Page 8 of Villain

“Now that you’re back, you can help with the screening process. Carry your weight,” Yejun suggested with another grin.

“Weren’t you just complaining about him taking all the prey?” West pointed out.

“There’s plenty of ass to go around.”

“We only need one,” Lake stated, proving that he did, in fact, remember their task.

The rules were simple. To carry on the great legacy of Essential, every three years, the highest-ranking senior members of the prestigious Foxglove Grove would cultivate and offer up a sacrifice to the club.

This year, that honor fell to Lake, West, and Yejun.

“Essential is tied into everything on this damn planet,” he continued, lowering his voice, gaze sweeping around them to ensure everyone was watching from a safe and respectable distance and couldn’t eavesdrop. “Which means if I want that title, I have to first prove myself to the Order.”

“Those stuffy old assholes wouldn’t know a good time if it bit them on the ass and tried to plow inside,” Yejun griped.

“Everything has to go perfectly,” Lake insisted. “We can’t afford any errors.”

“The app should have been useful in helping you narrow things down.”

Originally, they’d designed the app to be accessible only to students currently enrolled in the university, but over the years, the rules on that matter had been pushed and pushed until the waters had been muddied.

Now, anyone who’d graduated within the past twenty years, as well as anyone who worked with the school in any type of fashion—be it as a professor or merely on the board—could create an account. As far as Lake knew, there weren’t many old-timers who’d taken that offer, but there were some. The Club itself offered more than enough entertainment in that department, which had helped, but still. The anonymous setup of the profiles had been great in the beginning, yet complicated things now that they had to actively screen out the older members who wouldn’t make the cut.

The three of them had various tastes but similar types. Before, when the plan had been for Lake to remain off-planet for a while longer, it’d only been West and Yejun who’d had to worry about sharing the sacrifice between them. Lake’s arrival meant one more opinion when it came to selecting someone from the masses.

At least there was comfort in knowing their tiered system held strong, even with all the other changes that had been forced by the Order. Not many ever made it to the higher levels, which helped narrow it down for them, as intended.

A lot of thought had been put into that system, and Lake and West were already pissed enough about how their rules had been altered and messed with to fit the needs of the Club outside of its initial purpose.

On the outside, it probably came off as pointless fun. Another way for the rich and elite to classify themselves. In reality, there were much darker and greater intentions behind the five tier system.

Pawn. Knight. Bishop. Rook. King.

To download the app, let alone create an account, one needed an invitation with an active QR code. The first two tiers were mere smoke screens, designed to trick less desirable users into believing Enigma was nothing more than another hookup app. Past that, things got interesting.

“We’ve got less than fifty Bishops,” Yejun rattled off the numbers effortlessly. “Twenty-three Rooks. There are eleven Kings, including us.”

“What are you thinking?” West asked. “Pick from the Bishops? It would simplify things.”

Lake shook his head. “Too generic.”

Yejun snorted. “When was the last time you checked their chatrooms? The freaks who congregate there are many things, but generic…I’m not sure it’s fair to label them as such.”

Lake quirked a thin brow. “Since when were we about playing things fairly?”

“So the Rooks then?” West hummed, considering it. “Twenty-three is more than enough for us to pick a good candidate.”

“I don’t want good,” he said. “I want the best.”

His friend frowned. “You want to sacrifice the best candidate for enrollment? Isn’t that a waste?”

“We’ll need followers,” Yejun agreed with West. “The students who’ve managed to find their way into the Rook and King chatrooms are clearly the most like-minded. They’re already well suited for Essential just for that alone. The Order would agree. It’s a guaranteed instant acceptance of our choosing. Is it worth throwing that away on an outdated ritual?”

Lake rapped his fingers against the leather armrest. “I’ve considered that. I have a plan.”

“What plan?”

“Later.” He stood with a flourish and adjusted the button of his vest, charcoal black with gold embellishments similar to the ones his friends wore. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time.”

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