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“Were you knocked out by the blast?”
“For a short period, yeah, I think so.” He touches his head and winces.
“You’ve probably got a concussion. I wondered how the hell you managed to miss when you fired at him.”
He looks down at the body. “Christ, Dom, remind me never to get on your wrong side.”
I laugh at that, and he does too. He slings his arm over my shoulder and, both laughing, almost to the point of hysteria, we walk in the direction Kirill took Mackenzie.
“We nearly lost her again, Tino,” I say as the laughter subsides.
“I know, but we didn’t.”
“There are still people out there who mean harm to her and her mother. She’s not going to be safe outside these walls.”
“Then we don’t let her leave.” Tino turns to me and holds my gaze.
“Are you saying we all stay here forever?”
He shrugs. “I mean, forever is a long time, but there’s no reason we need to leave as soon as we’ve graduated, is there? I have the compound, but I doubt our Duchess will want to live there. Kirill has nothing much left in the way of security to offer her now. You’ve got all this.”
He waves an arm around.
I stare up at the gothic spires of the college looming over us. It’s been a place I’ve known as home for a long time. I was home schooled within these walls and then started my degree education here. I always thought I’d be leaving soon, until a girl who looked like a doll and acted like a stuck-up aristocrat showed up here and turned my world upside down.
“We need to beef up security moving forward if we do decide to stay awhile. It’s tight, but not tight enough if that fucker got in.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he says. “It will be costly, but what about biometric security for everyone? No one, not even food delivery, gets on the property unless they are in the database.”
“I’ll talk to my father.”
Shit, are we really doing this? Staying here?
“We can’t keep living in our rooms, though, so how about we move into the den?” Tino suggests.
It makes sense.
“I’ll ask him about that, too. I’d like for us all to be together.”
“Not the worst place in the world to stay,” he says with a shrug. “I mean, it’s all going to be yours one day, right?”
He’s not wrong there.
Chapter 38
Mackenzie
Kirill helps me back toward the main college building.
Paxton Kassell is finally dead. He can’t hurt me anymore. But the destruction he’s wreaked continues to play on as the survivors of the blast try to help those who’ve been injured.
The authorities will be here soon. Police, and firefighters, and paramedics. They’ll take charge, or perhaps not. I’m not sure how much leeway Nataniele will give them and how much they will demand. This is no ordinary college, and while he can’t keep the emergency services out when an attack this large has happened, I expect Nataniele will want control of it. He’ll vet who comes in because having the place crawling with personnel who might gossip about what goes on here would be a disaster.
The cleanup alone will be arduous. Then we’ll have to rebuild.
I could probably use a paramedic myself. The cut in my side isn’t deep, but it’s still bleeding and hurts like a bitch. I’m worried about Tino as well. He was obviously injured in the bombing, and he needs medical help, too.
As we get closer, I can still hear people crying for help. My heart tightens in my chest. My God, those poor people.
