FOUR KINGS, ONE GIRL.

5

Chapter 5

I found Kane at seven in the morning.

Not at the library. Not in the business building. I found him in the campus gym, alone, hitting a bag with the focused violence of someone working something out of his system. He had not heard me come in. I stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment and tried to remember every reason I had decided not to trust him.

The list felt shorter than it had yesterday.

He stopped. Not because I made a sound. He just stopped and turned, and the fact that he already knew I was there before I announced myself was something I filed away to think about later.

He reached for a towel. His chest was heaving. There was a sheen of sweat across his shoulders and he looked more human than I had ever seen him, more reachable, and I hated that the sight of it did something to my composure.

Ask me, he said.

How do the four of you know each other, I said.

He draped the towel around his neck and looked at me for a long moment. Then he said: Come with me.

He took me to an office on the second floor of the athletic building that I had not known existed. Clean and spare, a desk, two chairs, a window overlooking the empty track. He sat on the edge of the desk rather than behind it and crossed his arms and looked at me in the chair across from him.

Our fathers, he said. They did business together. The four of us grew up in the same circles. Same events, same schools until university. We are not friends the way you mean it. We are more like the only four people in a room who all know the same secret.

What secret, I said.

His jaw shifted. That the men our fathers are, are not the men they present publicly.

I waited.

My father has been quietly buying influence in this university for twenty years, he said. River's father runs money through legitimate businesses that are not entirely legitimate. Axel's family has contracts that bend in directions the public would not approve of. Draven's father used his academic position to cover things that had nothing to do with academia.

The room was very quiet.

And you, I said. What does Kane Hargrove cover.

He looked at me steadily. I do not cover anything. I expose it. That is what the file is. Someone is trying to stop me before I finish building the case.

By coming after me.

By coming after everyone close to me, he said. The others got pulled in because of their connection to me. And you. He paused. You got pulled in because of your connection to your father.

The floor tilted.

My father left when I was eight, I said. I have not spoken to him in thirteen years. I have no connection to my father.

He disagrees, Kane said. Your father has been watching you for two years, Sienna. He is the one behind the monitoring. The photographs in that room last night. Those came from him.

I stood up.

I did not decide to stand. My body just did it, the way a body moves away from something before the mind catches up. I put my hand on the back of the chair and breathed through the roaring in my ears.

You knew this before last night, I said.

Yes.

How long.

Three weeks.

I looked at him. You have known for three weeks that my father has been watching me and you said nothing.

I needed to confirm the source before I told you. If I was wrong I did not want to.

Do not, I said. Do not explain it to me like it was a kindness.

He went quiet. The muscle in his jaw worked once.

You are right, he said. I should have told you sooner. I am sorry.

I had not expected that. From Kane Hargrove I had expected justification, calculation, the careful management of information. Not two flat words delivered without qualification.

I sat back down.

The silence between us rearranged itself into something different. Still tense. Still loaded. But honest now in a way it had not been before.

What does my father want, I said.

We think he wants leverage over me, Kane said. And he believes you are the way to get it.

Why would I be leverage over you. I am nothing to you.

Kane looked at me. He did not look away. He did not blink or shift or soften it with anything.

You were nothing to me three days ago, he said.

I felt that in my sternum.

That is not an answer, I said, but my voice had lost its edge.

It is the most honest one I have, he said.

He stood from the desk and walked toward me and I stayed in the chair because moving felt like admitting something. He stopped in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze, and he looked down at me with those grey eyes that gave everything and nothing at the same time.

He reached down and put his hand against my jaw. Slowly. Like I might move and he was giving me time to do it.

I did not move.

His thumb traced my cheekbone once and his eyes followed it like he was memorising something.

I protect what matters to me, he said quietly. I handled this wrong. I will not handle it wrong again.

I should have said something sharp. Something that put the distance back.

Instead I turned my face slightly into his hand. Just a fraction. Just enough.

His breath changed.

He pulled me up from the chair with one hand and kissed me and it was nothing like River. River had been heat and relief and desperation. Kane was control and intention, every movement deliberate, his hand in my hair tilting my head exactly where he wanted it, his mouth taking its time like he had decided to do this and was going to do it completely.

I grabbed the front of his shirt with both hands.

He walked me back until I was against the wall and pressed into me with the full solid weight of him and kissed me deeper and I stopped thinking about my father and the photographs and everything except the way Kane Hargrove kissed like he was staking a claim he had no intention of releasing.

When he pulled back his breathing was unsteady. His forehead dropped to rest against mine and we stood there in the quiet office with his hand still in my hair and mine still twisted in his shirt.

This changes things, I said.

Everything, he agreed.

I pulled back and looked at him. I am angry with you. About the three weeks.

I know.

That does not go away because of this.

I know that too, he said. I am not asking it to.

I let go of his shirt. I stepped back. He let me go without argument, which somehow made it harder to leave than if he had held on.

I picked up my bag and walked to the door and then stopped because there was one more thing I needed to ask.

Kane. My father. Does he know I am here. That you have told me.

He was quiet for exactly one second too long.

My chest went cold.

He is on campus, I said. Not a question.

Kane's expression confirmed it before he spoke.

He has been here since yesterday, Kane said. This morning he requested a formal meeting with the Dean. His name is on the request.

He held my gaze and the next words landed like something physical.

Your name is on it too. And Sienna. The meeting is in one hour.