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If she didn’t look like the spitting image of my brother’s murderer.
My hands curl tighter around the fork and knife in my hands. Considering how much I’ve been looking forward to her coming here, now that I see her, I’m torn between following my plan and leaping over the table to end it all now.
“You okay?” Royal asks.
She looks up then, locking eyes with me. And then, as though she has no idea who I am, she glances away and continues talking to Bergmann.
Slowly, I turn my head to face Royal. “Change of plans. I want all the Elite, including the initiates, in a meeting this evening. No excuses.”
Royal glances past me, likely at Gemini, before looking back at me and nodding. “Whatever you need.”
What I need is forherto feel the same pain I do when I see her.
X
Tori
There’s something about the way Syn was looking at me that left me with an uneasy feeling I can’t shake.
For half a moment, I thought he recognized me, but he just continued eating his breakfast while talking with his friends.
“You need to stay away from all of them,”Penny had told me.
She had no idea how hard I was going to try.
I’m not stupid. Possibly crazy at this point, but not stupid. I knew JP’s brother was a student here before I enrolled. I knew there was a strong possibility our paths would cross. And my plan was to avoid coming close to him.
If Syn ever works out who I am, I fully expect some kind of confrontation. He might not know it yet, but he hates me. If my brother was killed and his killer’s sibling was attending the same college as me, I’d hate them too.
The uneasy feeling remains as I walk into Keyingham. The town is small and feels more like one of those quaint New England towns old people like to vacation in. Certainly not like a college town—even one as small as James Keyingham University. With New York City being a little over an hour away, my guess is the students go there.
There’s a pizza place with grimy windows, a small grocery store, three coffee shops, and an antique store. None of which are hiring. According to one of the baristas, there might be some jobs available at Walmart in the next town, but without a car, that one’s out.
Which leaves me looking for online jobs when I get back to my room. I’d seen something once about being a virtual assistant for an author, which seems like something I could do, but I was really looking for something in town so I could talk to the locals.
Oh well. Books need buying, and I can’t afford to be picky.
Speaking of, I have a list of books I need for my classes, and as almost none of them are available on Kindle Unlimited, my other mission is to see which are available in the bookstore. The town isn’t really catered for a college, the bookstore only has a small section dedicated to textbooks, and I already have them in eBook form.
Although I made it to college, I don’t really have plans for the future. My goal is getting my brother out of prison, which means I need the lightest course possible. Something that’s almost impossible at James Keyingham. Being a small college that’s dedicated toproducing the future leaders ofAmerica, the course selection is both small and intensive. Each one with a long “required reading” list.
I’ve not declared my major yet, and maybe once this is over, I’ll pick something. For now, I have the minimum number of credits my scholarship requires.
Picking a book off the shelf, I turn it over to inspect the price and nearly faint. Before coming, I’d looked up the cost of new books online. But the secondhand prices are ridiculous—and they’re no better than the secondhand copies sold online.
I set the book down, hoping that the college’s library will stock the books I need, otherwise, I’m going to have to start an OnlyFans.
Hurrying out of the store, my thoughts are so preoccupied doing calculations on which textbooks I can afford should I need them; I’m not paying attention to where I’m going.
The next thing I know, I’m colliding into a person, and something hot spills over me.
“Shit,” I cry, stepping backwards, somehow tripping over thin air to land on my ass.
Or I should be.
A strong hand is holding onto my wrist, stopping me from hitting the ground. As I get my balance and quickly check myself over, my arm is released.
“Are you okay?”
