The Pretty Psycho (St. Vasili’s Academy #2)

12. Adrian

12

ADRIAN

My arms tightened around Vega, keeping my eyes closed for just a couple of more seconds, ignoring the vibrations coming from my phone charging on the nightstand. It hadn’t stopped ringing for a couple of hours now, but most of the numbers weren't familiar, and those that were could wait. Jax and Dante were handling the transportation of the rest of The Brotherhood into the Academy, but I knew they needed me.

The cabin was still in total darkness when I finally opened my eyes, seeing the back of her head and then trailing over her body. The fact that I almost lost her made it almost impossible to sleep, but my body knew she was here, recognized the peace that washed over me as she pressed against me last night after we ate while reruns of Supernatural played on the TV.

My phone started vibrating again and I detangled myself from her, reaching for the goddamn device when she started protesting, seeking me out even in her sleep. A smile broke on my face, seeing her like this. There was still too much distrust in her beautiful eyes, even after I told her what weighed on my chest. What lived in my mind.

I used to be afraid of opening myself to other people, terrified of them using it against me, but for whatever reason, I wasn't afraid with her. I wanted her to see me, to know me, to know all those deepest, darkest parts of my soul and my heart. There was no going back now.

I was addicted to her. Her touch, her scent, her smiles, and even her anger.

I wasn't lying when I told her I needed her to be okay, because I wouldn't be okay until that old flame returned to her eyes. It was still there, just dimmed, simmering beneath the surface, but we would get it back.

That motherfucker, Tyler… I was going to find him and make him pay for what he did. For taking what wasn't his to take.

I unlocked my phone, blinking at the glaring white light, still shaking off the sleep from my eyes. Just as suspected, Jax was the last one to call and it surprised me to see that it was already eight in the morning, mostly because I halfway expected them to come knocking at six.

I don't want to bother you, man, but we need you at the main building , was the last message from Jax, sent just fifteen minutes ago.

I dragged my hand over my face, hating this. I didn't want to leave her, not just yet, but duty called, and if I wanted us to move past all of this I needed to get to work. But Yolanda should be coming soon, and I was glad that Vega at least wouldn’t be all alone.

My father was probably already assembling his people, planning an attack, and since we didn't leave this place I knew it was bound to happen any day now. The members of The Brotherhood were flying in today and it gave me a moment of peace to know that we would have our people here. We'd be able to put them on guard at the front gates and we would be able to train the newest members as needed.

Every member of The Brotherhood had their own lives and their own organizations, but when the bell rang, or as Jax loved to joke, when the Bat signal called, they would have to answer. We were strong individually, but we were unstoppable together, which was why I came up with this idea in the first place. Well, that and the fact that I wanted to throw out the old masters and set the new generation up for a better life.

I was done trying to appease men and women who had no idea how to lead anyone, least of all organizations who could make or break this world. Jax, Dante, Arseniy, and Ethan felt the same.

I scrolled through the messages, my eyes catching on one in particular.

"Speak of the Devil," I whispered, seeing Ethan's message on the screen.

" ETA, two days. Have a job to finish. " I grinned from ear to ear, knowing that we would be at full force with him here.

We all met at the Academy, each of us carrying the burden of our parents. Sometimes it felt like the rest of us had it easy compared to Ethan. His family only consisted of him and his two uncles, who were professional hit men back in the day, hired by most of our families to deal with their dirty laundry. Ethan never wanted this life, but he had no choice just like the rest of us.

"Adrian?" Vega mumbled next to me, her brilliant eyes searching mine. "What time is it?" she asked with a yawn, pressing herself against my side.

"Eight," I answered, draping an arm over her. She practically climbed on top of me, pressing her cheek to my chest and wrapping her arm around my middle. God, I could die a happy man now. Right here, right now.

"Too early," she grumbled. "Sleep."

"I can't." I chuckled. "I need to go and meet Jax, Dante, and Arseniy. We need to come up with a plan."

"No." She pouted. "Plan later."

"I wish I could." God, I really, really wished I could, but I had to go. "Go back to sleep." I pressed a kiss to her hair, slowly sliding her off me. "I'm gonna come back in a couple of hours to pick you up. Just rest and let me know if you need something." The only reason I was even remotely okay with leaving her here, out of my sight, was because the grounds were covered with our people, our guards. The entrances and exits were sealed and there was no way for anyone to get in or to go out without us knowing.

Her eyes blinked open, that cute wrinkle etched between her dark eyebrows. "Don't look at me like that, Bambi," I grunted. "I will be back later."

"Good," she smiled brightly. "You can be my slave and Jax, Dante, and Arseniy can deal with the rest." But they couldn't. We both knew they couldn't.

"Go back to sleep," I said, slowly getting out of the bed. "I'll be back soon. Fridge is full, Yolanda took care of that while we were at the hospital. I'll send her here as soon as I see her. Does that sound good?" She nodded, her eyes already closed.

