Chapter 31: 30 – Kill him loudly and painfully
Contrary to how crazy yesterday had been with the car scare and the prommittee debacle, today
was shaping up to be quite peaceful. School passed by uneventfully. The prommittee even did
some ass kissing since the caterer ended up calling with a change of heart half an hour after I left. And
Olly, thankfully, hadn’t tried to give me another heart attack so far. In fact, she had been almost angelic
which under normal circumstances would’ve been suspicious but yesterday already happened which
meant she was also cozying up to me for having saved her ass.
She retired to her room for the night a while ago. Our dad wasn’t home yet. Everything was as I liked it,
quiet and peaceful. I was curled up on my window seat, reading a novel on my phone with my afghan
wrapped around me. The n was to finish the book before my dad got home, then go to bed.
I had only a few chapters left and it seemed like the guy I wanted to get the girl was actually going to
get the girl. I, unfortunately, had a penchant for second leads so the characters I root for rarely end up
together but this time, it seemed like they would.
I smiled to myself, pulling the afghan tighter around my shoulders as a cool breeze filtered in through
the open window. I absently reached for my cup of tea while waiting for the next page to load.
My gaze flitted out the window, taking in the clear night sky and scenic two-way street. I sighed, a quiet
satisfaction filling up my chest.
Well, until I spotted Ian clumsily staggering up the street.
I almost spilled hot tea on myself in shock. What the...? He made it to my backyard before
unexpectedly crashing to his knees.
I frowned, gently setting the cup down when he didn’t immediately get to his feet. I got to mine and
reluctantly went down to find out what the problem was.
“Ian?” I called from the safety of the doorway.
A groan was all the reply I got.
“You good? What are you doing here?” I tried again.
I watched, worry beginning to gnaw at me as he slowly rose to his feet, limping the distance between
us until like me, he was standing in the illuminated part of the doorway.
I gasped, my hands flying to my mouth.
His face was more red, blue and purple than his normal skin color and was liberally stained with blood.
He was sporting a split eyebrow, an swollen shut left eye and what I hoped to God wasn’t a bullet
wound in his right arm.
“The fuck...?” I rushed over to him.
He groaned.
“Are you...? What the fuck happened? You need a doctor!” I hissed, hooking his good arm over my
shoulder to support his weight.
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with his left leg but a huge part of me really did not want to find out.
“Yell at me inside the house. I think I shook them off but I’m not sure,” he managed before slipping into
a coughing fit.
I paused, all sense of sympathy fleeing from my mind. ''I think I shook them off...''
“You think?” My tone was all ice and frost. “You think?” I repeated. “Meaning, you might have led
them...”
I clenched my jaw, swallowing the rest of my statement in favor of helping him inside. He was right. If
he had in fact led a group of criminals to my house, standing outside where we could easily get caught
was the worst idea.
I could just as well yell inside as I could outside. My dad wasn’t home yet and Olly could sleep through
a tornado. I could kill him as loudly and painfully as I pleased inside.
I locked the back door behind us and helped him up to my room just in case my dad chose this
inopportune moment to show up. A bleeding boy in the living room at midnight was just not something I
could exin away.
I sat him on my bed, drew my ckout curtains close, and then switched on the lights.
I helped him take off his authentic leather boots -I couldn’t help noticing, sue me- before sitting him
down morefortably, with his back propped against my headboard, a pillow cushioning him and his
legs stretched out on the bed.
“Don’t touch anything,” I ordered before heading downstairs to get everything I’d need to tend his
wounds.
I returned armed with supplies. Iid them at the foot of the bed before going back to lock my room
door just in case. Olly could suddenly wake up and need something from me. I wasn''t willing to take
any chances.
I faced him, meeting his unbruised eye.
“Exin yourself,” I ordered.
A part of me was impressed by how calm I sounded, especially given the fact that my heart was racing
a mile a minute and I was lightheaded with fear.
His eye drifted shut, a sigh leaving his lips.
“I had match this evening and then--”
“Not there, idiot.” I red. “From the beginning.”
A frown marred the parts of his face that weren’t immovably swollen.
“Okay,” he acquiesced, confusion coating his tone. “This morning, I got--”
“Not. There.” I ground out. “The beginning beginning. Where all this started. How you got involved in all
this. If I’m going to risk my family’s and my safety, I think it’s only fair I have all the details. Start talking.”
