Page 25 of Villain
Yejun let out a breath and dropped back down into his chair dramatically. “Well damn. I thought he’d never stop talking. Remind me why I had to tag along tonight again?”
“Because he asked for you,” Lake stated, easing back down into the wooden chair on his side of the table. Now that they were alone, he selected a few more things from the trays filled with more food than a small army could eat.
“He just wanted to remind us about Demon Passing,” West said. “Dick.”
“Once we graduate and Lake takes the throne, we won’t have to tiptoe around him anymore,” Yejun reassured, clapping him on the back and shaking him slightly. “Which is why we have to succeed.” He glanced to Lake and held his eye. “Which leads me to this plan of yours.”
“You don’t agree?” Lake cut the ferh steak and slipped a bite past his lips, all while maintaining eye contact. “You seemed fond of Nix the other night.”
“Did I?”
“You came,” West reminded with a shrug, only to have Yejun snort.
“I can come from just about anything.” He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I don’t like it. Even if he’s not the one we were after, the guy still managed to mess with West’s programming. It’s bad enough you allowed him to become a King, but this? The sacrifice—”
“Should be useful,” Lake interrupted. “Nix has the potential to be.”
West pursed his lips, considering it. “You want to use him as bait.”
Lake snapped his fingers. “Bingo.”
“And,” Yejun drawled, “how exactly do you plan on going about that?”
“We know very little about this hacker,” West began.
“Which one?”
“The one the Club wants us to find,” he clarified. “We know he wants to expose Essential’s less than stellar dealings to the world, and we know he’s open to recruitment if it means achieving his goal.”
West felt kind of shitty for having to bring up the elephant in the room, especially when Yejun immediately looked away and grew distant. He’d suffered from their recent betrayal the most and had yet to fully recover. But facts were facts, and they were on a time limit.
“We took out his pawn,” Lake said, pretending not to notice Yejun’s reaction the same way West was. “He’ll be in the market for another.”
“How can you be so sure?” Yejun asked quietly.
“Because clearly getting close enough to break into our systems isn’t something he’s capable of doing himself.”
“He was found trying to break into the main servers within minutes by security,” West agreed. “He’s got skills to even make it that far, but they’re nothing in the grand scheme of things. He’s a threat, but not a big one.”
“That’s why we’ve been trusted with this.” Lake dabbed at his mouth with a napkin.
“It’s bullshit that we have,” Yejun stated. “Other Legacies had easy tasks. This? We’ve got nothing to go on but supposition and luck.”
“Like you even know what that word means,” West teased, hoping to lighten the mood.
But of course, he only managed to have the opposite effect.
“I’m not a moron,” Yejun snapped. “Just because I’m not an emotionless robot like you two whack jobs doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“Whoa,” he held up his hands. “Sorry. Bad joke.”
“This whole thing is a bad joke,” Yejun swore and shot to his feet, his chair clattering to the ground. “You know the only reason we’re going through this is so Lake’s uncle can get off on it.”
Hendrix Barden, also a member of the Order, was sixth in line for the throne, one place after Lake. He’d made his opinion on Lake being too young publicly known before the bodies of the Emperor and Royal Consort had even gone cold. It wasn’t a hard conclusion to come to that this was all a part of his plan to prove Lake and the rest of them weren’t strong enough to take positions within the Club, let alone the government.
“Have you tried talking to Beck?” West asked, referring to Lake’s cousin and, unfortunately, Hendrix’s son. West had always been a fan of Beck, the two of them having bonded over the fact both of their dads were trash.
“I will tomorrow when I see him on campus,” Lake said. “Though I doubt he knows anything.”