The Revenge by Tijan

I nodded, reaching for and then downing my orange juice as he got up, going to his room.

It was really good orange juice.





NINE

Bailey


Turns out, it was a Wednesday and smack in the first week of February, so that meant classes were a go. That also meant my advisor thought I was nuts. She said it herself. Ms. Wells shook her head but went to work on her computer. “Okay. Are you sure you want to take last semester’s finals this week, and then also try to catch up?”

“Yes.”

I was firm. I was adamant.

She stopped typing and looked over my shoulder to where Matt was standing. He shuffled over, coming to sit next to me. He shrugged, shaking his head, and folded his arms over his chest. “She woke up with a mission today. Don’t look at me to talk sense into her. She’s the genius, not me.”

“Have you—Was this run by your, er, Mr. Colello?”

I flushed. “I don’t need permission from my boyfriend to start school again.”

“I called him and he wasn’t surprised by this turn of events. He said if she wants to learn, let her learn,” Matt said, as if I hadn’t spoken.

I heard another tone in his voice and slid my eyes sideways, but he wasn’t looking at me. His gaze was firmly locked on my advisor’s and the two seemed to be reading each other’s minds. She confirmed this a second later. “Uh-huh. I see.”

Typing it up, she handed me a note to take down to the registrar’s office, and after we did that, I was reenrolled. Classes started tomorrow. Which, crap, I didn’t have my books. But going through my list, I saw that only two required a textbook. The rest were online, and I smacked Matt’s chest as we were walking through campus. “We gotta run by the school store fast.”

Matt grunted, his chest deflating a second. “Ouch. You hit hard, woman. And what are you talking about?” He took my class list out of my hands, reading it. “MIS 545 Operations Management. MIS 516 Security Risk Management.” He read my other two classes and frowned, absentmindedly rubbing where I’d hit him. “Just the titles of your courses give me a migraine. I don’t get how you, Cy, and Dad are into this, and that you guys almost salivate over it.” He handed the paper back to me. “You guys are super nerds. Not just nerds; super nerds.”

I snatched it away. “Well, don’t get your panties in a bunch. I’ve got a feeling you’ve got super nerd powers of your own, just haven’t found ’em yet.”

Matt threw his head back and laughed. “You serious?”

I frowned.

Fitz was walking ahead of us, and one of Matt’s guards was behind us. We had two others covering us, but walking far away so students wouldn’t automatically associate them with us. It didn’t matter anymore. I was past wanting to be invisible. This was how life was going to be. Guards. People would recognize us, but as we were going back to my usual building, I realized that only a few people had paid attention to us. And even those people had just stopped, stared, frowned, and then continued on.

A few were glancing at Fitz and the other guards, but it wasn’t the spectacle of last semester.

As if following my thoughts, Matt said, “We’re old news.”

“What?”

He gestured around us, his hands sliding into his back pockets. “You’re looking around, right? Noticing no one noticing us?”

“Yeah.”

He inclined his head. “We’re old news. You’ve been gone, mourning your mom, and Kash isn’t letting anyone take his picture. There was a spread of him and me at Naveah a while back, but you’ve gone to ground and so has he. People moved on. Some celebrity posted an image of himself and you could see his dick. Everyone was in an uproar about it.”

Well.

That was nice.

Felt nice.

Normal.

And I was almost crying, because it was reminding me of a time before the first kidnapping attempt.

That was making me think of Chrissy, and yeah. No “almost” anymore. Huge tears were rolling down my face.

Matt looked over and cursed under his breath. “Come here.” He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. We kept walking, but I was half tucked under my brother’s arm, and by the time we got to my building, the size of the tears had shrunk. He patted my arm. “There you go. Look at you, learning the Francis way and getting in control of your robot side.”

I laughed.

The tears were almost gone as Fitz held the doors for us and we stepped through. I used the backs of my hands to wipe my eyes clean.

That’s when we ran into Hoda, my on-and-off nemesis from school.

Who used to work at Naveah, and who was the one to release an image of Kash and me in a compromising position. That Hoda.

Who was friends with our blogger nemesis.

I had a lot of nemeses.

She was coming out of an office, looking down at her phone.

Matt stopped and frowned. “Hey, isn’t that—”

Hoda’s head whipped up, saw us. Her eyes went wide, and she tried to go back into the office she’d just left.

“Hey!” I zipped out from under Matt’s arms.

Hoda was still scrambling for the doorknob.

“Hey!” I grabbed her arm just as she got it open and started to go through.

I pulled her back out.