Kings of Anarchy

by Caroline Peckham

  Once I was sure that he was gone, I tugged my cell phone from my pocket and called Tatum to let her know what had happened.

  "Hey, I was just thinking about you," she said, sounding like she actually meant that and I couldn't help but smirk like an idiot at those words.

  I knew I was getting in too fucking deep with this girl. This whole thing we had going on could see me in prison, but from the moment I'd given in to it I'd known that I was a lost cause.

  Besides, so long as we kept it secret for long enough for me to take down Troy Memphis, I would be content enough to know that I'd at least managed to claw back some points of happiness in this life that had offered me so little. Although, when I'd thought through all of the issues that might stand in the way of the two of us claiming this happiness, I'd never once considered the idea that I would have to deal with her overbearing husband too. I swear ever since Kyan had gotten her to say I do, he had barely left her alone, certainly not for long enough for me to have a chance to figure out what this meant for us. I mean, they’d had the Royaume D’élite shit to deal with and then he’d gotten sick so I could make some allowances for that, but it was time for all of us to move on and get some clarity about things. Not that I thought it should mean anything at all if I was being honest. I didn’t give a shit if she had a husband, it didn’t make me want her any less. And it wasn’t like I was some asshole creeping in on another man’s girl. We’d all gotten into this at the same time.

  "Well that makes two of us, because I was thinking about you too. Mostly because Saint was just here and he found your necklace," I said as I moved across the room to the box on my mantelpiece where the only things I'd kept from my past lay.

  If I hadn't known that Saint had been looking through it already then I never would have known he had. Outwardly, everything looked exactly the way I'd left it. I lifted out the old photograph of me with Michael and our mom and looked down at it with my skin prickling as I listened to Tatum's next words.

  "What did he do with it?" she asked in a concerned voice and I sighed as I placed the necklace and the photo back in the box alongside my things.

  "Nothing, princess. He was wearing it and laying on my bed when I arrived back from my run like some kind of bunny boiling stalker or something, but luckily enough I don't think he had any grand designs of trying to seduce me. So we just had a rather disturbing conversation and then he left. He gave the necklace back into my safekeeping and told me that he knew you'd start wearing it again once you learned to trust him.”

  She was silent for a long moment on the other end of the line and I had to wonder what she thought of that. Was the idea of her ever trusting him as absurd to her as it was to me? Or was she actually considering that as an option. I knew that her opinion on him had changed a lot since he'd taken that bullet for her, but I was more sceptical than her about that whole turn of events.

  Yes, I could admit that he'd clearly been willing to put his life at risk for her. But what I wasn't so convinced of was that that had been some show of his deep feelings and proof that he cared for her. Saint was definitely obsessed with her and I was easily able to imagine that his obsession and imagined ownership of her were what had made him put himself at risk like that. If Mortez had taken her he would have lost all control over her and that was what was most unacceptable to him. Not the fact that she was in danger or that he was secretly harbouring love for her.

  I seriously had trouble imagining Saint ever being capable of anything like that for anyone. Although, I did have to admit that when Kyan was sick, I’d seen another side to him. I’d witnessed the fear in his eyes and the way the impending grief had weighed on him as well as the pure, utter relief he’s experienced when he’d survived. But I didn’t want to focus on the reasons I was starting to have to believe that Saint wasn’t a monster because that meant revaluating everything that I was trying to achieve with his father and him.

  "Is he on his way back here?" she asked me and I moved to the window to look out at the path, but I couldn't see any sign of Saint on it so I guessed he'd already passed into the trees.

  "Yeah. I think so."

  "Good. Kyan and Blake are going down to the Oak Common House for a few drinks in a minute and I'll be here alone. When he gets back, I'll distract him in his room and you can come in and check out his laptop. It's on the dining table again, but for the love of god don't move the fucking thing when you touch it."

  I snorted a laugh even as I let the idea take root in my mind. Saint had been on high alert ever since our last attempt to get into his computer and we hadn't had any other opportunities to try again. But now that I knew what folder I was looking for, I could get straight to what I needed without having to fuck around.

  "Are you sure, princess? He's a cunning bastard, if he realises that you're distracting him on purpose then it will all go to shit fast,” I said, wondering how hard I should be trying to talk her out of this.

  "Don't worry about that. I have a plan. There’s one sure-fire way that I know to throw him off his guard and he's been avoiding it for weeks. I can do this."

  "Okay. I’m on my way." We hung up and I couldn't help but grin at the idea of finally gaining access to whatever the hell Saint was hiding on that laptop.

  I put my mind into revenge gear, grabbed a hoodie and a pair of sneakers before heading out of my house and running down the path towards The Temple.

  It didn’t take long to jog through campus, and I eyed the view of the sun setting over the lake as I came up on the huge church, taking care to keep my steps silent as I went.

  I paused outside the heavy doors, looking through the small window beside it as I listened for any sounds of someone inside, but the only thing that carried to me was the haunting chill of one of Saint's requiems playing over the speakers.

