Chapter 152 Common street rats
Chapter 152 Common street rats
Hayes
The world around me turned to black ash. Like a fucking nightmare. The second the helicopter’s valves hissed open, dumping that thick, suffocating cloud of pitch-black aerosol into the strong ocean wind, my body locked into pure survival mode.
I didn't give a shit about the sky anymore. What the fuck even was this? I didn't know much about gender reveals, but Tegan said a mist of blue or pink was supposed to drop. Not fucking black. The crowd was supposed to be cheering, not screaming in pure terror. Something was seriously wrong.
I spun violently, my arms launching forward to grab Tegan. I yanked her small frame beneath mine, throwing my entire bulk over her to act as a human shield.
"Hayes—" she choked out against my chest, her fingers clawing at my suit shirt.
"Keep your head down," I growled, my voice a rough, jagged snarl.
The black soot rained down over us, instantly ruining my tailored jacket and coating the gold leaves in her dark hair in a dirty, ash-colored mess.
My large palm stayed pressed flat, heavy, and frantic over the swell of her belly. Around us, the beach went into a screaming tailspin of pure panic.
The high-society campus gala dissolved into a localized riot within a fraction of a second. If my heart weren't hammering against my ribs with a lethal dose of adrenaline, the sheer absurdity of these kids crashing out would have been fucking hilarious.
A group of sorority girls were frantically screaming, running in chaotic circles across the sand as if the black powder were literal acid. Their designer heels sank deep into the shoreline, almost tripping them.
The untouchable, arrogant "golden kids" of the university, the ones who usually ruled the campus corridors with absolute, snobbish authority, were reduced to a bumbling, terrified herd of sheep.
Bunch of fucking idiots. Give them a little corporate scandal and they fold like a cheap plastic lawn chair.
An ice-cold, suffocating dread filled me as my dark eyes aggressively scanned the security perimeter of the beach house estate.
"Carlos!" I barked into the radio comm pinned to my inner collar.
"Carlos, report! Lock down the private ferry! Get the chopper out of the airspace!"
Static. Pure, dead, white-noise static blared through the earpiece.
My jaw clenched so tightly it violently ached beneath my stubble. Carlos was my head of private security, an ex-military operator who helped me lock my shitty grandparents behind bars. He never missed a radio check.
I looked across the sand toward the main gates leading up to the villa, my eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
Carlos wasn't there. Not a single one of my black-suited goons was standing at their station.
Instead, patrolling the edge of the tents were eight massive, stone-faced guards I had never seen in my life. No fucking way. This was an ambush. They wore generic, heavy tactical vests, combat boots, and carried high-grade submachine guns slung casually over their broad shoulders.
They weren't moving to clear the crowd or put out the chemical smoke. They were standing in a rigid military formation, completely blocking every single exit off the private island beach.
"Jax!" I roared over the screaming crowd. "Lock the side kitchen doors! Cover the rear flank! We have a breach!"
Jax didn't even drop the glass of champagne he was nursing. His face went completely, ruthlessly serious as he instantly broke into a high-speed sprint toward the villa, his massive frame cutting through the panicked students, shoving some of them right out of the way.
I looked down at Tegan, trembling in fear. Whatever was happening, we needed to get the fuck out of here.
I reached down and effortlessly scooped her smaller body up against mine. Her heels cleared the sand as I violently pushed through the running crowd, heading back toward the elevated DJ stage where the private stone bunker of the house was accessible.
We were a mere five yards away from the steps when the thumping bass of the party speakers, which had been dead for two minutes, suddenly hummed back to life with a sharp, piercing burst of audio feedback.
The sound of slow, heavy, and mocking applause cut straight through the high-end sound system, echoing loudly across the dark shoreline.
A sudden, chilling wave of absolute, maniacal laughter exploded through the speakers, a sound so hollow, crazed, and dripping with a sick, toxic satisfaction that the entire screaming crowd instantly froze.
The panic on the sand completely died, replaced by a suffocating, dead silence that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
"Oh, look at you all," a voice purred into the microphone, smooth as silk, dripping with an artificial warmth that I recognized from the darkest corridors of the university administration building. "The perfect, beautiful little elite dolls... running around in the mud like common street rats."
Through the thick, black mist settling over the stage, a figure slowly stepped into the center spotlight. It wasn't a masked robber. It wasn't a thug.
It was the fucking Dean.
He wore his tailored, prestigious coat, his silver hair perfectly styled, and a wide, blindingly bright smile stretched across his face. It was a smile so visibly unhinged it looked like it had been carved into his skull with a scalpel.
My chest violently locked up, primal fury flaring in my eyes as my fingers bunched into white-knuckled fists against Tegan's waist.