16. ~Mason~

16

~Mason~

I hadn't waited forty-eight hours.

After Levi's reaction during breakfast the other day, it had become extremely apparent that immediate action was required, that there was no time to wait.

Besides, the deadline I'd given him had now come and gone anyway and he hadn't come to me with the truth. Just as I'd anticipated.

Offering him time had just been my way to test the waters with him at that juncture.

And he'd failed spectacularly.

I sure as fuck wasn't going to sit back and allow him to become unhinged again. We'd all suffered for it five years ago and I was still paying for it more than most.

I watched from the shadows as two of my soldiers slammed into the girl in the corridor, knocking her fluffy messenger bag from her shoulder and her along with it. They walked away as had been instructed and she scrambled there on her knees to retrieve her bag and a couple of things that had fallen from it in the scuffle. She hadn't noticed what one of my guys had slipped in there during the stereotypical bullying move I'd had staged. As if I'd settle for such a pedestrian tactic—at least not without following it up with something much more glorious.

She rose to her feet and squared her shoulders as if nothing had happened, then continued on her merry way.

Hmm. She certainly wasn't as meek and as pliant as I'd taken her for.

She'd shrugged off all the minor acts I'd had visited upon her over the last few days.

It was clearly time to step it up a notch.

And, although, they had been minor—messing with her food, having her cornered on campus with my soldiers uttering threatening words about her being marked by Hex , spilling an ice-cold coffee on her, having her tripped up the steps, taking one of her beloved jackets while she'd been immersed in a coding lab and having it trampled then half buried in the dirt—it served to pile on the pressure and to inundate her.

I'd kept it to small infractions so far to keep it off Levi's radar.

With my eyes on him, I'd managed to inflict the minor but continued damage upon her when he was out of range and none the wiser. From my observations of him, it had become apparent that he hadn't made contact with her since the morning after their finger-fuck session outside Nirvana. Knowing Lev as well as I did, it was clearly him gearing up to something big.

The girl had to be on the verge of breaking now, so stepping it up should finally push her to give it up and actually transfer out of Stonewell.

I wanted that to happen before Levi's something big came about.

She'd scheduled her time with Colt today to work on their duet, so once that was out of the way, I'd move to more damaging tactics. Let him have his time with her to get that done. It would assuage his worries about Mythic Cry. The fact that he hadn't understood my contracts class at all had meant I'd taken on his case myself and determined the other two couldn't touch most of his catalogue. I'd found proof that he had written ninety percent of the band's songs himself, and I was in the process of working with Professor Litman to draw up something official. If they proved resistant to it, my next move was to use the soldiers I'd acquired via Hex to remove them forcibly from Colt's vicinity and ensure they remained that way—fucking exiled. He'd worked too hard with Mythic Cry to suffer for their jealousy and ineptitude. I wouldn't allow it.

I made my way around the other side of the music building where Colt spent most of his time, meaning I knew it so well that I was able to approach the recording studio from a side entrance that most didn't know about without being bothered.

I opened the door a little so I could hear inside as I also peered through the small window in the door. Fortunately, it was at an angle where I could see them there in the heart of the recording studio, while they couldn't see me clearly.

I wanted to see how the girl reacted when she wasn't under fire from my assault.

And, yeah, I also wanted to see how she was with Colt—and how he was with her.

Lev had mentioned that Colt had taken a liking to her. I needed to understand how much my plan to remove her from our vicinity would impact him so I could manage the fallout. I was hoping that it was just fleeting for him like his interests in his many other conquests over the years had been. This was hopefully just lasting longer than usual for him because it was intertwined with his music—his ultimate passion. It was likely why he'd managed to maintain his focus on her for longer than I'd ever witnessed from him before.

Settling against the door, I looked on as Colt walked to her while frowning at her bag.

"What happened?"

"What?" she asked, following his line of sight.

"All the dust and dirt, even a scuff mark. Did somebody step on it?"

"Slammed into me, knocked my bag to the ground, and stepped on it in the process, sure."

"What? Who? When?" Colt asked.

She eased the bag away. "Don't worry about it, I'll clean it off when we're done here." She moved away then and headed for the microphones.

