s embrace, his arm tightening around me as the man comes closer. And he really is a man, older than the twins by maybe a couple of years if the lines etched around his dark eyes are any indicator.

“Hunter,” Ash’s deep voice sounds in the room, Jax and Kai coming to stand on either side of Loki and I, framing us. Ash moves just a little in front of me, giving his protection too.

“Asher,” Hunter replies, his own voice as cavernous as the endless caves that can be found in nature. The ones that people disappear into and are never seen again.

The boys clasp hands and exchange a firm handshake, clearly testing each other’s mettle. Hunter gives Ash a half smile and nods, slapping him on the back as if he’d just passed some sort of test. He then leans to the side, letting go of Ash’s hand and ensnaring me in his piercing gaze.

“This is the pixie that’s caused so much trouble, huh?” he teases, and I realise that he has Willow’s smile. This must be the Hunter, Willow’s brother. The boys tense round me, Jax issuing a growl that does inappropriate things to Her Vagisty given the current situation. “Calm yourselves, boys, I’m only teasing,” he tells them, his tone light and unafraid. “My sister speaks very highly of you, Lilly Vanderbilt. Tells me you helped her out over there, over some cunt called Amber.”

“That’s right, Willow is my best bitch, and we look out for each other,” I tell him, deadly serious and hoping he sees how much his sister means to me too. He gives me a nod.

“You have The Shadows’ protection for life,” he tells me, voice full of a heavy gravity, and by the way the guys take an inhale around me, I know that this is a big deal.

“Thank you,” I whisper back, realising that I have more chosen family around me than I ever realised.

“Family takes care of itself, pixie girl,” Roman tells me, giving a sly wink that makes Loki bristle.

“Speaking of…” Hunter interrupts with a roll of his eyes at the mischievous twin, turning to gesture with an outstretched arm at my uncle. I swear the room gets colder by several degrees as my guys swing their gazes towards him, tied up and helpless.

Anger burns in my veins at how helpless I was when I first came here, when he was drugging me and sneaking into my room at night. I can feel my expression tightening, my body tensing as I look at the man before us, usually so put together and suave. He’s wearing silk pyjamas, his hair a mess, and his face red as he tries in vain to free himself from his bindings. I smirk when I see his still puffy nose, a strip of tape over the bridge of it and bruising along each side and under his eyes.

“Nice work, Baby Girl,” Jax praises from beside me, and I preen at the attention.

Rowan strolls up to him, casually grabbing an edge of the tape and ripping it off with a sound that reverberates around the huge room.

“I should have known it was you fucking boys, especially Julian’s spawn, behind all this!” he spits out, still tugging at his bindings. “Julian won’t stand for this, you little shits! He’ll have your balls for hurting me!”

“What Julian will, or will not stand for is not your concern,” Ash tells him, tilting his head to the side and studying the man as one might an insect you are about to dissect. “What is your concern, however, is how you might be of use to us so that we don’t end your miserable existence in the most painful of ways right now.”

“Fuck you, Vanderbilt! I don’t fucking answer to you! Or you father!” Adrian screams, spitting at Ash. The globule doesn’t even come close, yet Ash’s lip still curls in disgust. Ash heaves a great sigh, as if this is all just so tiresome, and I watch with bated breath as he lazily strolls towards Adrian.

“This can go one of two ways, you know,” he tells my uncle, voice bored as he inspects his nails. “You can answer our questions in full, thus helping yourself. Or you can resist.”

“I hope he resists, don’t you, Pretty Girl?” Loki asks me, loud enough for Adrian to hear and squirm more. Loki’s body thrums next to mine, full of pent-up energy. “It’s always so much more fun when they do.”

I look up into his shining, green eyes, twinkling like jewels in the lamp light, and see an evil smile sitting on his face as he gazes hungrily at my uncle. And I’m not afraid like I might have been once upon a time. I look at each of my Knights in turn, all of them with a matching hunger in their eyes, a need to dish out vengeance on this man who has wronged me.

“I’m not going to tell you shit, boy,” Adrian snarls, his confident smile wavering slightly at what he must see on Ash’s face. I can’t see, as my darkest Knight’s back is to me, but I can imagine that it must be terrifying if my uncle’s expression is anything to go by.

“I was hoping you might say that,” Ash’s voice sends chills across my skin, his words a promise of pain, and I shiver with how much I enjoy the sound. “Jax.”

My Viking steps forward, sparing me a quick glance and a devastating smile that leaves my stomach full of butterflies. Without any preamble, he draws his fist back and punches Adrian square in the face, snapping his head to the side and drops of red spraying across the floor. I wince when I hear the crack of bone as presumably, his nose breaks again.

