CHAPTERTEN
MICAH
My clenched fingers slammed down on the counter, pain radiating up my arm, but my mind had gone numb to it. Anger still pulsed through my veins, taking over everything else. I couldn’t see or feel anything past the fury. It rushed back in a sea of red, hearing Grayson tell me that Sterling has pictures on his phone and that he was using them against my girl.
Not fucking happening.
Perhaps using my fists hadn’t been the most effective way to get answers from him, but it sure as shit felt fucking fantastic to lay into him. Now hearing this, I was ready for round two, and this time, I wouldn’t go easy on him. He was about to get the full brunt of just how far a reach the Elite had.
His life was about to become miserable.
I blinked at Grayson, attempting to clear the film of red that had descended over my gaze. “He has what?” I stated, the lowness of my tone making the words a deadly whisper.
Grayson huffed, slouching in the chair. “I said he has photos of Mads on his phone.”
“What kind of photos?” I demanded, thinking about the one he had hidden between the pages of a book in his room.
Brock sat across from me at the island counter in our kitchen where we ate most of our meals. “We didn’t see them, but thinkPlayboy.”
“Are you—” I couldn’t even finish the statement. A storm of fire raced through me, and I wanted to hit something again, but the counter wasn’t going to cut it. I opened and closed my fingers to release the tension that had mounted from keeping them clenched for so long. It didn’t help. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
“You never gave her the chance,” Fynn muttered.
True. I had walked off before I said regretful shit, not wanting her to be on the receiving end of the violence that continued to stir in me. I had pretty good control of my temper, but when I lost it, it was like a beast being freed from a cage. Wild. Untamed. Destructive. Unchained.
“He’s so fucking dead,” I rasped, brushing the pad of my thumb over the cut at the corner of my lip.
Grayson’s head turned sharply in my direction. “I get you’re upset, but none of this makes sense. It doesn’t add up. My cousin wouldn’t do that, not with a guy she barely knew, and she seemed genuinely confused about how he had them.”
Brock drummed his fingertips over the wooden counter, a frown pulling at his mouth. “I agree. Something is up. That girl has liked you far too long, which I’ll never understand.”
“Don’t tell me we have another Carter on our hands. We just put that bastard behind bars,” Grayson retorted.
The idea of Sterling being anything like Carter and doing what the prick had done to Kenna and Josie froze my heart for a split second.
Fynn scratched the underside of his chin. “I’m not sure. This feels like a personal attack on Micah. Mads is just a means to get to him.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” Brock agreed.
I wrapped my fingers around the cold neck of a beer and brought the opening to my lips, downing half of it. “And that’s what has me so fucking angry. Not at Mads. This asshole has me worked up, and it’s the not knowing that’s driving me crazy.”
Brock’s brows locked together, an expression he wore often. “We’ll figure out his game.”
Grayson glanced around the counter at each of us. “We always do.”
Fynn held up his drink. “It’s what we’re good at.”
The other three of us followed, clinking the tops of our beers together.
I didn’t know what I would have done without these guys in my life. They’d saved me more times than I could count, had always been there when I needed them, even when I thought I didn’t. Unlike Grayson or Fynn, I didn’t grow up with a loving family, at least not the same kind of love they got from their parents. My father gave hard-ass a new name.
Tonight was supposed to be about getting drunk with the guys and letting go after our first official week of college classes. Some days I doubted I would ever end up here. It had been drilled into my head from the time I was born that everything I’d been working for was to get me into Kingsley University. All Bradford men attended KU, and if it hadn’t been for Mads and Brock, I would have flipped family tradition off in the face. I wanted to stick it to the old man. Instead, I shifted my fuck-you priorities, but even those weren’t panning out. Like refusing to be a part of Chi Sigma, yet I was considering rushing.
Not that I stood much of a chance after tonight. Perhaps I never did. That would burn the old man’s ass.
I didn’t regret choosing KU. Mads could get me to do things I promised I’d never do.
It was as if the universe wanted me to walk in the old man’s shoes, step by step. The harder I fought against it, the more parallel my life became with his.