Colt grasped her arm in a much more careful manner than he was known for. "Hold up. Talk to me, cutie."

Cutie?

She stared—or glared—at his hand on her arm. "I'm here because we have a deal and I don't want to make things worse than they already are."

"What things? With Lev?"

"No. I haven't heard from him in days. I even saw him in class a couple of times and he didn't even acknowledge me, so I guess his threats were all about switching to the silent treatment."

Interesting. For one, that wasn't Lev's go-to. Not in the fucking least. And, another, she looked upset about it, like she was missing him.

Fuck it. This was worse than I'd imagined. He was already affecting her now. Yeah, I definitely needed to escalate and speed things along.

"That's… weird. Really weird. Do you want me to talk to him for you?"

"No," she said. "Absolutely no way. I'm glad he's leaving me alone. It's what I wanted."

As she shoved her hand through her hair and cut eye contact, Colt frowned. "Are you sure? It doesn't exactly seem like it."

To her credit, she managed to steel herself, her pretty features hardening, as she told him, "I have other things to deal with anyway."

"Yeah, these things you're worried about making worse. And I ask again, what things?"

She glared at him. "Come on, don't play all innocent. You already know."

"Know?"

"About Hex targeting me. I'm sorry— marking me."

That's right, get the terminology right, troublemaker.

Colt's unadulterated shock blazed through clearly.

And then I waited to see how he'd respond.

It would tell me everything I needed to know about his true sentiment toward her.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" he yelled, surprising me at the vehemence of it.

The girl looked more than a little taken aback, reading his reaction as the genuine truth that it was. "You didn't actually know then."

"That you've been marked? Shit, no. What the shit is going on?"

"You're part of Hex. How can you not know?"

"I'm on the periphery. Especially with this new revival. I've been dealing with issues with Mythic Cry and working on getting my GPA back to a respectable level. I haven't even been tasked with anything concerning Hex yet." He took her hands in his and leveled with her. "I swear it, Brianna. I wouldn't… I wouldn't do that to you."

She stared at him for a moment. "You really wouldn't, would you?"

"No. Of course not. I told you at the bar that I liked hanging with you, connecting with you. I don't fake that kind of thing. I don't fake anything."

"Well, it's fine. I'll handle it. I'm working on it."

I tensed with the challenge she'd just thrown down. That tension quickly became something much more, though, as I took in the fierce look in her eyes, the fire and determination shining forth. It was intrigue, admiration… something more? I wasn't sure.

"No. Don't… don't retaliate," Colt urged her.

"Why not?"

I narrowed my eyes. Was he going to sell me and Hex out to a girl he'd only known for a few weeks and tell her about our covert protocol?

Fortunately, he merely ruffled his mohawk and told her, "I'll sort it out for you. I'll speak with Mason. Something might've gotten lost in translation, some mix-up."

He played with her fingers in his and she smiled, returning it, making his eyes spark with something softer than his usual blatant and unmistakable lust.

"I don't need you to do that. It'll be fine. But thanks for offering. It's actually really sweet."

"Uh uh. I said I'd do it and I will. It's all good."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why go out of your way for me? Especially about this?"

"You went out of your way with this whole duet thing. It's not your thing or what you want to be doing, yet you're still here showing up to help me out."

"Well, we had a deal."

"And I already paid my side of it, so you could've walked away."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Yeah, I get that about you. You're sweet and honorable."

"I'm not sweet."

He stepped closer until their joined hands were pushing against both their chests. "Are you sure about that?"

"You tell me."

In the next moment, Colt sank his fingers into her silky black hair and eased her to him as he took her mouth.

I took note of her freezing up for a moment, before she was able to get into it and kiss him back, hooking her hands around his neck and sinking into him.

He wrapped his free arm around her and held her tightly to him as he kissed her with all the passion I knew well from him, yet also with a much more careful edge with her.

Gritting my teeth now I'd gotten my intel, I turned and walked back the way I'd come.

Not the way I'd needed things to go.

It was becoming apparent that this girl was nearing the unpredictability level of Levi.

Troublemaker didn't even cover it.

Son of a bitch.