“That was for being a fucked up pervert and for sexually assaulting your own daughter!” Jax screams in a guttural roar, his whole body shaking, his huge neck corded.

“Wait, what?” I stumble out, my mouth falling open. All the boys freeze, turning towards me with looks of regret on their faces. Kai steps in front of me, cupping my face in his warm palms, and I can’t help leaning into his touch.

“Adrian isn’t your uncle, darling. He’s your father. We believe that your mother wasn’t called Laura Darling, but Violet Rochester, and that she was carrying Adrian’s child when she ran from him,” he tells me softly, trying to soften the blow with the caress of his thumbs.

“Fucking worthless whore that she was!” my un-father-Adrian scoffs, his voice thick and a little muffled. “Couldn’t even get knocked up properly, not for lack of trying on my part.” I look past Kai to see Adrian’s deceptively handsome face, the monster underneath finally showing in the swelling on one side with blood dripping down his chin. “You boys think you know everything! Well, I’ll tell you one thing. That good-for-nothing slut got herself knocked up with some other cunt’s baby. Lilly is no more my daughter than she’s my niece. The paternity test last year proved that.”

He looks at me, his lip curled in a sneer as my world tilts on its axis, and I try to process the information that I’ve just been given.

“Why take me in then?” I question, Loki’s grip tightening round my shoulders as Kai keeps his hands on my face even when he steps aside slightly, both lending me their strength. “If we’re not related, why pretend that we are?”

“That’s the billion dollar question now, isn’t it, little whore?” He smirks, his head whipping to the side again as Jax delivers another punishing blow.

“Don’t you even look at her, you fucking piece of shit!” Jax barks, grabbing a fistful of Adrian’s dark hair and pulling his head back, snarling right in his face.

“Shit!” Loki exclaims next to me, dropping his arm from around me and fumbling in his pocket. My heart hammers in panic, my head whipping round to face him, Kai’s grip dropping from me as well.

“What?” I ask, voice breathy and high, my pulse pounding. He brandishes his phone triumphantly.

“Almost forgot the playlist! That really would have been a disaster,” he responds, the sound of another fist hitting flesh loud in the room. It’s so utterly ridiculous that a giggle escapes my lips, my hand flying to cover them as the tension feels like it drains from the room. “That’s the spirit, Pretty Girl!” Loki beams, scrolling, and in the next second American Boy by Estelle and Kanye West starts blaring from speakers hidden somewhere in the room, drowning out the sounds of the beating that Jax is currently issuing. “Dance with me!” Loki shouts, grabbing my hand, twirling me so that my back is to his front, and pulling me to him.

He moves us as I outright laugh, his hips gyrating with the beat and letting me know how happy he’s feeling right now.

“Loki, you are incorrigible!” I gasp out, his hands bringing my own up and draping them over his neck behind me. I glance over to see Jax hit my–Adrian again, and what looks like a tooth flies from his mouth, skittering along the polished wooden floor.

“Talk dirty like that again, baby, and I’ll show you the meaning of the word,” Loki whispers in my ear, shivers making my nipples harden which is so many shades of inappropriate it’s unreal. “Kai, join us!”

I look up to see Kai step back in front of me, a sexy smile fixed on his face as he moves in as close as my bump will allow. His palms trace the roundness, his hips moving to the beat as we dance while Ash watches on with a softness in his eyes. Jax pauses in his beating to look over, a rare smile lifting his lips when he sees us dancing. The twins and Hunter are standing in the shadows, the latter stoic as he watches us, the former bobbing their heads to the beat. I knew they were our kind of people.

“You are all fucking insane!” Adrian shouts, his voice clear during a lull in the song. Loki doesn’t pause or falter, spinning me so that my back is to Kai, who presses his own hips snugly into my arse, his arousal grinding up against me.

“All the best people are!” I call back, laughing as the boys spin me between them until the song ends.

“Ready to answer some questions?” Ash inquires, bending over slightly as Jax uses his grip on the top of Adrian’s head to lift his drooping head up to face Ash. The older man’s face is a bloody mess, his eyes almost swollen shut, and ruby red liquid drips from his nose and lips.

“Fuck you, Vanderbilt,” Adrian rasps out in a pained mumble, spitting blood into Ash’s face. My husband doesn’t react, and from my position, I see a terrifying grin spread across his face before he straightens up and turns to face me.

“I made you a promise, wife,” he tells me, accepting something from Rowan. He holds them up for us all to see, the blades of the secateurs glinting, and Adrian gives a pained groan, but clearly no longer has the strength to fight his bindings anymore. Ash turns to him. “I promised my wife here that I would cut each and every one of your fingers off for daring to touch her.”