He sighed wearily then winced almost immediately, reminding me that he required medical attention.
“I’ll fix you up while you talk. Don’t even think about holding out on me or I’ll hand you over to the
wolves myself.”
The contents of my stomach were quickly turning into butterflies as I took in his wounds. The I-might-
puke kind. Thankfully, he was in too much pain to notice.
“Fine,” he breathed.
I gestured for him to go on as I got started on his injuries.
This is property ? of N?velDrama.Org.
“I’m a rich kid like you guessed.” He winced, sucking air in through his teeth as I helped him get his
jacket and T-shirt off. “Old money rich. You were right about that too.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. That part had been too obvious. I hadn’t even felt that much of a sense
of satisfaction from uncovering it.
“My family has been rich for generations. My grandmother handed the business down to my father not
long after my older sister was born.”
He paused for a deep breath, his shoulders rising and fallingboriously.
“I found outst year that not only has my dad been evading taxes for years, he’s been cutting shady
deals too. Also, we own an insurancepany which he uses to skirt thew and swindle people out
of their money. There were a bunch of other things too but the highest on the list was that he was
suspected of being in bed with some drugwork.” He stopped, hissing in pain as I prodded his chest
for broken ribs.
He really was lucky I used to be a devout follower of Residents and Grey’s Anatomy.
Thankfully, nothing was broken -that I knew of anyway- and what I had thought was a bullet wound was
actually just a nasty graze from a chain-link fence apparently. The bleeding waspletely out of
proportion and I would have told to him to have himself checked for bleeding disorders at his earliest
convenience but I didn’t want to interrupt his storytelling.
“Go on,” I encouraged, keeping the knowledge that his arm would need stitches to myself for the time
being.
“It was the... drug thing that got the FBI involved.” He heaved, exertion worsening his pallor. “I think.
But they couldn’t pin anything on him. Not a single thing. My dad doesn’t just think he’s the smartest in
the room. He usually is. He came out clean. He’s very good at skirting thew. There wasn’t a single
shred of evidence to pin him down but I just... knew he did it. I just knew and I couldn’t...”
He sighed wearily, his Adam''s apple bobbing up and down.
“Whatever. He was cleared but my grandmother found out. She’s the only one who can call him out on
stuff so she went back to being active in thepany to monitor him, thank God. But I felt like I had to
do something at least.”
He tried to shrug and quickly learnt it was a bad idea. I, on other hand, kept my thoughts on how stupid
bing a criminal to spite his father was. It was really hard but I managed it.
“So I started sniffing around the drug thing. I even asked him one time. I know he’d never incriminate
himself. He’s too smart for that but I had to try. It paid off. He told me they approached him and he
turned them down.”
He tried to smile. Keyword; tried.
“I’m not sure I believe him.”
To save him some dignity and also because I didn’t have the bandwidth to so much as try tofort
him, I pretended not to hear the desperation in his voice that made it ringly obvious he really wanted
to believe his father.
Something in my chest twisted. That desperation was a little too close to home.
“Anyway, he slipped up and I got the address to the arena. Lucky for me, another Carrington family
tradition is kickboxing.”
Thankfully, that little nugget slipped out right when I needed something else to focus on.
“Hang on,” I held up a disinfectant coated cotton bud, “Carrington as in Carrington Global? As in Amina
Corp?”
My eyes felt like they would pop out of their sockets.
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ.” I blinked.
I knew he was rich. Really rich. But not Carrington level reach. Definitely not Carrington level. The
Carringtons were on list of the top fifty richest families in the country. Number seven or so. They were
obscenely rich. It was just not the kind of rich you’d expect from someone you actually know personally.
Like how you wouldn''t expect yourself to know Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos. It was urban legend level rich.
“So I came down here.”
I had half the mind to tell him to wait for me to finish processing the fact that I had mistaken a billionaire
for a poor down-on-his-luck petty criminal at some point in my life. I might have if I wasn’t worried it
would make him stop talkingpletely and since I was almost done patching him up, he could decide
he wanted to leave.
“Came from where?” I inquired, forcing myself to file away the shock forter.
“I lied before.”
I froze, fingers stilling in the act of wiping his split brow. My mind instantly jumped from from reluctant
but honest Fed to family dynasties built on blood and betrayal.
My eyes narrowed.
“Lied about what?” My voice could’ve easily cut ss.
He flinched.