The corners of his lips tip up in a smile. “I know you saying that kind of thing is a giant red flag and it should freak me the fuck out, but it doesn’t. In fact, I like it.”
“Do you like knowing that the asshole who jumped you is dead?”
His smile turns into a smirk. “Yes. Did you have something to do with it?”
“No,” I say regretfully. “Someone got to him before I could. And they were a lot kinder than I would have been because he didn’t suffer nearly enough.”
“And there’s more of that talk that should scare the fuck out of me.” He shoots me a little smile. “What about the guy tonight? What are the twins and Killian going to do to him?”
“It’s probably best if I don’t tell you specifics,” I say. “But they’re going to get whatever information they can from him, then take care of him.”
“You mean kill him?”
I nod.
“And when Killian said he’d take care of things, that’s what he meant?”
“Not exactly. He was telling me he’d make sure the twins didn’t have too much fun and get carried away before they kill him.”
Damon’s eyes widen for a few beats, but his shock quickly melts into curiosity. “Does that have anything to do with them being different?”
“It does,” I say, my voice serious. “And I’m going to tell you something no one outside of our family knows. Something that can never get out.”
I might trust him with my secrets and the secrets of the frat, but this is different. Hopefully he realizes that betraying the twins’ trust would be a fatal mistake, and not even my feelings for him or protection would be enough to stop them from seeking their revenge.
“I swear I won’t tell anyone, not ever. It doesn’t matter what you say, I promise I’ll take it to my grave,” he says quickly, and I can see he’s being sincere.
“Jax and Jace were diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder when they were kids,” I tell him, not mincing words. “Technically, they’re both functional psychopaths, and they need Killian and me to rein them in so they don’t go too far or get too carried away.”
“That actually makes a lot of sense now that I’ve seen them in action, so to speak.” He lets out a bewildered laugh. “And it’s another thing that should terrify me but doesn’t.” He glances at the fire for a few beats. “So someone hired that guy tonight, and that other guy a few months ago to kill me?”
“Yes. Did you know that first guy had a gun?” I ask.
He swings his gaze back to mine, his eyes round with shock. “He did?”
I already assumed he didn’t see it, and that’s probably one of the reasons he didn’t think it was more than just a random attack.
“Yeah. But Eden interrupted him before he could use it.”
“Jesus.” He flicks his lip ring a few times. “I really thought it was just a prank or something like that.”
“It was a hit, the same as tonight. Are you ready to hear what I know about what’s going on?”
He nods and sits up straighter, like he’s getting ready to pay attention in class.
I spend the next few minutes telling him everything Jace and Carter found out about our kidnappers, and what’s happened since he got back to campus. I leave out the stuff about the blackmail files and his real last name showing up in them, but tell him about how Jace found his original birth certificate and how both he and Carter know about his alter ego.
There’s a long pause when I finish talking, but instead of getting angry or being pissed that I know so many of his secrets, he just undoes the buttons of his jacket and shrugs it off.
“So you think the kidnapping wasn’t random?” he asks and tosses his jacket over the arm of the couch. “That there’s more to it than them just wanting my fee for the gig?”
“I think so,” I say. “Jax pointed something out when I told him and Killian what happened to us that really made me start questioning things.”
“What was it?”
“Carter might have figured out what we were drugged with, but Jax was the only one who’d ever heard of it before. He told me the dosing is incredibly precise, and even a slight miscalculation can be the difference between knocking someone out and killing them. They would have had to know your weight and height and done some advanced math to make sure that they gave you just enough to slowly affect you over the course of a few hours so it didn’t kick in while you were still on stage and working. And he also pointed out that I probably got the same dose as you because it was meantforyou. And the only reason I’m not dead is that I’m bigger. Apparently mixing it with alcohol is a death sentence, but since I only had a few drinks and I have more body mass, the drug hit me harder, but it didn’t kill me.”
He nods slowly. “That makes sense. You were out longer than I was, and I wondered why they didn’t kill you if they weren’t planning on ransoming you or anything like that.”
