“It’s hard to tell who the man is,” Baikal said just as December spat on him before turning toward the door leading back into the building. “None of the cameras were able to pick up his face very well, but I’m sure I could find out if I did some digging.”
The only reason he hadn’t bothered already was because it shouldn’t matter. The point wasn’t that there was a wronged person somewhere out in the galaxy, it was that the sweet, motherly figure known to said galaxy was a fake.
“This is vicious even by my standards,” he lied. Honestly, if it’d been him, he wouldn’t have walked away so easily. He would have first ensured the man had been thoroughly crippled. “If it gets leaked, her career will be over.”
It hadn’t been three months into watching Rabbit that Baikal had put the pieces together and uncovered his greatest truth.
Rabbit hated playing the beiska, not because of the instrument itself, but because of all of the responsibility that came with it. Since his mother had been away for most of the year, Baikal had yet to witness their dynamics in person, but it couldn’t be all that great considering she’d left her one and only son in a massive house alone for over twelve months.
The glasses Kal was wearing weren’t for helping his regular vision, the built-in computer scanner constantly gave him body readings on the people around him. When you could figure out what made a person’s heart rate leap, it was a lot easier to manipulate them, and right now the tiny neon blue numbers in the right corner of the glass told him Rabbit’s heartbeat was going through the roof.
Noticing the telltale signs that he was about to experience one of his episodes, Baikal reached into his pocket to pull out the candy bar. Rabbit never went anywhere without one of these on his person.
Breaking off one of the rectangles, Baikal brought it to Rabbit’s lips, sliding the chocolate into his mouth when he parted for him.
“Either you’ve wised up and decided to be a good boy,” Baikal teased, “or you’re so shocked you’re broken. Which is it?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Rabbit said. He chewed the candy slowly, the cloudy look in his eyes dissipating as he chewed until he seemed to come more to himself. The second he did, he noticed Baikal touching him and quickly shoved his arm off with a glare. “You’re trying to claim my mom is a violent person.”
“I don’t have to claim anything.” He motioned to the screen. “It’s all right there for everyone to see. If I leak the video, of course. Unlike your mom, I cover my tracks. This is the only copy left. I deleted it from the school’s main server.”
“How did you even find this?”
The events recorded had taken place over a year ago. The date stamp in the corner told them as much.
“I’m good at digging,” Baikal said casually. “I’m also ruthless when it comes to getting what I want. If this isn’t enough to convince you, I’m sure there are many other skeletons in her closet that I’m more than happy to uncover. You see that guy there,” he pointed to the burly one kicking the man, “imagine my absolute delight when I recognized him as one of mine.”
“He isn’t.”
“Afraid so.”
“My mother doesn’t have any connections with the Brumal,” Rabbit insisted.
“He was muscle for hire back then,” Baikal explained. “He didn’t enter the family until about six months or so ago. What matters is thatnowhe is family, which means he’ll be more than happy to speak out against your mother if I tell him to.”
Rabbit’s mind seemed to be racing a mile a minute. “He’d implicate himself.”
“The Brumal has more than enough money to make a little incarceration worth his while.”
Rabbit had gone pale, but at least he no longer appeared to be on the verge of a breakdown. Baikal had only seen him suffering a panic attack once or twice, and it’d never been pretty.
“Did you know?” he asked. “That your mom once beat a man to an inch of his life?”
“I knew.”
“Then you must have thought about it, right? How if this got out her career would be over.” Baikal had gone straight for the jugular since he’d known he couldn’t simply threaten Rabbit’s future. It was hard to blackmail someone with something they didn’t care about, and if he’d pulled the plug on him being a professional musician? Something told him Rabbit would be grateful.
Baikal still didn’t understand why. But he would.
“Everything your mother built in her thirty years of performing would crumble to the ground like a house of cards. You,” he lifted a single shoulder in a shrug, “You’d probably be fine. They’d suspect you for a while and people would whisper behind your back, but that’s not really any different from how things are now. Although, I guess right now people are only saying nice things about you, aren’t they? You can’t walk anywhere on campus without hearing ‘The Music Prince is so hot’ or ‘The Music Prince is so mysterious’.”
“Is that why you sought me out?” Rabbit asked, a flash of that stubbornness back as he held his gaze. “You got curious what all the fuss was about?”
He hadn’t given a shit about any of it until after he’d been forced to attend that recital, but Baikal didn’t tell him that. Instead, he made a point of trailing his gaze over Rabbit’s face, across the sharp rise of his cheekbones, and down the elegant slope of his nose. That silky, white and silver hair with lilac highlights beckoned to be touched and he almost gave in, catching himself at the last second.
Soon.
But first…
