Page 35 of Mayhem

He leaned closer again. “Westbridge was where you knew him, right? Your records overlap there, but barely. I’m guessing that’s where this started.”

I put the fork down carefully and looked at him.

He kept going. “Were you already dating him when—”

I picked the fork back up and drove the tines into the tabletop beside his hand.

The sound cut through the conversation around us harder than I expected. Metal struck wood, and the people closest to our table went quiet for a second before pretending they hadn’t noticed. Malakai looked down at the fork buried less than an inch from his fingers, then slowly turned his hand over like he was checking the distance for himself.

I left the fork where it was and looked at him directly. “I answered the question that mattered. I found Nichlas. He owes me, and I came here to collect. You don’t need the route I took, the people I spoke to, or the history before I got here.”

Malakai’s eyes stayed bright with interest. “You stabbed the table because I asked where you met him.”

“I stabbed the table because you weren’t listening.”

Ronan finally set his cup down and looked from the fork to Malakai. “She has a point.”

Malakai glanced at him. “You’re taking her side?”

“I’m saying you knew she’d stopped answering three questions ago and kept going because you wanted to see what she’d do.”

“That worked out well for me.”

I pulled the fork free and set it beside my plate. “Great. Then we’ve all learned something useful.”

Hunter had been watching the entire thing without interrupting. That bothered me more than if he’d told Malakai to back off. He looked too comfortable, too interested in seeing where I drew the line and what happened when one of them crossed it.

I turned toward him. “Any more questions? Because I’d rather get this straight now. We didn’t agree to get to know each other. I sit in your presence, I tolerate whatever performance this is supposed to be, and you give me my ex.”

Ronan leaned back slightly, his attention moving to Hunter. Malakai’s grin stayed exactly where it was but Hunter’s changed.

He looked at me for a long second, then lowered his coffee to the table with deliberate care. “You really have no idea what you agreed to yesterday, do you?”

Hunter’s grin settled into something colder, and for the first time since I sat down, Malakai stopped looking entertained enough to interrupt. Hunter leaned back in his chair and let the silence stretch until the table around us seemed to pull tighter.

“You stepped into a world you know nothing about, Matthews.” His voice stayed low enough that the people watching from nearby tables would have to work for it. “There are rules here. Some are written down. Most aren’t. You follow them because the people who ignore them eventually learn why they exist.”

I pushed my plate away a few inches and rested my forearms on the table. “I’m not following a bunch of fucking rules because your families have been scaring each other with them for generations.”

Ronan looked toward me, his expression losing some of its amusement. “You keep hearing rules and thinking somebody’s asking for manners. Hunter’s talking about the structure underneath this place. Who gets access, who gets protected, whose word carries weight when something goes wrong. You can hate it all you want. It still functions whether you respect it or not.”

Malakai pulled my abused fork from where I had left it beside the plate and rolled it between his fingers. “And you already used it yesterday. You wanted Nichlas badly enough to bargain with Hunter instead of trying to cut through everyone around him yourself. That means you understand enough to know the structure matters when it stands between you and something you want.”

I looked between the three of them and felt my irritation building again. “Then stop talking in fucking riddles. Every conversation with you people eventually turns into some warning about names and influence and consequences, and nobody actually says what they mean. If you’re threatening me, threaten me.”

Hunter went still.

Ronan’s gaze shifted toward him, and Malakai set the fork down.

Hunter folded his hands loosely in front of him and studied me for several seconds before answering. “I looked into you yesterday.”

“Congratulations.”

“I found a twenty-three-year-old transfer student with a clean academic record, no meaningful disciplinary history, enough practical experience to move around this campus like you’ve been trained for it, and four fathers whose backgrounds get thinner the farther I push.” His eyes stayed on mine while he spoke. “Employment records that don’t explain the money. Moves that don’t line up cleanly with jobs. Years where there should be more documentation than there is. A family that exists on paper without leaving much of a trail behind it.”

My attention sharpened despite myself. Hunter noticed, because Hunter noticed everything he thought he could use.

He leaned forward a little. “Then there’s you. You tracked an ex across the country, transferred into his university, learned his schedule, got around the people assigned to him, put your hands around his throat, and pulled a knife when you had the chance. That tells me something happened between you that you don’t intend to discuss over breakfast.”