My heart felt as if it was growing in size, expanding, making more room for her and all these things she made me feel. I had no idea if this was love or something else, but whatever you called it, I yearned for it. And I wanted her to know everything.

I fucked this whole thing up by keeping things from her the first time around and I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice.

"We still need to talk, Bambi," I murmured as I bent down toward her.

One eye opened, glaring at me. "Do we need to do it now?" she asked, making me laugh.

"No, not right now. But later. I don't want to wait, and I don't think you do either. And, Vega," I leaned closer to her ear, "no running, baby. If you feel like running, I just want you to remember that I'll chase you to the ends of the earth."

"Is that a threat?" She smirked.

"Oh no." I bit down on her shoulder lightly, making her yelp. "It's a promise." She better not run.

I hated leaving her not just because only yesterday she was discharged from the hospital and she was still injured, but also because there were too many things up in the air between us, and until we cleared it all up, I didn't want to leave her side.

A few hours wouldn't kill me, but as I moved away from the bed and toward the bathroom, ready to get this shit over with, I already started counting the minutes until I'd be able to have her by my side again.

Jax, Dante, Arseniy, and Dimitri looked like shit, for lack of a better word. Jax kept in touch with me via messages throughout last night, letting me know they had made a command center in one of the old classrooms that was never used up on the second floor of the main building. But it was obvious by the look of all of them that they slept like shit.

"Well, don't you look like Little Miss fucking Sunshine," Jax grumbled, glaring at me.

"Nah," Dante said. "He looks like he slept, unlike the rest of us." His glare was all bark and no bite, which only caused me to laugh.

Arseniy had his eyes narrowed at me, Dimitri kept on yawning, while my other two friends kept bickering like an old married couple, trying to one-up each another on who could fuck with my mood more.

"Guys." I stopped them. "I just slept, that's all."

"Yeah, right," Jax drawled.

"Seriously," I laughed as I approached the desk they were all sitting at, with several cans of energy drinks and coffee cups between them. "You guys had a wild party last night, huh?"

Jax looked at me, then at Dante, and then back at me. "You know, I will never ever complain when you're pissed off, because coordinating this amount of people is insane. My phone bill is going to be through the roof, my nervous system is practically nonexistent. Why the fuck do we have so many psychopaths in The Brotherhood!"

"Because they're the most creative ones?" I asked, earning yet another glare.

"Seriously," Jax huffed. "Gabriela basically told me she will cut off my balls and feed them to me, because I told her she needed to be here by this evening. That chick, Mariella, she asked me who the fuck did I think I was. And don't get me started on the Hudson brothers." He shivered. "I'm not a saint, but those two would even scare Lucifer himself."

"But they're all coming?" I asked as I sat down and pulled over one of the clean coffee cups. The coffee in the pot was still steaming and given how I didn't want to annoy Vega even more, I rushed out of the cabin without a drop of coffee in my body.

"Oh, they're coming, all right," Dante said. "But they won't be happy when they realize they won't be getting individual rooms."

"Well, if they want individual rooms they can pay for the hotel in the city and get the fuck out of The Brotherhood," I said, sipping my coffee slowly, when I felt their eyes on me. "What?"

"Just like that?" Dimitri asked, finally participating in this conversation.

"Yeah, just like that. They know what The Brotherhood stands for. This is not a beauty pageant, so if they don't like it, they can get the fuck out."

"You know they won't do that." Dimitri laughed. "They're too scared of you, especially because they know you'll be able to overthrow your old man." I definitely hoped so. "Besides," Dimitri placed his elbows on the table, "they're also too curious to see what the new world order would look like."

Hell, even I was curious to see what it would look like. The five of us weren't the only ones that had beef with their families and wanted to change things. The problem was that there were those who wanted to change things simply because they thought their parents were too weak to do the things that needed to be done.

"We will see," I simply said. "What's happening with The Schatten?" I asked, looking at Arseniy who just grunted, his face revealing everything we needed to know. They were definitely in cahoots with my father, which shouldn't have been that surprising, given the circumstances. "So it's true then?" I asked, looking at Dimitri this time. "The rumors are true."

"It would seem so," he added, leaning back in his chair. "I must say, they hid it really well."

"They sure did," I grumbled. "All this time I simply thought that my father didn't like them because The Schatten still held too much power in the underground, but I guess I was wrong."

Arseniy and Dimitri had been looking into The Schatten and the possible connection between them, my father, and Vega. Turns out The Schatten wasn't just an enemy.

They were technically my family, or should I say, they were founded by my family.

My father, Gerard Zylla, and Heinrich Schafer were brothers. Blood fucking brothers, and my father had never mentioned it to me. There was a fallout in the family long before he even married my mother, and instead of staying, he ran from them, changing his last name and creating his own organization. I would've laughed because the similarities between that situation and the one we found ourselves in now were uncanny, but nothing about this was funny.

"So, we're a hundred percent sure they're working together? That file my father gave me on Vega wasn't just some stolen document?"