  I carefully slid my key into the lock, smirking at the little Night Keeper perk I'd been gifted as it offered me free entrance into the dragon's lair. I had tried sneaking back here during the day a few times to check up on the laptop but ever since we'd gotten into it the first time, Saint had taken to hiding it when he wasn't around and I had no doubt that he would instantly catch on to the fact that someone had been rummaging through his belongings if I tried to find it. And seeing as there were now bars over all of the opening windows and only five people who had a key to this place, it would have been pretty obvious who had been snooping if that happened.

  I turned the key in the lock as slowly as I could manage and eased the door open with my heart in my throat. It wasn't like I was afraid of Saint Memphis or his wrath if he caught onto me, but I knew that if he did catch us out that this would be the last opportunity we got to do this. The moment he was sure that we were looking into him and his family, he would lock this place up tighter than a duck's ass and quite possibly strike back at me in ways I couldn't imagine. At the very least, his mom was on the school board and solely responsible for getting me the position as head teacher and I was in no doubts that she could just as easily take my job from me again. And this was the only thing I had that kept me in a position to come after Troy. If I was cut off from Saint then I really had no fucking idea of how I was going to get to his father.

  I had a backup plan of course. If I really couldn't take Troy down any other way then I had a pistol and a bullet with his name on it just waiting for the excuse for me to pull the trigger. The only reason that I hadn't gone for that course of action as of yet was because I didn’t actually want to end up gunned down for assassinating the Governor of State. Or I guessed I could spend the rest of my years rotting in prison as an alternative and I didn’t much like the sound of that either. Because as much as I was willing to sacrifice to take my revenge on him for what he had done to my brother and mom, I knew that it would have broken their hearts to know that my life had been stolen by him too. And I refused to offer him that satisfaction even in death until it was the only option left available to me.

  The song that was currently playing was only on
softly, the relaxing tones of Rêverie by Claude Debussy filling the open space in the former church and making a shiver dance down my spine as I slipped across the flagstones and onto the carpet.

  The dining table where Saint had left his laptop was directly beneath the balcony which held his bedroom and my heart was pounding as I made my way over to it, hearing Saint's voice coming from the space above.

  "What are you doing?" he asked as I moved to stand before the table and gently eased the laptop open.

  "I need this Saint," Tatum replied in a low voice. "And I know you do, too. Why are you denying both of us?"

  There was a span of silence where I wondered what the fuck she was doing to have rendered him speechless and I quickly pulled up the text she'd sent me with Saint's ridiculously complicated password on it and began typing it out.

  "Please, Saint," Tatum said. "It doesn't have to be anything that pushes the boundaries of the rules. Just take control of me. Bend me to your will."

  What the actual fuck was going on up there? I almost moved away from the laptop to investigate it, but I knew I couldn't fuck this up. This was our shot. Our one chance to get hold of whatever the hell was on here and see if it could help me in any way at all.

  "I need a few moments to think on it. Kneel there until I make up my mind," Saint commanded and I swear I wanted to be a fly on the wall up there so damn much that it was making my skin itch.

  The laptop came on and I flinched at the dull sound it made, but after holding my breath for a few seconds it became clear that Saint hadn't heard anything over the music and his attention was still on Tatum.

  I quickly opened up the file marked MAF and started clicking through the countless documents within it as I tried to figure out why he had copies of his father's bank accounts while ignoring the amount of zeros on the total figures because they just pissed me the fuck off.

  After several minutes of flicking back and forth between documents and cross referencing bank account numbers alongside transactions that Saint had highlighted, I began to figure out that the money going out marked as ‘charitable donations’ were in fact more often than not being paid to people like judges, the police chief, other members of the government and even prominent businessmen and women from the city. Which meant that this was a documented record of all of the bribes Troy had been paying to keep himself in his cushy position of Governor of State. I doubted it was actually enough for a conviction though. But maybe a juicy newspaper article could be leaked to the press to damage his reputation if I was careful about it.

  The next file I clicked on only made my frown deepen though as I found a record of Saint's own finances including his investment portfolio. My mouth actually fell open when I saw the summary of the value of his assets. Somehow, through countless investments and buying and selling of stocks and shares, Saint had managed to accumulate more wealth in his own name than his father held by more than double. He wasn't just rich. He was fucking platinum made. It was insane and kind of sickening. I didn’t even realise one man could own so damn much.

  And the more I looked into his records, the more confused I got. Because as well as his most profitable investments, Saint had also been slowly but surely accumulating shares in all of his father's companies under a host of different pseudonyms until he was in fact secretly holding a controlling portion of the shares in all of them. Every single one.

  If it hadn't seemed totally crazy, I would have thought that Saint was actually working against his father, building up his control over his assets and his supporters and getting himself into a position to take everything from him in one fell swoop.

  But that was unthinkable, wasn't it? The amount of work that had gone into this was hard to even fathom and I'd only sorted through a handful of the files he had here. If this really was a takedown plan then it was multi-faceted and entirely convoluted, completely overworked and containing so many details that it was insane to think that one man could have done it alone. Let alone him doing all of that while maintaining perfect grades, working out day and night, attending football practice, haunting the piano room with a skill that was scarily good, obsessing over Tatum and ruling the entire school with an iron fist.

