Page 17 of Sunrise

I’ll protect her, worship her, at all costs.

The clip plays on repeat, and never gives me a hint as to what happened last night. Her scrambling for the panic button kills me. Whenever she’s had trouble with a challenging sub, she looks at the camera and gives a signal so Dmitri or I can come running, because we’re the ones who monitor the most. I don’t know the last time she hit the panic button. Honestly, this might be the first time.

“What the fuck happened?” Rubbing my chin, I play the video again. I’m at a loss here. Running through earlier footage, I follow this couple through the club from their initial registration and orientation, all the way to when Dmitri and one of our security staff barrels into the room and escorts them out. The woman looks scared the whole time. The man? He keeps his head down until he’s masked up at the beginning of orientation, and even when he’s booted out of the club.

I don’t like that, but the behavior isn’t necessarily a red flag. We cater to the elite, and sometimes those rich fucks need practice to balls-up around here. The masks offer anonymity to anyone,for any reason that is within the club rules. He’s broken none of those rules. Rifling through the stack of membership applications, it takes me a while to find his. Ethan McGregor.

Oh yeah. I did his background check prior to the open house. Everything checked out with him just fine. Same for his partner, Meridith Ricci.

“Find anything?”

Knox’s voice startles me. “No.”

He calmly walks around my desk and places his hand on it while leaning in from behind me to stare at the monitors. Without being asked, I hit play and let him study the footage three times.

“I don’t get it.” Cracking the top to another energy drink, I take a heavy swig. My fucking eyes burn. And Knox smells good.

My head’s all over the goddamn place.

“Sometimes a trigger is tiny, Alex.” He straightens up and looks down at me. “She’s got demons too, you know.”

No. I don’t think I do. Does she tell him more than she tells me? Why am I jealous of that? Shaking my head to get those ridiculous thoughts out of it, I drink more of my liquid electricity.

“That shit’s going to kill you.” He pulls the can from my hand and sets it on the desk.

“We all gotta go sometime.” I take it back, but don’t drink it. I’ve got a pounding headache and feel sick as it is. “Why are you here?”

“We need to talk.”

“About?”

“Us.” He raises his eyebrow and glowers at me…

Knox sits next to me at my kitchen island while I frown at his algebra test. “Well, at least you got the bonus question right.”

“The teacher said I could try to fix my problems, and she’ll give me half points for any I get right.”

“Okay, we can work with that.” I slide the paper over to him and tap the first red marked question. “Remember what I told you about cosigns?”

“I don’t give a shit about cosigns.”

Great. He’s in a mood. I don’t have time for him to act like a little bitch. My mountain of homework is waiting for me, thanks to being transferred to a private school so I could be “challenged more”.

“What do you give a shit about, then?” Because he needs to pass this class.

“Us.”

I feel his gaze burning into the side of my head. Clicking the lead out of my mechanical pencil, I work on the first test question, keeping my numbers all neat and perfectly aligned because I’m basically a robot. I feel like one, most times. No emotion, only logic.

Except when it comes to Knox, Dmitri, and Ryker.

Solving for x, the answer is five.Filling out the equation and circling the final answer, I bump my knee with his and start on the next problem he got wrong.

“Are we going to talk about my birthday?”

“What about it?” I keep my leg up against his.

On purpose.

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