Chapter 12 Chapter 12
I found myself standing by the gate that he had left me at a year ago. I looked out through the bars at the road leading away from the academy. Somewhere out there, he was living his life. The thought made my blood boil.
I went back to my room and sat in the dark. I didn't turn on the lights. I didn't open my laptop. I just sat there and let the silence wrap around me. I’d done everything he asked. I was smart, I was lethal, I was the perfect socialite, and I was the perfect assassin. I was a weapon with a degree and a grudge.
If he didn't reach out soon, I wasn't going to stay in this cage, no matter how secure it was. I’d learned how to navigate the world now. I knew how to disappear, and I knew how to hunt. If Nikolai Ferro thought he could just leave me here forever, he was about to find out exactly how well I’d learned his lessons.
I put on the noise-canceling headphones and closed my eyes.
One year down, Nikolai, I thought. The debt is paid. Now it’s time for the interest.
I fell asleep dreaming of fire and the smell of expensive cologne, waiting for the day the silence finally broke.
Nikolai
I was in the security room looking at the screen. She was on the tarmac with Vale. She was no longer the weak girl I left at the gates of the academy. She was using her anger, and that was what I needed.
I left her at those gates without a goodbye. Expressing emotions wasn't a part of my nature, but I had to send her away; it was for her own safety.
The day she was here and my family showed up, I knew I had to move fast. They never bothered to get familiar with the business that they handed to me; all that mattered to them was that no one ever disrespected the Ferro family name, traitors, and making more money; nothing else mattered to them.
So imagine my fucking surprise when my grandmother, Isador Ferro, the head of our family, said she found a wife for me. Blair Rhodes. I almost lost my shit. She wanted me to marry the woman that was responsible for torturing the woman that saved my life. I managed to persuade her to give me five years, citing that I was only twenty-eight and wanted to focus on expanding the family business before marriage.
What drove me to push her away was the information Brax brought to me. She was the one that saved my life. I was really small and was at our family’s cabin. I had been walking around the forest and decided to climb the hill. I was almost to the top when the rain started falling and I slipped.
I would have gone over that cliff; I was barely clinging to a jagged piece of rock when a tiny hand threw a vine over, and I grabbed it and pulled myself up. When I came up, I didn't expect the girl to be so small and tiny. She was dressed in nice clothes. But that moon-shaped mark on her shoulder was what I searched for; Brax confirmed it was her.
When he showed me the videos of the Rhodes family hitting her, in one video they had her kneeling on the ground, eating off the floor, and they were laughing. They treated her worse than a dog, and I would make them pay for it.
I kept watching her. On the screen, she was walking back to the dorms. I chose not to reach out to her; that would be a distraction. Besides, I needed her to focus. I had all the reports on her progress for the past year, and she was learning. I watched her as she walked into her room and just sat down. I always had eyes on her, even in her room, everywhere except the bathroom.
I pulled up the email Director Kasim sent. They would be having a formal dinner. She would need a dress.
ISLA
I had just finished training and walked into my room and stopped short. There was a box on my bed. For the past week all anyone talked about was the formal dinner coming up, the women, and the men’s academy. I wasn't interested in it.
One look at the box and I already knew who it was from. I didn't even bother opening it; I just picked it up and put it in a corner. After a shower, I checked my email, and nothing; that just solidified it for me. I was nothing to him and would put him out of my mind completely.
After my second year at the academy and he still never called, texted, or showed up, it just made me push myself harder. Once a month a box would show up, but I treated it just like the others, never opened them, just put them in a corner of the room, and they piled up. I learned how to use a sword, dagger, and spheres and learned how to drive.
In my third year, I was acing all my classes; Mrs. Gomes no longer even bothered with me. I did it all right; it was just going through the motions now. Mr. Rodney asked me if I wanted to learn more, and I agreed. I learned investing and technology. I learned everything I could. Why? Because I could. I had Oris teach me how to take apart an engine and put it back together. He was hesitant but did it. I had managed to beat Elena at hand-to-hand combat and graduated from that.
My fourth year was where the fun really started; Oris began training me how to use a gun and how to disassemble and reassemble it, and through it all, he never reached out, not a single word. I stopped looking up the Rhodes family too. Thinking about them and watching them live carefree after what they did to me messed with my mind, so I stopped.
It was two months into the beginning of the fifth year; I had completed multiple courses, and Director Kasim told me to focus on my training. I was fluent in Russian and seven more languages. I had accomplished playing the violin and more. Mrs. Gomes was the proudest. The one thorn in my side was Mara Andrews from the wealthy family. She was a nuisance, always trying to figure out what was happening behind those gates, but I didn't give her anything.
Oris told me to take a week off before graduation, but I couldn't; I spent every day in the academy gym. Friday after I returned from the gym, I found a black wooden box on top of my deck in front of my laptop. There was an envelope with it.
I had the urge to put it in the corner with the others; after a shower, I sat down and just stared at it. I grabbed the envelope and opened it; a small card was inside.
“FOR YOUR LAST EXAM”