Page 101 of Manhattan Secret

Soon enough Delaney Sloan will be just a memory.

Right now, nothing makes me happier than the surge of adrenalin for hacking into somewhere I shouldn’t be permitted to go.

I swear, the FBI are gonna get a genius with me one day.

Until then, the Bishop is thriving with my heart drumming, and a secret smile in my eyes.

Just as I’m finishing up, covering my tracks as always, leaving behind no footprints of my time on the server, I receive a text.

My boy Ethan, all the way over at Hunter College. He’s in their pre-law program. My sidekick is going to be a kickass business lawyer one day.

We joke I’ll be his only client, getting me out of trouble every week.

Ethan:High school didn’t prepare me for this shit.

Ethan:I have a class at 7: 45 fucking AM, man. I’m dying.

Ethan:Think I caught something from you. There’s a fuck hot professor I wouldn’t mind bending over her table. Alas, she’s married with kids.

Lachlan:WTF, I didn’t give you teacher herpes.

Ethan:I saw her, you wanna know about it?

Sneaky asshole, that’s his reason for texting, and I can’t mask the way my heart lurches as I shove the laptop away in its carry case. Of course I want to know, it’s taking all my willpower not to digitally stalk her and find out shit for myself.

But I haven’t and I won’t.

Lachlan:Nah, man. All good here, parties galore.

Ethan:Yeah? You got any yet?

Lachlan:All in good time, bro. You don’t fall on the first burger you see.

Ethan:Riley tried to talk to me. Bitch, please.

Lachlan:Talk to her, you don’t have to shun her for me.

Ethan:Fuck that. She did my boy dirty. I got nothing to say to her.

Ethan:Fuck me, I got another class. Killing me! Later, bro. Don’t find a new best friend. I’ll kill them.

I laugh to myself. He’s such a pussy.

Lachlan:Your pussy is showing.

I’m not like the rest of these people—I rush for no one and nothing. I get places where I need to go, and always on time, but I see people, even now running across the quad, stressed and sweating. Nothing is worth being stressed over. I climb to my feet, part from a few of the circle around me, going to different buildings on campus. I don’t push and shove to get what I want, or to be at the front of the line. Rushing and looking haggard doing it isn’t a good look for no man but especially not one of my status.

I might have only been at MIT for a few weeks, but my reputation apparently has gotten here before me and a few of the guys anticipated my arrival, even going so far as to throw a party in the dorm rooms.

Fierro knows how to get shit done;people are saying.

I didn’t earn my reputation like Theo as a football god. He owns Clemson and rightly so, he’s fantastic with a ball in his hand and the school worships him for it, he gets plenty of pussy and adulation. His stardom even travels, and a few professors have asked if I’m the same Fierro as Theo. He lapped that shit up when I told him.

Two weeks turn into six, then eight and before I know it my first semester is over with and my reputation is just as it’s been at Richmond.

I never ask to be the prince of anything, I like my own lane, doing my own shit, I don’t rush, because I have no need to.

But that’s who I’ve become.

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