Adrian replaces some strength to begin his struggle, but it’s futile, the cable ties too tight and numerous to allow him much movement. His first scream is cut off by a new song blaring over the speakers, Bodies by Bryce Fox filling the room with the strains of a guitar and the beat.

I watch as Loki engulfs me from behind, his vanilla musk mixing with Kai’s fresh, woodsy scent as the latter wraps an arm around my waist from the side. I expect to feel sick, to feel something apart from a detached sense of numbness whilst watching Ash cut off all the fingers on one hand with the bolt cutters, each one landing at his feet.

But I watch Adrian’s vain struggles with a sick satisfaction running through my veins, enjoying the fact that his screams become more strained and gurgling as each digit falls. Ash pauses, and Jax holds something under Adrian’s nose to wake him up after he loses consciousness. Ash makes a gesture, and Loki lowers the volume so that we can all hear the conversation about to take place.

“P–p–please…” Adrian whimpers, his voice so full of pain that I should feel remorse, but I don’t. I feel nothing as I watch him twitch and shiver in front of us, knowing that he drugged me and touched me without my consent.

“You ready to confess your sins, Adrian Ramsey?” Ash interrogates, the secateurs dripping blood from their now red blades.

“Anything, yes, I’ll answer your questions,” Adrian murmurs, voice laced with agony.

“Why did you take Lilly?” Ash asks, tone hard and unforgiving. I step closer, Loki and Kai letting me go, then following along behind me. I move until I can see the dull light in Adrian’s eyes as he answers.

“Julian wanted to punish her, and I offered to remove her for a time to teach her a lesson. But I was under strict orders not to harm the baby, in case it really is Julian’s grandchild,” he tells us, his chest heaving, his voice grating and raw.

“Why offer?” Kai interjects from beside me. “Why did you want to take her?”

Adrian traces his cracked lips with a bloody tongue just as the song changes to Way Down We Go by Kaleo.

“Because her mother stole something from me, and I was angry. Initially, I planned to just kill the girl, taking what was owed to me as her next of kin. But your fucking father had other ideas and married her off so that I could never get my hands on what belonged to me by rights!” His anger gives him strength, and he levels a venomous gaze at Ash, then moves to me. “It was too late to ever get my shares in the company back, especially after she cashed in the bonds and bought more shares, but I wanted to see you suffer for the sins of your whore mother.”

Before I know what I’m doing, my hand snaps out and slaps him so hard across the face that my palm stings.

“Watch your mouth, or Ash will start on the other hand,” I snarl, dark rage filling my veins at this man and all his revenge plans.

“Not quite like her then, too feisty,” he comments dryly, teeth missing and blood running down his chin, and Loki holds me back from slapping him again as I step forward.

“Why drug me?” I ask, my voice cutting with my disgust at his actions. “How many nights did you climb into my bed, you fucking waste of oxygen?” I can feel my heart racing, my palms sweating at how angry I am that all this really had nothing to do with me.

“You look so much like her,” he replies, his eyes softening, and bile rises to my throat, a sickening thought occurring to me.

“The outdated clothes…you tried to dress me like her?” The room spins, Loki and Kai’s touch the only thing centering me and bringing me back to the library, and the disgusting creature in front of me.

“I loved her, in my own way, and she betrayed me, stealing from me and letting another man touch what was mine,” he seethes, the anger towards my mother still fresh.

“How did Violet escape from you?” Ash interjects, and the question takes me somewhat by surprise, the name Violet still somehow not seeming to belong to Mum.

“I have no fucking idea. She had outside help. She drugged me, fucking bitch.” I don’t get time to step forward as Jax punches him in the chest, Adrian doubling over as much as his bindings will allow.

“Watch your mouth,” my Viking tells him, my chest swelling at his defence of my mum even though he never knew her. Coughing and spitting out more blood, Adrian continues.

“For years I fucking searched for her, without even a whiff. And then, almost seventeen years after she disappeared, a contact saw an article in a London newspaper of a girl who he said looked eerily similar to my Violet.” He stares right into my eyes, and though his own are mere slits as the skin around them is so puffy he can barely see, I feel the horrible truth sink in like a terminal disease.

A rushing noise like a fast-flowing river sounds in my ears as I’m transported to that fateful day, my mum clutching that very article that I tried to keep hidden, knowing that she’d be pissed. It all makes sense now, not being allowed any social media accounts, not even being allowed to be on anyone else’s. My mum was hiding from this vile monster, and I led him right to our door.

“Pretty Girl?” Loki’s voice penetrates the spiral that I’m tumbling down, dragging me back up and into the present again. “Talk to me, Lilly.”

His arms band tight round me, and I blink to see Kai has once again blocked my view of Adrian, my face once again cupped in his palms.