"Oh, absolutely not. Here." Dimitri pushed the white envelope he had in front of him in my direction. My fingers wrapped around it, turning it toward me and opening it slowly, only to see dozens of photographs inside. I started pulling them out, one by one, seeing the same thing on every one of them—my father and Heinrich sitting together, drinking and laughing like old pals. "I have a feeling your father somehow knew about your plans long before Vega even came to the Academy, or he at least suspected."

"And he had Heinrich send her here, expecting either her to kill me or?—"

"For you to kill her," Dimitri added.

"But why would Heinrich want her dead? She's his best operative."

"Because I wanted out," a feminine voice I knew very well spoke, and all of us turned around to see her standing at the threshold where the door stood open, glaring at the photos on the table. "Hello, boys." She grinned, slowly walking toward me, mesmerizing me.

"I thought you wanted to sleep," I grumbled, not exactly happy to see her here. Not because she didn't deserve to know all these things, but because I really wanted her to rest.

"I know." She placed her hand on my shoulder as she pulled out the chair next to mine and sat down. "But I was bored, and Yolanda wasn't coming nor was she picking up her phone.” Dammit, Yolanda. “So I came to look for you." Her eyes flickered toward the photos, and I didn't miss the flaring of her nostrils when she saw the particular one where a woman sat with the two of them. "That's Alena," she said, her voice dripping with poison. "She practically coordinates everything for Heinrich when he's not there. But yeah, he wanted to take me out because I wanted to leave. This…" She looked at me. "This was supposed to be my last mission before I planned to disappear."

"Why didn't you just leave?" Dante asked, pulling her attention to him.

"Because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I wanted to be free of all this. Free of them. I know all of you have pressure from your families, but living with The Schatten, living in the shadows and being one of them, is something I wouldn't wish even on my worst enemy."

I wanted to wrap my arms around her and destroy every single person that dared to hurt her, but I knew I couldn't. Vega didn't need me to protect her, not really. She needed me to stand by her side as she fought her battles, and I would need to learn to control the urge to take her and run far away from here every time someone threatened her.

"I thought I had outsmarted them," she chuckled sadly, looking at the photos spread in front of us. "I thought I had it all under control, but it is obvious to me now that they have played me. They took what I wanted the most and used it against me."

"It's not your fault," Dimitri said, mirroring my exact thoughts. "You thought you had this all figured out."

"No," she shook her head, "I was cocky. I was too confident and that confidence is what landed me in this whole mess." She turned toward me, her eyes filled with an anger I could understand. "They've been lying to me my entire life. Your father has been lying to you. They've used us." She turned her attention to Jax, Dante, Dimitri, and Arseniy. "They thought they were creating puppets they could use for their fucked-up wars." The solemn expressions of my friends told me they wholeheartedly agreed with what she said. "But we're not mindless puppets. We're not the heartless monsters they wanted us to be."

"No, we're not," Jax murmured, looking at his interlaced fingers on the table. "We're not puppets."

"I have spent so long looking for even an ounce of love in this loveless world." Vega chuckled, her sadness enveloping us. "I've been trying to find my place, to figure out where I belonged, because I always knew that The Schatten isn't my family." I couldn't take it anymore.

I wrapped my arm around her middle, careful not to press against her ribs, and lifted her from her chair, depositing her right on my lap. She yelped, looking down at me as if I had lost my mind, but whatever it was that she saw on my face had her calming down immediately, and instead of trying to move away from me, she relaxed, wrapping her arm around my neck as I pressed my nose underneath her ear.

Arseniy was grinning like a fool, while Dimitri rolled his eyes, but neither one of them tried commenting. Neither did Jax or Dante.

"We need to fight them," Vega said, playing with my hair at the back of my neck. "We need to destroy them," she bit out, her tone becoming more and more vicious with every new sentence. "I have no idea what your plans are for the future," she looked around the table, "but I refuse to be their puppet. I refuse to be controlled by men or women who wouldn't even blink if they needed to sacrifice me just to gain something for themselves." She took a deep breath, her nails scraping over my neck. "And I want in," she said. "I want to be involved with all this planning." Her eyes found mine, burning with the fire of a thousand suns, scorching me to the spot. "No more secrets, and no more lies."

My lips pulled into a bright smile, because I never expected her to sit here and command the room this soon after the attack.

"I am not a victim," she bit out for the thousandth time, repeating the words she said to me just last night.

She wasn't.

She was a warrior even on the days when the burdens of the world seemed to be too heavy for her to carry by herself.

"I know that," I murmured, wrapping my hand around her neck and pulling her closer to me. "We all know that." Murmurs of agreement passed over the desk, giving her the fuel she needed to continue her little harangue.

"Good." She smiled. "Then I want to know it all." Her eyes communicated even before she voiced it out loud. "I want to know the full history. And then," she looked at Arseniy, "I want us to destroy them just how they tried to destroy us."

And if I wasn't already falling for this girl, I knew I was definitely well on my way now.