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"Either it says you're nastier than you think you are, or it says I'm reformed," I replied. "I'll leave that for you to decide." I kissed her forehead.
"I'm guessing it's the first one." Her freckled brow wrinkled cutely. "Not more than five minutes ago, I asked to come along and see a man die."
"Unfortunately, nastiness is wildly underrated as a positive character trait." I curled a section of her hair around my fingers. "The best people in the world are the nastiest. I can think of four straight off the top of my head."
She responded by speaking slowly. "You, Mannix, my mother, and Leo?"
I laughed. "You, Mannix, Ares and me," I corrected. "No offence to your mother or Leo, but I don't think either of them could be called nasty. Not the way the rest of us are."
"I didn't realise there was a measurement scale for something like that." She rolled back onto her stomach and lay on her arms. Her breasts were pushed forward enticingly.
"Sweet girl, there's a measurement scale for everything. It doesn't matter what it is, someone will rate it. People love to organise and quantify everything."
"Is that your professional observation, Doctor Miller?" she teased.
"Definitely." I liked the way that sounded, coming from her lips. I was a long way off being able to call myself that, but if she kept saying that, I might just be driven to keep on studying.
"Are you planning to do a PhD too?" I ask her. "Doctor Knight has a ring to it."
She snorted softly. "I'd sound like a supervillain. If I did that, I have to get myself a cat."
I grinned. "We could all be doctors except Mannix. Although, knowing him, if we all went and did our PhDs, he'd feel left out if he didn't do it too."
"Or he could just buy himself one." Her expression was wry.
I snapped my fingers. "Or you could hack into whichever university you like and give us all PhDs."
I frowned and quickly corrected myself. "Don't hack into Brutham Academy. Doing that would shorten your life expectancy by a large amount."
"Is it really that bad?" She didn't look as alarmed as I might have expected. If anything, she looked curious. Hopefully not too curious to try it, because I wasn't exaggerating. Brutham Academy was as possessive of its digital data as me and the other guys were of Kennedy.
"At the end of first year, they let third and fourth years hunt us down," I said. "If we've made the right alliances and haven't pissed off the wrong people, we might just survive. Obviously, the three of us did."
Her eyes widened. "Wait a minute. By hunt you down you mean—"
"Exactly that. We're given a starting position and a location we need to get to. If we get there without anyone catching up with us, we pass. If we didn't, I wouldn't be here telling you this."
Her lips dropped apart. "They're literally allowed to kill students if they catch up with them?"
"They're not just allowed to, they'reencouragedto. This life is tough. Only the strongest, best connected and smartest, survive. On the upside, we got to do the same to the first years when it was our turn. It was… exhilarating. But we weren't killing for the fun of it. The first years who weren't connected, and allied with other powerful students, were often ones who were ostracised for a reason."
"They touched the wrong guy's girlfriend?" Kennedy guessed.
"That's certainly been a reason for someone to be targeted in the past." And would be a reason for it in the future. Most of the guys in this life were brought up to understand that they protect their woman at all costs. I couldn't think of a single one who wasn't the, 'touch her and you die,' type.
"I'm starting to think the world is a different place than what I thought it was." She sighed.
"In a good way, or in a bad way?" I tangled my fingers tighter in her hair.
"I don't know yet. Maybe a bit of both." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "How reliant is Samuel Bell on his computer systems?"
I smiled. "Very. Do you have something in mind?"
Chapter Fourteen
Kennedy
I'd needed to have this conversation for ages, but now the moment was here, I didn't know how to start it.