“Whatever it is, it’s not your fault, darling,” he tells me, his serious tone willing me to believe his words.

“B–but it was me in that article, Kai. Even though I knew Mum would be mad, I agreed to do it anyway as I was so damn proud to have won that stupid writing competition. I—” My voice cracks as tears stream down my face, tasting like despair.

“Kai’s right, baby,” Loki whispers in my ear, nuzzling the side of my face. “It wasn’t your fault this fucking freak couldn’t let go.”

I try to draw comfort from them, I really do. But I know that this sickening guilt will stay with me for many years to come.

“What happened next?” I ask as a thought occurs to me, not taking my eyes off Kai’s comforting, amber ones, his thumbs brushing the tears from my face. “When you found Mum.”

Adrian laughs, and the sound chills me to the bone. I just know that something awful is about to leave his mouth, but like a train crash, I am powerless to stop it.

“I found her in the kitchen. She thought that I was you, and started to apologise for your argument earlier. That must hurt, knowing that your last words to your own mother were in anger.” I would stagger under the blow of his words if my two Knights weren’t holding me up. Another muffled grunt sounds out, followed by another sound of flesh hitting flesh.

“Let him finish, Jax,” I say, cold dread filling my body up until I’m numb. Kai holds my gaze, lending me what strength he can.

“She refused to tell me where the bonds were, told me that I’d never get my hands on them and that they belonged to you. I laughed at her. The pathetic, useless woman thought that she’d bested me. And then I took a kitchen knife and drove it into her body over and over again, watching the life drain out of her eyes.”

My knees give way, the room changing once more to my old kitchen, covered in my mum’s blood. A low keening noise sounds around me, and it takes me a moment to realise that it’s coming from my lips as Loki holds me in a crumpled heap in his lap, Kai stroking my hair.

A scream cuts through my mourning, and I look through bleary eyes to see Ash cutting off all the fingers on Adrian’s other hand, blood pumping from the severed digits. Jax blocks my view of the tortured man, the sound of ripping fabric loud over the broken, pained whimpers. Ash hands him the secateurs, and a second later a garbled animal shriek reverberates round the room, a lump of flesh hitting the floor at Jax’s feet.

I watch with a sense of numbness as Jax steps back, revealing a gaping wound in Adrian’s crotch. I should feel sick, but I feel nothing for this man, this monster who stole my mum’s life long before he killed her. Ash hands Jax a small blowtorch next, and Jax lights it just as Ash wakes Adrian up with smelling salts.

Adrian’s eyes widen, incoherent wails falling from his lips as Jax lowers the torch, the wails becoming more anguished as the sweet smell of cooking meat and burning fat fills the room. Bile rushes into my throat, threatening to spill over, but somehow I manage to hold onto the contents of my stomach, forcing myself to watch as justice is served.

What feels like an age later, Jax steps away, dropping the now unlit blowtorch and wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving a bloody trail. He glances over to me still on the floor, his piercing gaze pained, refusing to meet mine.

“Jax?” I question, his stare finally meeting mine, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t come closer. “Help me up?” He takes a deep inhale, his nose wrinkling at the smell as if he’s only just noticing it now. He still hesitates. “Please?”

Heaving a great sigh, he steps towards me, holding out a bloody hand for me to take once he reaches me. I grasp it, knowing that his hand is covered in the blood of my enemy. He added another black mark to his soul for me, and I love him for it, even as my soul hurts for him.

“Thank you, my love,” I whisper once he’s pulled me up to standing, and I place my other hand on his chest, his T-shirt damp with sweat and blood underneath my palm. Leaning in, I kiss him, worshipping my knight in tarnished, bloody armour with tongue and lips. My protector and saviour deserves nothing less.

“I would do all this and more for you, Baby Girl. I’d burn the whole motherfucking world to the ground if you asked me to,” he confesses against my tingling lips as we part, his free hand coming up to cup my face, the blood staining my skin.

“And I will always love you for it, no matter what you do,” I whisper back, pulling away slightly so that he can see the truth in my eyes. “You belong to me, Jax Griffiths, and I belong to you.”

The song changes and Serial Killer by Moncrieff & JUDGE breaks the heavy tension in the room.

“Fucking Loki,” Jax mumbles, his lips tilted in a half smile at his friend’s choice of music.

“What?” the man in question asks, bouncing up to us and throwing his arms round our shoulders. “It’s the perfect song!”

We laugh, Kai and Ash joining in, and some of the heady tension in the room easing.

“You’re all fucking crazy!” an inhuman-sounding rasp cuts through our mirth, and we all look over to see the mess that is Adrian Ramsey.

“All the best people are,” I tell him once again, smiling at my collection of dark knights, my monsters.