  Although now that I thought about it, I had to admit that if anyone was capable of such insane work, then it would have to be Saint Memphis.

  "I want you to follow me," Saint's voice came from the balcony and I froze as I looked over at the stairs with my heart leaping at the thought of getting caught.

  "Why are we going downstairs?" Tatum asked loudly and I knew that she was giving me a warning.

  I quickly shut down the files I'd opened up and slammed the laptop closed, cringing at the sound it made as I ran for the door.

  "I'm going to watch while you transfer a kilo of rice from one bowl to another using tweezers," Saint said just as I pulled the door open and I couldn't help but wonder why the fuck he would want her to do that just as I slipped outside and pulled the door closed.

  I hesitated there for a long moment, listening to Tatum complaining that that hadn't been the kind of punishment she was imagining while Saint laughed cruelly and told her that she would do as she was told if she didn't want a worse punishment.

  It fucked me off to think of her in there sorting grains of rice for the next however long, but I forced myself to walk away. It might have been a tedious task but it wasn't like it would cause her any actual harm and she'd done it to give me the chance to get this information so now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to use it.

  I walked up the path while I turned it over in my mind again and again and to my utter frustration, one thought kept coming back to me which was like a damn infection in my brain that wouldn't go away.

  If Saint really was working to take down his father, then he must have hated him just as truly as I did. And after the story he'd told me about that toy car, I couldn't exactly blame him for that. But if I was going to accept that Saint had every reason to want to take his father down then I had to consider the option of joining forces with him.

  Because the enemy of my enemy could just be my friend.

  I could sense that Blake's mood was low today as I sat beside him in classes and he barely said a word to me, even when he claimed a spot at my side. His dark aura was seeping into me too and I drank it in like a Dementor sucking on his soul. But instead of thriving on his pain, I just wanted to take it away and soothe that lasting ache inside him over the loss of a parent. A pain I knew too well myself these days.

  "If we don't catch the Justice Ninja soon, I'm gonna lose it," Blake murmured to Saint on his other side, his grip tight around the edge of his iPad. Miss Pontus had set us all an assignment to write out the meaning of some boring ass poem about wheat, which basically meant the whole class were talking loudly to one another, paying little attention to their work.

  "Be patient," Saint said, his tone calm. He’d already finished his assignment of course and I’d seen more synonyms for wheat listed on it than I even knew existed. I swear he didn’t even use a thesaurus either. Maybe he really was a robot.

  "I have been," Blake growled and Kyan nodded his agreement from further down the row of desks. Mila was sitting on my other side listening in. I'd apologised again and again for what the Night Keepers had done to her, but she kept insisting it had been worth it for the best sex of her life and was glad that at least they knew she wasn't guilty now. I guessed she was used to the ways of my men in this school; she'd spent years watching them rule, falling into line with the rest of the students. She took what they'd done in her stride and I didn't know whether to worry about all the shit she must have witnessed for her to not give a damn about being almost pissed on, or impressed that she tossed her hair and moved on with life as simple as that. Still, I’d made it clear to each and every one of them that if they ever went after her like that again, I’d cut them somewhere that counted and that somewhere would be their balls. Fair to say they’d gotten the message.

 
"I'm still up for the idea that we bring groups of students to the fight pit day after day and eventually, I'll beat an admission of guilt out of one of them," Kyan muttered.

  “The problem with that is, that half the students in this school would admit guilt to avoid being beaten,” Saint said thoughtfully.

  "I still think we should question the Unspeakables again," Blake said.

  "Do you really think one of them could be responsible though?" I asked, frowning at the idea. "If one of them did it, you would have gotten it out of them the last time you questioned them."

  "Tatum's right," Saint agreed. "Their backbones have been thoroughly melted, but they’ll get another reminder soon enough anyway."

  "They're the only ones with motive though," Blake said thoughtfully.

  "Pfft, what about every girl you've fucked then tossed away faster than an old, piss-ridden shoe?” Kyan suggested and my lip curled back at the reminder of that thrilling fact.

  "Well, yeah," Blake shrugged. "I doubt they took it that personally though."

  "Did you really leave Tiffany Forsythe up in a cabin in the woods so that she had to be rescued from a bear?" I frowned while Saint and Kyan laughed and Mila leaned closer to hear the answer.

  Blake looked to me with a dark kind of smile that left my skin tingling. "Yep. I mean the bear wasn't planned, but it was a happy coincidence."

  "That's awful,” I growled, fixing Blake with a glare.

  "The bitch stole from me," Blake said angrily.

  "We found Blake's wallet in her locker just before the end of term last year," Saint explained, examining his nails for dirt.

  "I dunno if it was revenge for me fucking and ducking her, but either way that shit was shady. I told her it would be a one night thing, by the way. And maybe if she'd wanted it to be more than that she shouldn't have just laid there like a dead frog on its back. All I remember from that fuck was my mouth getting glued together from all her gross lip gloss and feeling like I was dipping my dick in an aquarium while having a bunch of fish nibble on the end of it. Vaguely interesting, but kind of disturbing at the same time."